2025 Trends: Preparing L&D for the Future

So thank you everybody, for joining us here.

Again, really excited to be hosting,

this session today where we're gonna be diving into our 2025

trends report. So this was a report we designed. We surveyed,

a lot of our customers, a lot of,

prospects in the l l and d,

HR industry

about what they're prioritizing,

what they're focusing on in 2025,

but also a little bit more importantly, how they're planning on addressing that. So in this session today, we're gonna be really diving into, the report. We're gonna be talking a little bit about, just briefly covering who the audience is,

what they look like to get you an understanding of what's the voice behind these results.

What is this connected to in terms of job titles, in terms of organization sizes, seniorities to help you kind of add some context to the numbers that we're sharing here today.

Once we cover that really quickly, we're gonna be diving into the actual top priorities. So we're gonna be discussing what are the things, the big buckets, the big goals that l and d teams are gonna be focusing on in 2025.

After those priorities, we're gonna be diving into a few of them, in in particular. We're gonna be diving into leadership development, skill development,

and focusing really on also retention and burnout, as well as learning,

leaning into social learning as well to expanding those modalities and really understanding

the impacts on program design and how programs fit in towards, these strategies to address these trends and really not just survive in 2025, but but but also thrive and and really drive that workforce development.

After that, we're gonna be following up with a few case studies as well too.

I I think one thing we have in all of our resources is is a real practical focus sharing,

how are other companies

really taking this advice? What are they doing in terms of their development efforts, what are their programs look like,

more importantly, what are the impacts of those programs as well too. So we're gonna be sharing a few case studies.

We're gonna we're gonna be diving into what the strategy looks like and what the results been on, their organization.

So in terms of some quick introductions,

I know I introduced myself a little bit earlier, but my name is Brent. I've had the pleasure of working at Together for the past 3 years, and I've been working in HR and EdTech, broadly speaking for the last 7 years.

If you've joined a webinar, read our our newsletter,

you're probably familiar with my name, my face, or my voice. I spent a lot of my time researching and writing about workplace learning, learning more broadly,

as well as employee development,

really creating a lot of

the content that we have here today. I have an awesome pleasure being supported by a wonderful team, who has helped produce this report as well too. So, huge kudos go out to every member of the team, the customers who participated in this, as well as everyone else who filled out the form.

I'm also joined here, with Nathan Goldstein. So Nathan is, the cofounder of Together, and he he, along with our CEO, Matt Reeves,

started Together in 2018 with a desire and a goal to fix workplace learning to really provide those learning opportunities

and development moments for employees when they needed it, to drive performance and to drive career development.

Nathan's role together has largely been focused on,

leading the research and development of our mentoring platform, our product.

He spends a lot of time talking with, learning development professionals and practitioners as well as HR, talent management, DE and I,

at all levels, everywhere from individual contributor and specialists,

all the way to, directors, VPs, and CHROs.

So, Nathan, before we we kinda kick things off, any thoughts, questions, or things that you wanna get in before we we get started?

Well, I'll just say that,

before the 2025

trends report came out,

officially, I was

I obviously read through it a few times and was just really excited by the quality of

input that went into it, the number of LMD people that were interviewed and,

from all different backgrounds

and the conclusions that came out of it. So,

today, we're obviously going to take you through some of that high level findings from that, but I do also encourage you to take some time after today's call and have a spin through it. I think,

you'll enjoy it just like a lot of our other content.

Amazing.

And

just very quickly before we we we dive in, a few house housekeeping tips. 1, a recording of this,

presentation as well as a link to the slides will be shared out immediately afterwards.

The goal is not for you to to frantically take notes or or or seek down resources that we're sharing, in this session here today. We're gonna be sending those all to you afterwards.

Second, if you if you have questions, we we we strongly encourage questions as well too.

There's gonna be a few interactive elements,

with this presentation. And so in order to keep track of the questions, there is a panel on the right side of your screen. It's called q and a. If you have questions, putting them in there helps us out quite a lot. It makes sure that we can see your question. It's not buried by a 1,000,001,

chat messages as well too. And then lightly touching on the interactive part, we're gonna have some some some questions, some comments. Please feel free, to interact, in the chat as well too. There's gonna be some qualitative questions. There's also gonna be polls. So you'll see this come up on the screen. You can simply

just read the question, select the, the poll sorry, the the answer,

that best fits,

what what what you fall into.

So we'll we'll give you some, some warning and and and some advanced,

notice of of when those polls come up.

