Top L&D trends for 2025

AI will continue to rise within L&D

AI is high on the agenda of every CEO. Whether it’s a watching brief or a full-scale effort to use AI wherever possible, we’ve only seen glimpses of what it will be able to do. Over the last few years, development in AI has gone from being the technology of the future to a highly efficient tool with everyday applications. With even more AI developments on the way, it will change the way we work for good. With classroom L&D having limitations and live feedback often needed for employee training, implementing advanced chatbots could be a vital step forward in your training to match with modern technological trends.

AI will continue to be adopted in 2025, but to what extent is a question that only individual organisations can answer. Nevertheless, as an L&D leader, you should be aware of what’s coming and how you can adopt AI into your workflow and that of your team.

An increase in closing skills gaps for new hires 

Employers generally favour work experience and existing skills when hiring new staff. With there being skill gaps across the economy as a whole though, talent pools are becoming increasingly limited. This is despite there being great candidates with lots of potential out there in the market. As such, 2025 should be the time for L&D to implement training to plug these skill gaps, making more use of talent with great potential and widening the hiring possibilities. As an L&D leader, this should be high on your list of priorities, working with your colleagues in recruitment to identify skill gaps early on and making sure that your onboarding and development programmes address these. 

Adjusting L&D to meet hybrid demands

The benefits of hybrid work mean it is likely to stay in some capacity within the wider economy. Recent surveys have shown that some industries are pushing for a return 5 days a week, however, others have firmly adopted the hybrid model.

2025 will be an opportunity for L&D professionals and businesses to design digital or blended content to meet staff development needs whilst taking into account where the learning is taking place. Many people look for hybrid working when job searching, therefore, not having a programme in place to cater for this would be an own goal in terms of hiring. This is especially important when considering our previous point about the shrinking talent pool. 

L&D cost-cutting due to economic demands

There is no denying that the last five years or so have been, to say the least, economically noteworthy. With this in mind, expect L&D departments to consider ways of cutting costs in staff training while maintaining learning quality. With the recent budget, most businesses will be looking to cost-cut and sadly, L&D is often an area that comes into focus at such times. Of course as an L&D professional, you know that this is a mistake and companies should be investing more in their people so that the good ones remain and aren’t tempted to look elsewhere. Convincing the board of this, however, is another thing altogether.

Adapting to fewer financial resources within training should mean using blended learning and also digital methods like interactive documents and video tutorials. Leaning into the digital even more though, the use of pre-recorded webinars for onboarding is a useful asset for L&D, provided that the information contained is up to date. We would advocate for using online platforms to build onboarding sequences using these digital assets. Through our partnership with Eurekos, we’re able to build onboarding platforms for our clients that bring each new starter into the business in a logical way, whilst keeping engagement levels up. The result is better informed new starters who get up to speed more quickly and realise their potential sooner. 

The increased emphasis on employee upskilling

With all these and more factors combined, retaining and developing staff is more important than ever in 2025 and beyond. We mentioned new starters earlier in this article, but your existing people may also have skill gaps that need to be addressed. As such, L&D must focus on upskilling existing staff and ensuring that they can meet the technology demands of a 2025 workplace.

With businesses needing to adapt to rapidly changing technologies in order to stay competitive, upskilling is key. Hiring new talent with the expectation they will not only effectively understand the workings of your business but also have a wealth of experience with new technology, is too much of a risk. Instead, delegating time and resources to training your current people should be your route to growing as a company whilst taking advantage of business and technological innovations.

So, what are the key takeaways to consider?

Here are five key recommendations for you to put into action:

1. Explore the possibility of AI, such as improved chatbots to answer employee questions 24/7.
2. Invest resources into developing skills in fresh talent for your business, with less of an emphasis on broad pre-existing qualifications.
3. Use L&D that is more flexible to hybrid work schedules and prioritise less one-to-one mentorship.
4. Implement more digital or blended learning, whilst still maintaining L&D consistency and quality.
5. Upskill your current employees to improve their efficiency in using new technology.