Top 7 Learning and Development Trends 2025

It is no surprise that the world of learning and development is changing. A lot of innovation is happening in the space, particularly with the advent of AI, which everyone expects to be the game changer. There’s also the need for a post-pandemic revival that never happened in its true sense, an economic scenario that shies away from promising certainty and calls for reimagining learning and development in workplaces from its present faces. In this blog post, we are talking about the top 7 learning and development trends that will take center stage in 2025.

#1 L&D for managers gets a new face

What comes to your mind when you think of training the people, managers, and leaders on your team? For most of us, the answer used to be a nice-looking workshop by a well-known instructor and an online course to add a cherry on top because that would build reinforcement. But let’s be real. Most of this fails to account for the context of the manager we are training and delivers little value to them personally. Unsurprisingly, they are disgruntled about having to take out precious hours from work or personal life to endure the ordeal. Sure, networking is a benefit of these programs. But what about the learning itself? The learning and development trends 2025 promise a break from these old-school ideas. As we started by noticing the many changes in the learning and development landscape, the impacts started to show. Lean teams want to create an impact that organically reaches more people and creates happy experiences. The mechanic mode of learning is out, while empathetic learning, ironically powered by machines, is in. For learning and development initiatives focused on people management roles, this means a revamp right from the beginning. For instance, while going through Risely users to curate the State of Leadership Development Report, we understood that most of their challenges do not fit neat boxes. Instead, they look like this statement: “My team feels overworked.” It could mean the manager is not setting the right expectations with their team, the team is not sufficiently skilled for jobs, or the team needs to hire someone very soon. The context is married to the challenge in a way that we are just beginning to understand and solve with the help of innovative solutions in L&D. In fact, diagnosing the right challenge is a task in itself! At best, most managers can tell you the symptoms, provided they have the space and security to do so. Risely’s AI coach Merlin is one step in this direction because it starts with a tabula rasa – a blank slate where the user’s challenges and contexts are defined with them, with no assumptions or biases hurting the process. Similarly, microlearning continues to pique interest and reach job areas needing a personalized learning and development approach.

#2 L&D teams will move ahead with cautious optimism

What has defined L&D in 2024? Sadly, it has been a categorically bad thing. It was the year when L&D and HR teams lost people, budgets were harder to acquire, and there was uncertainty across the board. So, how do we move into 2025? “Cautious optimism” is the way to go. I asked this question in a recent conversation with Kelli Dragovich, and it was part of her answer.

“I just feel like the soil is loosening up a bit, even though this growth isn’t out there yet. It’s underground and I feel good about that, and look when when things are moving forward and you’re building and you’re not tearing down ,it becomes fun. I do think there will be more elements of optimism and fun this year. which is great because that keep us going.“

It means that although the past few years have been shaky, we are in for something new. As I mentioned earlier in the first point, empathetic learning powered by new tools is in big time. Organizations are looking for ways to solve for visible challenges like retention and keeping the best talent ammunition with them, so it’s a no brainer that HR and L&D teams move ahead with the idea of innovation with the human touch at the center.

#3 Skills for L&D professionals are changing

What does it take to be an L&D professional in 2025? The answer is not limited to learning design and knowing how to run a lecture anymore. As more tech comes in, there is demand for L&D professionals who can leverage it to do less with more. In essence, Kelli’s insight suggests that organizations are looking for solutions that touch more people but within their limited means. Even earlier this year, the LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report had pitched a more active role for complex skills like analytical ability, working with data effectively, and a set of “human skills” that make you more endearing to the people around you. After all, you must sell L&D programs to multiple people, get approvals, and garner engagement. And, of course, there’s AI. Is it going to steal your job? Likely no. I spoke with Dr. Steven Hunt, the author of Talent Tectonics, over a podcast, and he remarked that two pivotal changes are modifying the skills matrix for L&D professionals. The first is digitization—AI and many other avatars are showing promise. As with every technical advancement, some jobs get lost, and new ones are created. The second is demographics, since many people are aging out of the workforce, and there’s demand for more. So, there’s space to learn, innovate, and be more humane in L&D.