So with all of that covered,

really excited to get started, with today's presentation. So, again, just quickly reiterating a lot of what Nathan just said here.

The objectives for today's,

session are 1, to share report insights,

but we also wanna provide a a little bit more than just what's in the report. You can read that by yourself. And so what we're doing today is double tapping into them. We're we're providing some more characterization,

for some of the challenges that,

we're seeing, the trends that we're seeing, and really cascading that down from the strategic level, and also focusing that on the practical and program design level as well too. So we're gonna be sharing a lot of real programs, a lot of real examples as well. And then lastly,

we're at the end of a year. It's it's crazy how fast this has gone gone by.

2024 is nearly behind us, and we have a new year ahead of us. And a lot of people are starting to get into planning. And so, really, what we want this session to be is a way for you to to understand

what's happening and to gain inspiration

around how you can design your programs,

how you can design your development efforts, to really take advantage of that and

really make 2025 a great year for employee development in your organization.

So so with that, let's, let's let's get started.

So as I mentioned, just quickly wanna discuss

who's in this report. We have numbers and figures and priorities.

Whose voice is this? And so, we have a few kind of demographic questions here, and the first one's on the job titles of the respondents for our survey. So we surveyed, some of our customers. We surveyed people who are also not our customers working in, HR, talent management, l and d industry, and overwhelming,

about half of the respondents for this,

survey results in in this trends report are directly in learning and development.

We also have a lot of other kind of diversity of HR related roles as well too. We have HR business partners, heads of HR, talent management, as well as folks in diversity, equity, inclusion.

We've also got a healthy amount of people in the other category, which really is emblematic of something that I'm I'm sure we all kind of believe, and that's that learning and development is,

more than just L and Ds or HR's priority as well too.

We have people engaging with us who are in distinct areas, who are,

you know, have LND and LND priorities at the top of their mind as well too. So there is some inclusion of their, voice and priorities in this as well.

So double tapping into just some more characterization of this,

in terms of the seniority level, we have, about half of people, who responded to the survey at the manager, director, and executive level. So there are people in this who

really have their involvement at the strategic

or their high high high level,

as well. And we also have, that contribution from individual contributors as well too. About, 25%

of, respondents are in that individual contributor. So we have pretty good balance here between those who are operating at a little bit of a higher level and those who are really on the grounds running programs, being specialists,

in their organization.

In terms of company size, this definitely leans a little bit more to the

medium to large enterprise level.

We've got we got we got about 50% of people over,

500 employees, a healthy amount of people in that 1,000 to 10000 category.

But we also have some some companies that are a little bit smaller as well too with fewer than 500 employees.

So to talk a little bit about, just the general framework for understanding how this presentation is going to, kind of go and and the flow of it as well too, we've we've we've designed this to kind of mimic, L&D's process as well too. And I'll I'll kinda take take or let Nathan kinda take over, and explain a little bit about this first.

Yeah. So as Brent was mentioning,

I spend a lot of time talking to l and d folks and,

and HR folks.

And when it comes to employee development,

what I've noticed a pattern and maybe just a simplification,

I guess, of,

a lot of the role is almost like 2 phases of work is there's a first phase of diagnosing

what your organization needs and prioritizing that. And,

some examples of that might be, you know, doing a needs assessment,

skill reporting,

employee engagement surveys or annual surveys,

and even just getting requests in from

other departments.

And then there's a second phase, which is actually delivering the programming

that

fixes those needs and improves,

development. And that can be workshops and events,

LMS courses, mentoring programs, readings, etcetera.

And so we kind of almost broke out this discussion into these two phases and also the report. In the first phase,

we kind of asked, you know, what have l and d teams diagnosed and prioritized for 2025? And we'll talk about that. And then secondly,

when it comes to programming,

what mediums are we seeing l and d teams use to address those priorities, and and we'll also talk about that and give some case studies.

So,

just getting you ready for 2025,

with seeing what what other folks are doing.

And yeah. So I'll hand it over to Brent to just start with some of the priorities that we found through our report and survey.

Amazing. Thanks for the overview, Nathan.

So diving into priorities. So we asked our our our survey respondents one one core priority or one core question, and that is, what do you expect to be your team's number one priority in 2025?

And I I I think the the results are quite quite interesting, especially, thinking about,

all of those 2024 prediction reports that we read, perhaps beginning of the year, early in 2023.

