A snapshot of L&D priorities and learning strategy in the modern era

Published in September 2024 and now in its tenth year, Fosway Group’s Digital Learning Realities research explores how L&D teams rise to the challenge of a fast-changing business environment and tech landscape.

Here Fosway analysts take another look at some of the key trends and challenges that learning leaders need to meet head on, that could also offer a road map of success for vendors looking to the future.

Upskilling and reskilling are the top strategic priority for learning

Compliance and regulatory training has long been the top driver of corporate learning, but in 2024 things have changed.

Upskilling and reskilling now leads learning strategic priorities. In much of Europe the continued pressure of an aging population and the challenges behind the availability of skilled talent is making skills a hot topic. This combined with the need to build new people capability in the face of unprecedented global and technological change has pushed upskilling and reskilling up from 3rd place last year to 1st place for L&D professionals’ priorities for the year ahead.

Whilst this could be seen from a L&D only perspective, what this genuinely represents is a growing momentum for ‘skills-powered’ organisations typically led by a wider HR strategy. In the CIPD Spring Labour Market Outlook report over half of organisations had responded to hard-to-fill vacancies by upskilling more employees. Skills is the HR zeitgeist and its influence is clearly filtering through to learning teams. And this means effective L&D teams need to partner much more deeply with other HR teams to make sure skills is coherently joined up across the people experience. The last thing any L&D professions should do with skills is stand in isolation. You do need to be connected.

The L&D priority for compliance, career development, onboarding and CSR all saw decline

One of the consequences of the surge around upskilling and reskilling has been the waning priority for compliance, career development, onboarding and CSR. All of which took a noticeable dip compared to their ranking last year.

How much this has been driven by a tightening around new hiring and what some have called the ‘Great Talent Stagnation’ is unclear. But it does hint at a refocusing on workers’ employability rather than the promise to deliver career progression. That could be indicative of organisations enabling people to keep pace with existing roles as much as enabling them to step into new ones.

This is an excerpt from Digital Learning Realities 2024. Get the full insight and discover the most common challenges experienced by today’s learning leaders by downloading all five infographics.

What should you do next?

• Are upskilling and reskilling a strategic priority in your business? Share your experiences – join the Fosway roundtable programme in 2025.
• How will AI affect changes in the digital learning space? Take part in Fosway’s strategic AI project for 2025: ‘AI in Learning’.

Other recommended reading

• The 2024 Fosway 9-Grid^TM for Digital Learning – full report which looks at market and solution trends in digital learning and how these are informed by trends in upskilling and reskilling.
• Digital learning: From strategy to execution. A paper that asks, how do you make digital learning work for today’s learners?
• What to look for in off-the-shelf learning content. On the rise and not stopping; here’s how to get the best out of your content – and your learners.

For corporates looking for deeper insight on this and other similar topics, please consider joining our Fosway research network to get access to corporate roundtables, private 1-1 analyst time, benchmark reports and other analyst services or project support. Click here to find out more.

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