What Does The Next Decade Hold For Corporate Learning?

The decline of college degrees and the rise of skills-based learning

By David Blake, Degreed

Alittle over 150 years ago, the first documented ‘corporate’ learning program took place when printing press manufacturer Hoe and Company created a factory school to train machinists onsite. A lot has changed since then, not least because of the Internet democratizing access to learning resources and data making it hyper-personalized. The next decade for learning and development (L&D) promises to be just as revolutionary.

Now, it is impossible to fully understand what the future holds. The Covid-19 pandemic was a valuable example of that. But with current advances in technology, we can predict a few distinct trends that it is worth keeping in mind when planning your medium and long-term learning strategy.

The Shift to Skills

The first of these is the continued decline of college degrees as the de facto way of knowing if someone was capable of doing a job. Now there are so many other, more up-to-date measures. There is a myriad of ways to learn outside of college today and more organizations, including IBM, Accenture, and even the U.S Government are dropping degree requirements in favor of a skills-based approach.

While college degrees may have defined who was ‘educated’ and who had ‘potential’ in the past, the chronic skills crisis and need for more agile workforces are encouraging business leaders to cast their nets into wider talent pools. They are broadening their ability to see people’s potential — and reducing bias in the process.

L&D Becomes Business-Critical

This fundamentally elevates L&D’s mission because when all education and learning are recognized, the work to upskill post-school and post-college suddenly takes on a different emphasis. The skills built in the workplace become more of a differentiator for both individuals and their employers. It makes learning not just a compliance activity but something to build a long-term, meaningful career.

That offers great opportunities for L&D leaders to take an active, strategic place in the boardroom (especially when advising on current and future skill supply and demand). It also increases the focus, and pressure, on them to deliver tangible business results, notably in ensuring that workforces are ready for future business needs and can shift quickly if demand suddenly changes.

Skills Data Delivers Game-changing Insights

The only way for L&D to step up in this way is to really understand what is happening with skills in the workforce. To know what critical skills the business needs in the short, medium, and long-term, and what learning is happening right now to build those skills. To be able to facilitate the identification and movement of people with certain skills from one project to another, across business functions. To inform the business of any skill gaps that may hinder performance.

In order to achieve this, L&D will become increasingly data-driven. It will soon be normal to see L&D teams with dedicated skill analytics solutions and data-savvy individuals, who can make sense of all the data being generated in the workforce every day. As more L&D teams realize the value of skill data, you will see more emphasis placed on solutions with a great user experience, which makes it more digestible and easy to make decisions based on that data.

Learning Metrics Evolve

With these new data capabilities in L&D, it will be much easier to directly link learning to business outcomes like lead generation, conversions, customer satisfaction, product quality, and more. By linking learning to the business (much like how marketing was able to do when digital marketing became commonplace) it will become a lot easier to justify budget increases for L&D — and vice versa, cuts will be harder to make.

Of course, this data needs structure, and that is why many organizations further along in this journey are building intricate skill taxonomies and reporting structures. But there is no uniform standard, so that is only going to create more noise and complexity as different organizations and vendors create their own taxonomies. Realizing this, some of the world’s most innovative learning leaders are working with the World Economic Forum to create a universal skills taxonomy. This will help to normalize the disparate systems out there and create a uniform standard that will, hopefully, be widely adopted by all L&D and human resources (HR) functions within the decade.

L&D Deepens Upskilling

We know that lifelong learning happens on a spectrum from recalling basic knowledge to the synthesis and evaluation of complex and obscure concepts. Over the next decade, L&D teams will continue to refine their learning opportunities, creating highly personalized learning programs that meet learners where they are, in their moment of need. For one, individual, informal, everyday learning will help them meet the skill requirements of their current role. For another, a talent academy (also known as skills mastery) will provide the deep and targeted skill-building needed to reskill and upskill for the future.

In other words, L&D will have more options to offer learners, orchestrating learning experiences that equip people now, prepare them for tomorrow, and inspire them to continuously grow.

Open Connects Disparate Systems

As the range of learning opportunities offered to workers increase, L&D decision-makers will become more astute in picking the right solution for their needs. It will not be as simple as buying more content, a learning management system (LMS), a learner experience platform (LXP), and a talent mobility solution and expecting them to all work seamlessly together. Nor to collect data from those disparate systems easily.

Instead, L&D leaders will soon discover why open platforms are better for flexibility, choice, and futureproofing. And they will hone in on the user experience because having to log in and out of different systems will quickly disengage learners.

AI Enters the (Class?) Room

I would be amiss if I did not mention the many advances in artificial intelligence (AI) that will impact both how L&D operates and the kind of skills that need building.

What used to be a Hollywood plotline a little over a decade ago has become mainstream. It also used to be stuck with highly mundane, time-intensive tasks that were easily computerizable. With the advent of generative AI like ChatGPT and deep learning models like the ones controlling autonomous vehicles, that is set to change.

It will make all teams, L&D included, much more efficient by taking over a lot of tasks that do not really need their input. That is everything from suggesting learning content for curation to gathering and updating skills data. It can deliver automated nudges to learners to encourage them to re-engage with learning, remind them of deadlines, or inform them of new learning opportunities. It can assist with filling out skill profiles, by suggesting related skills based on what someone has already inputted or learned.

Virtual assistants could become coaches, helping people to create career plans based on their current skills, learning, and interests. Or AI tools could provide near-instant feedback on coursework.

For individuals, the advance of AI completely changes the skillset needed to succeed in the future. We have already seen students innovate with ChatGPT for their homework and journalists use it to assist with articles. This kind of man-plus-machine working might raise eyebrows now, but it is a strong indicator of what is to come.

Now, we all know that automation is not going to take our jobs, but it will evolve them. We will have more time to focus on uniquely human things, like relationship building and deep strategic thinking. L&D teams need to upskill their people with this in mind. The technical, hard skills you are building right now, have a rapidly dwindling half-life. Whereas the power skills you develop will help your workforce move from role to role and adapt to the rising prevalence of AI in their lives.

It is worth mentioning that some workers will feel uneasy with the growing list of things that AI can do. Doubling down on upskilling and reskilling them will help put their minds at ease while preparing them for the opportunities that AI will offer.

Endless Opportunities

This is but a snapshot of what the next few years will look like for L&D teams. Going through all of this, one thing certainly rings true — there is no better time to be in L&D. Organizations are going to have to invest significantly in learning and skills over the next decade and L&D leaders will increasingly be called on for their insights and experience. The opportunities ahead to strategize and innovate are endless.

David Blake is CEO and Co-Founder of Degreed, who believes that learning is too important to stay the way it is and has spent his entire career innovating in higher education and lifelong learning.

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