The results from the survey showed that leadership development was actually, by quite a large margin, the the number one priority.

Really excited to dive into to to to why why that is, what's changing.

But also rescaling is still up there as that number 1

sorry, number 2 priority.

And I think if you read a lot of the the the reports and everything,

from the last year,

there was a large emphasis on,

skill development, reskilling, and upskilling, becoming a skills based organization.

And we're seeing that still be a priority

to for l and d teams,

continuing in 2025.

We're also seeing this greater kind of focus on leadership development as well too. And then rounding out the top 4, we also have employee,

engagement and employee retention as well. So really making sure that

employees are not only just, you know, coming to work and fulfilling their roles, but they're engaged by it. They're really enjoying where they work and what they work on

and,

addressing kind of flight risks as well too. So we're gonna be diving into a little bit of these, top four

priorities, in more detail. And so we'll we'll kick things off with leadership development.

So as I was mentioning before, leadership development is kind of, like, risen in importance compared to 2024,

where skill development,

and rescaling and upscaling

really reign supreme, and, you know, we're all obsessed with skill mapping and and and making sure that we were addressing that for for everybody broadly. But there there's been a lot of change over the last year, in 2024 that have that has really kind of put the spotlight on leadership development as

the core priority that it's it's kind of showing us right now. And so some of the things that have changed are, 1,

this shouldn't be a surprise to to to to any of us, but there's a large tech technology,

change on the horizon as well too, and we're seeing this play out, and that is with artificial intelligence. We have tools like ChatGPT,

and and more that are that are really

revolutionizing

not just technical roles, but also nontechnical roles. This is a change that's really touching every employee no matter what field they work in, no matter what role they work in. And so a lot of these changes have the leaders challenges at the leadership level

are really about understanding how we can use this technology to get the benefits,

that it's supposed to, promise. Right? So, increased productivity,

leading through that. There's a lot of uncertainty around this, and it's a bit of a change. It's new material. It's an it's a new area,

that leaders need to create a vision around

and implement within the organization.

Right? So solving these challenges really requires strong leadership if businesses want to kind of continue to grow through a challenging business environment. Right? Like, over the last year, we've seen inflation rates or sorry, inflation rise. We've seen interest rates go up as well too, and that's that's that's created a little bit different of a dynamic compared to what it was in, you know, 2015

where, you know, it seemed like money was perhaps endless. We're trying to do more and experience growth and pursue growth and performance with less resources. And so leading through that and having leaders who can create that vision, who can align a team, and can get things done and drive results, the importance of that has just really, I think,

raised in the priority in which kind of helps explain this from the challenges perspective.

Right?

And so in terms of the opportunities, I I I think there's a lot here, that is

really kind of what teams will be focusing on, in l and d efforts will be focusing on in the coming years. And

to round things off, the technical the technical challenge and the innovation, it's also an opportunity.

Right? So getting people,

leaders within your organization

to understand and grasp how technology

is changing and how they can leverage it, giving them that understanding of of of of how to create a concept of how their teams can be using these tools to more, efficiently operate to to to drive that growth and drive those results in an area where there is, again, less resources. There's a talent shortage.

Finding new employees is increasingly different, difficult. Finding people with the skills is increasingly difficult. And so there's a raised importance on on ensuring that our teams, your teams,

and your leaders are equipped to kind of lead through that and really drive it.

There's another point on current terms of, leadership effectiveness as well too. Right? As we'll kind of, talk about a little bit more in-depth,

about retention,

burnout as well too. And so making sure that leaders are equipped with, the skills,

and to to essentially lead through,

some of the challenges that we're seeing with regards to employee engagement, making sure that, people have clear expectations,

strong feedback.

There's proper communication between teams as well too,

really resulting in the fact that team members are engaged, they're retained, and they're performing at a high level.

And as we mentioned before, with a talent shortage, it's it is really difficult

to find, leaders with those skills, those qualities, that allow them to do a lot of this stuff leading through change.

And so nurturing high potentials, I think, is gonna become,

really kind of raised importance, finding and identifying

those employees that are within your company,

nurturing their talents, coaching them,

getting them prepared to be a leader will be incredibly important.

1, yeah, to the talent shortage as well, but also,

few challenges on the kind of, like, demographic and employee fronts as well too. We have an aging population that's, exiting the workforce and retiring. We have a new,

generation of employees coming in, and they have differing skills. And so meeting them and nurturing them into leadership positions

is a massive opportunity

for,

kind of addressing some of these challenges.