#4 Keeping the employees upskilled and happy takes centre stage

When it comes to being a nice HR or L&D professional, what do you think about? One vital area is ensuring that the employees can realize their potential. It includes supporting employees on their professional journeys, keeping up with their interests and ideas for upskilling, and building employee loyalty toward the organization. A lot of traditional ideas in this space are really constricting. They put boundaries on how work is done, organized, and even approached. But fret not! The good thing about ideas is that new ones are always there. The Inside Gig is one concept that calls you to move away from the conventional job descriptions. With an inside gig, employees pick and choose projects that match their needs. It also supports your resource needs, because teams sometimes have shortages and excesses. It can be a game changer for managers because it calls for a shift from the mindset of “my employee” to a more open, care-intensive view toward people where managers coach, support, and sustain others. However, the best unlock comes for the employees who get to put all their skills to use, learn new ones, and explore areas that restrictive jobs would otherwise prevent them from. Dr. Edie Goldberg has documented plenty of of successful examples, including big names like HERE Technologies and TATA Communications. For L&D teams, it is a call to make more active connections with the HR function because you are the ones in charge of keeping up the organization’s skills inventory, upskilling and reskilling workers, and ensuring that people have effective learning experiences.

#5 AI will change how we approach learning strategies

Reinventing the wheel of training people better at work to keep up with their interests is one thing; speeding up the game is another. What about the core processes of learning and development itself? Turns out, there are some changes on the horizon for those, too. The learning and development trends 2025 point to one clear thing—we want more AI to be used effectively. The question is: where can L&D teams leverage AI? The basic idea is that AI will help us better create content faster. But is that all? Earlier this year, I was speaking with Inna Horvath, and she gave an amazing reality check:

“When it comes to content, it’s not enough to just type in ‘I need a course on talent management; and you would have 10 pages of text, maybe a quiz if with multiple choices if you are lucky. But that’s not enough. We all know that, that’s not enough… What I think is important is to learn technology in an ecological way.”

In essence, there are more vital applications for AI, which are not just about doing quick fixes in many vital areas of L&D operations like data analysis, localization with translators, and even hyper-personalization. For instance, Steve mentioned a great concept in our conversation. While potential is equally distributed across society, potential is not. What technology can do is it will enable us to not only spot the skills that we need but also point out the under-looked potential in people. It allows us to think much more deeply!

#6 AI will change L&D beyond just content creation

However, developing learning content is one step among the many in the learning and development of professionals. The future of L&D looks at AI disruptions in many more areas like that. As Paul Matthews, the founder of People Alchemy, remarked in a podcast earlier:

“We’re right at the beginning of stumbling around in the dark.”

A few years down the line, incredible AI solutions will be available for the learning and development space. Paul clarified that while the present day is all about prompting AI to generate results, the very near future will take a different shape. There are AI solutions that essentially sit between me and you as facilitators in a very human way. There’s a lot more AI in L&D under the wraps, particularly with improved training to create personalized, specific solutions for certain use cases. In fact, Risely’s AI coach, Merlin, is one such solution for people managers. What it does is fill the gap that traditional coaching leaves in the hearts of many managers and leaders due to its high investment needs and low accessibility.

#7 L&D goes out of boring classrooms

If the AI age is here, do we remain stuck to our screens? Isn’t it a travesty to move from classrooms to classrooms on screens? Well, it’s a good thing that we are not doing that. More innovative and interesting ideas come to life with more research in the learning and development space. The focus is on learning experiences derived from designing user and customer experiences in product development and sales, respectively. A good learning experience considers what the learner wants and ties it to what the organization needs, which essentially saves us from imposing goals and processes on anyone. Some practitioners are doing incredible work in making learning experiences worth it for employees. One such example is the equine-facilitated learning program that Janis Cooper and her team run at the Best Friends of Animal Society. They use horses for leadership training programs with people managers. Why horses? Well, they are very receptive and empathetic animals who would love to build a connection with you. And they don’t know that you are a senior in the company and you cannot really cut their salary. Jokes aside, this interesting program works with people managers to help them build trust with their teams by understanding how to make someone feel safe and secure in the environment. This offers a huge break from the daily hustle of work and the boredom that has now come to be associated with “upskilling” for professionals. We look forward to more such L&D programs breaking the notions of boredom soon.

To Sum Up

TL;DR on the learning and development trends of 2025:

1. Manager training gets a much needed revamp.
2. L&D teams begin the year with cautious optimism.
3. New skills for L&D professionals, focusing on the human aspect, become in demand.
4. Employee aspirations get more spotlight in L&D plans.
5. AI changes how learning strategies are viewed.
6. AI also changes for L&D teams function.
7. L&D heads out of classrooms for immersive experiences.

Let’s check in at the end of the year?