So with all that kind of said,

Nathan, I'm I I I'm curious to to to hear like, from the conversations that you're having with other leaders,

how how is this kind of changing the program delivery?

Yeah. For sure.

One of the things I've been doing

quite a lot of in 2024 is actually just understanding

the structure of

some of the leadership development programs of the most kind of forward thinking,

organizations on this.

And I'm happy to tell you a little bit about what I'm seeing. I think,

for 1,

there was a time where when you did a leadership development program

at your company, say you're, you know,

ramping up new managers,

that

it would be,

like, a cohort,

or a onetime

set of workshops

over a, like, say, a course of a month,

shortly after folks were promoted.

And,

that, you know, that checks the box, and you kind of walk away maybe even with a certificate that you've kind of completed,

the leadership development training.

And where we're starting to see it move

is a little bit more to, like, a, continuous,

longer

term program structure,

where

there's also a matter of, a social learning component to it. And so what I mean by that is

because

things are changing so quickly, it's not enough to just kind of do a month and then, walk away and say you're done the leadership development. So some of these programs are lasting a bit longer,

several months.

And

what the social learning piece of that is is,

instead of just having, say, a set of workshops,

that folks attend and maybe some readings,

what

l and d teams are starting to realize is that

a lot of these skills can't just be learned independently.

They're learned socially through others. And so there's a real

demand right now to add, for example, a mentor match,

to a leadership development program or not even mentorship. Sometimes even just, for example, doing,

you know, a coffee chat,

roulette with other managers or leaders in that program.

It's really

just more about learning from others and bouncing

ideas off. And so what that kind of leads me to is this

observation

that it's really blended learning,

that these programs are becoming where

people are expecting a mix of both those, like, online courses,

in person activities when possible,

as well as those mentoring and coaching connections throughout the course of multiple months of that program.

And then maybe and beyond just having access to those mentors and,

coaches.

And,

yeah, it's really just a testament to the fact that leadership skills are best learned by doing,

and by having that, like, ability to

test with your direct reports what works and what doesn't come back, learn from your mistakes with a mentor or with the program, and then try again.

And,

so, yeah, that's what I'm starting to see is, moving to a more blended learning approach and a bit more of, like, a longer or continuous

attention to these leaders,

from an l and d perspective.

Yeah. Amazing. And I I think there's that quote that I I always try to hold in my mind whenever,

I'm thinking about learning is no one learned to to to ride a bike from reading a book.

Sure. It it it can help, but a lot of I think, yeah, the the action here is is is focusing

the the results of, sorry, the the outcomes of of of learning development efforts, not so much on did you consume the material, but rather what impact did this have on your performance as as a leader? I I I think having that support in that network, to support that is,

definitely,

I think, a very important focal point of development efforts moving forward. Yeah. So I had a I actually had an l and d manager come to me recently and say that,

hey.

My CEO

came to me directly

and said,

we need to have

a matching

component

of having a mentor as part of our leadership development. Like, I think that's what's missing from our leadership development program. So it's almost even, like, trickling into

the the demand is going up to the CEO level to have this.

I think maybe part of that is also just our kind of distributed remote environment that people are really feeling

that need is there. But, yeah, certainly a a trend I'm seeing.

Yeah.

Amazing. Okay. Got some a lot of ground to cover, so we will move on to the the, the rescaling and the upskilling.

And a lot of the challenges that I think we're seeing with, that we saw in 2020

3 that led to kind of a focus on on reskilling and upscaling

still definitely exist. And I I think the the wrong takeaway from this is,

leadership development is the most important. I I think reskilling and upscaling for our workforce is

very much still a a prescient issue,

with the marine development efforts and will still continue to be,

a a very large focus

of the efforts that you are producing and working on throughout the year. And

there's a few, I think, stats on here that that really kind of, like,

make this the the challenge of it stand out, and that and that's, again, same issue that's, we're seeing with leadership development is that there's a lot of change on the horizon. Right? The skills required,

for employees to be productive and high performing are are are radically changing as well too than they were 10, 20 years ago. So we need to kind of adjust,

our

our our our our view on what in terms of what skills we're we're teaching and how we're teaching them, as well too. Most notably, I think I think there's there's a soft skills gap. Right?

If we look at, again, to the issue towards, generations coming in and out of, the workforce,

We have this new generation coming in where perhaps,

lots of their their their undergraduate experience was disrupted,

by by by COVID 19, and they're they're they're coming into a workforce where we have hybrid remote,

you know, blended work environments as well too that

haven't perfectly replicated a lot of the consistent work environment that we had, prior to COVID 19. Right? It's a completely new way, to operate, and this requires

a higher importance in terms of the the soft skills. So skills like,

problem solving, critical thinking, communicating, and decision making. These are all really, really important skills that are currently kind of lacking, in the organizations as we figure out how new generations work, how we're integrating our teams across remote

and,

remote and hybrid, work environments.

Right? And, again, same point with the leadership development, new technologies. This is really gonna be, I think, one of the biggest themes in terms of,

to be honest, everything. I think this is gonna be touching every

every unit in your your organization

in terms of how can we be using

artificial intelligence to to really get work done and, you know, further putting kind of the import this sorry. This further puts kind of the importance on the soft skills gap as well too. Some of these skills, these hard skills will be a little less important in terms of, for example, writing or communicating or creative production, for example.

And more so of that skill in terms of the high

performing employees will be on those those soft skill gaps. So this is something that's kind of accelerating that and putting a little bit more focus on soft skills versus hard skills when we're choosing what can we, kind of teach and develop.

And, again, same thing, business environment as well too. Skilled labor force is is kind of changing the dynamics

of skill acquisition

through recruiting.

Labor supply is is smaller. It can be a little bit more expensive, challenge or challenging to hire,

folks as well too. And so companies need to be looking at really just the reskilling portion of, their current workforce as well too.

So, Nathan, with with with some of that in mind, a lot of similar issues here with with leadership development,

what are you what are you seeing the impact in terms of priorities in the programs,

when it comes, specifically to skill development?

Yeah. For sure.

So this is an area that

I wanna talk a little bit passionately about,

but I wanna

preface this by saying

for everyone on the call, I am not

an AI groupie.

I'm not the one who's gonna, you know, like,

be super, super,

forward about, like, everyone has to be paying attention to AI.

However

but

I really do wanna talk about how some of these skills are changing and how,

the learning and development teams need to respond to this and what I'm seeing, on our customer base. So I think,

in general, like,

skills will

have to be taught faster and faster. We all kind of have heard this.

And,

I have recently been

looking into more of, and doing research on

how some of these new, AI tools are gonna change every single role.

And just, like,

hopefully, it's not an eye roller,

of a comment, but it's kinda getting scary how

fast,

rules are changing. And with some of these new models, like, I really do think we're in a situation where there's it's almost like back in farming days when tractors came out and, like, it was maybe there was a resistance for a little while, but eventually, like,

if you were a farmer without a tractor, like, you're just completely left behind.

And so I wanna make a few points on this. I think, 1,

some of these newer models

are going to do, like, an entire set of people's jobs.

Nowadays, like, some of the new models, you can have a finance person literally, like, get a entire model built by,

some of the new,

chat GPT,

versions.

And, well, how does this tie to your job?

What I'm seeing

among our customers

is that

there was a time where you could create a course on something.

Perhaps it was like leadership,

or,

managing meetings or, whatnot. And when you created that course

and for independent study as part of whatever program you had, it's likely that that material

would be

pretty fresh for, like, several years. Alright?

It's not something that you had to really massage and and kind of constantly update.

When it comes to not only technical skills, but kind of use of some of these new tools that are coming out for everyone's job,

I just think it's getting to the point where there's literally no way that you can keep some of these materials fresh because of how fast things change.

When in our company, internally,

what we noticed is,

there's

on the product development side, there's such a high surface area of things you could learn about how to be more productive,

with, for example,

AI that the only way that we're able to really learn this together as a team and upskill ourselves

is by doing it socially

through

lunch and learns,

webinars, and basically having, like, crowdsource of knowledge where, like, one person is an expert in this new AI tool and another person is an expert in this AI tool. As a learning and development person, it you're you're gonna have to

do this socially and democratize it. You're not gonna be able to just, like, build courses that will last for several years.

And so and I have customers who are essentially running events

through our platform on things like machine learning, lunch and learns, etcetera.

So where I'm going with this is,

I think I I feel like there's a thesis here that the social learning

is gonna keep up with change faster than static courses and independent study.

And I just think that, you know, using your people and their interest and their expertise

as they're,

catching on to some of these trends and then sharing that knowledge, I think, will be more effective than trying to buy content, trying to build content yourself that's static.

That just the pace of change is is too high nowadays for rescaling and upscaling.

Yeah. Great response there. And,

again, completely agree on on on that front. There is that cultural,

and behavioral aspect to to learning when you're surrounded by other people who are also focused on these as well too.

When it comes to the rescaling and the and and the upskilling,

that's gonna be, I believe, a huge portion,

of of of a huge consideration when it comes to how we're actually implementing modalities to to to create these programs and get those outcomes.

So I wanna start things off, for our next section with a poll.

And so we're, you know, we're getting into the retention

piece. And so we really wanna see,

how people in the audience,

match up with the the results on our,

on our survey, as as well too. So the poll is a question that we asked on,

is do you expect that employee turnover

employees are at higher or lower risk of employee turnover? So we'll start the poll here.

Feel free to select your response. We'll wait about 20, 30 seconds just for a few answers to come in. In the meantime, I I I do see we're,

kind

of we got a question here from Todd, which we'll we'll kind of answer in the meantime. And and, Nathan, I think this is perfect for you.

How is Together positioning itself to address these results using its platform?

Our focus has been on the mentoring component. So

Yeah. So, Todd, thanks for your question.

How is Together positioning itself to address these results?

In general, we are expanding,

our,

capabilities in terms of beyond mentoring.

We now offer an events functionality that is really rapidly,

improving in terms of its functionality.

And so it allows people to run both

events inside their mentoring program, but also outside their mentoring program.

And we do see customers starting to use that for things like lunch and learn on machine learning, etcetera.

And then, secondly, we've added at the beginning of the year, our Colleague Connect and coffee chats functionality, so, adding a more informal,

match type to our capability.

We are now working on and will be announcing things that are related to,

development programs and how those matching components and those events components can be incorporated into your development programs.

So we're really excited for some upcoming announcements,

more to come

on, development programs. But, those are some of the things that we're looking at is moving beyond just the mentoring programs into some of those more, you know, involuntary,

career development, programs that L and D folks are running.

Amazing. And so I'll close the poll now, and I I see we've got kind of a more or less a 5050

split between,

people responding more at risk

of of of burnout turnover,

and people who are responding equally at risk. So I I think this kind of, definitely shows the

same trend that we're seeing in the report as well too. And you'll you'll see here that

78%

of,

HR and L and D professionals that we surveyed,

said that employees are gonna be at the same or higher risk,

year over year. And so, again, touching back to those points that we were talking about in skill development, a lot of those things are still prescient in people's mind. Right?

Another point to to mention on top of just the the pressures of work, expecting to do more or less,

change.

Really, a lot of this is characterized by a lot of uncertainty, a lot of uncertainty around their role, what it's gonna look like, what they're supposed to be, working on as well too.

But another area of this is also stuff outside of work. Right? Like, the the world can feel a little stressful at times, conflict, and,

I'm sure particularly for our our American audience, but also as well for our international audience, the US election year definitely brings that out as well too and adds to that. So there there are there's there's a lot of distractions, and there's a lot of stress in, kind of the world, right now. And so I think that's

part of the reasons why we're seeing it. But I think what's really interesting is that when we double tap into the reasons why, people believe that

employees are at risk of of of turnover,

It's it's really interesting, the results here. And from our survey results, we got,

no growth opportunities. So no opportunities for professional development

as the number one reason, and by by by a pretty healthy margin here as well too. We followed that up, with compensation and benefits coming in at 2nd

and, poor management,

burnout, and job security and organizational stability kind of tied for that 3rd place as well too. So I'm I'm curious if if there's any kind of differing opinions or confirmations of the reasons why you think, turnover is gonna be at a higher risk, let us know in the chat. When we're done with this session, we're gonna take a look at some of the results as well too.

But kind of like a silver lining in this, I I think, is that there is also a lot that's within control

of,

learning and development in HR

to address these these,

burnout reasons.

Right? No growth opportunities. This is something that's squarely in, the mandate for learning and development as well too. Poor management. Right? Like, making sure that our leaders and our managers are equipped

to lead their teams and to, really have strong team dynamics, and performance as well to setting those expectations, providing feedback as well.

So I I I think with that, a lot of things are in,

kind of the control of,

of of of learning development teams in in in these efforts.

Nathan, how are you seeing teams take advantage of this, and how what kind of things are they doing in order to,

address this this issue of retention and burnout?

Yeah. So I

think there's a number of different

things here.

3 things that come to mind,

to consider with retention and how it connects to l and d.

Generally,

based on our survey and the trend for 2025,

retention seems to be

more of a core l and d metric in 2025 than before,

primarily because it's so tied to growth opportunities.

So

we expect that, you know, where maybe you would report to executives in the past a lot about, you know, skill done and how many people have been through,

a leadership development program

that maybe there's gonna start to be a component of your metric reporting to executives around retention

if if it hasn't already gotten in there already.

And so we wanna show you later in some case studies,

how you might do that,

and and,

have a really good example there. But in the meantime, just wanted to focus on 3 factors,

regarding that retention piece that you can influence.

So the first question that I would pose is how can learning and development increase the frequency of learning? Because this will,

affect retention, primarily because, you know, it's not really realistic to promise every employee that they're gonna get a promotion every year or lateral move every year.

But making progress against smaller goals more frequently that help them in the role on a shorter term horizon, whether it's daily, weekly, or monthly,

and not just solely focusing on years away,

goals is is very helpful,

on that retention piece.

2nd, question I would pose

on connectedness and well-being is how can the programs that you're running today

create more of a sense of community and connectedness

given that you're not in the same

room anymore a lot of the times for these programs, and you're not, you know, chatting at the water cooler between

breaks and workshops. So,

that's a second thing that I think will just

make those programs feel better and make

make a bigger impact on retention?

And then lastly, the third question would be, how can our programming shift

to be more than just skill development in terms of its metric and outcome? As I was saying, is there a world where

our leadership development program

not only improves the skill of those leaders, but also retains them,

just as much? And same with our onboarding, same with our sales training, whatever they are. How can we add that,

retention

success outcome to the programs as well?

So those are three things that,

you know, we're thinking about, and,

I think we'll talk a little bit about how social learning might be the answer to some of these, in the next section.

Yeah. So as, Nathan was kinda mentioning, earlier in this the,

the presentation, outlining this present outlining the flow, and and how we're doing this. So we've talked a little bit about priorities. We talked about

leadership development, skill development, retention, and engagement as well, and and how the challenges that we're seeing, how those are creating opportunities, and and and kind of what at the strategic level we,

we're we're seeing with that. We're gonna be focusing our attention now a little bit more on the more pragmatic, the practical,

what does this change with the actual programs and modalities that we're using? How are we designing these learning experiences

to really capitalize on that? And as Nathan just

mentioned,

we feel a lot of that has to do with the social aspect of learning. And so we asked this question

in our,

in our survey as well too, and we'll ask it again to the audience as well.

So the question was,

do you expect that social learning will be more or less of a priority in 2025?

And I'll just get this pull up here now.

So feel free. We'll let the the the results kind of, trickle in over the the next couple of seconds.

But, yeah, very interested to see kind of what this, is looking like for everybody.

Yep. And pretend that says 2025

for us.

Oh,

there we go.

Alright. So we're getting some some great results here.

Okay. Just gonna close the poll now. So we're seeing about 70% of people saying social learning is gonna be a lot more important as well too,

and about 29%

saying equally as important.

And that's really interesting because when we look at our,

survey results as well too,

a lot of that kind of confirms nearly identically

with, with with with what the survey respondents said as well too. So it's great to see that these these trends are not just present in the people that we surveyed as well, but also the people who are, on this call. And so,

we had, 60%

of survey respondents saying that social learning is gonna become a lot more important,

in 2025,

and about 30%

saying that,

social learning will will be about the same level of importance with only, again, 3.2%

saying, not sure,

1% saying, less important year over year.

So I think this is this is really important, and it's it's kind of emblematic of of of a trend with a lot of the content that we're seeing in,

kind of the l and d space as well too. Like, social learning has, as a theme, been a very important

aspect of it. And so if if you're everyone here is probably very familiar with, this this chart here. It's called the 70, 20, 10 model,

and it is

very commonly used as the framework for understanding,

how social learning is is implemented. And just to quickly reiterate, simply states that 70% of learning is derived, from doing the work itself, so application.

20% is derived,

from working from interactions with other people. So these are relationships with peers, colleagues,

most notably, also your manager. You're the the person who's 1, 2 levels above you as well too. And then 10% is derived from conventional learning courses, theories,

articles,

workshops, and instructor led trainings as well too.

What's really interesting is that there there does seem to be quite a lot of, misconceptions

about about social learning, and it was really interesting.

We held a webinar with

Charles Jennings, who's the founder of the 70 2010 Institute. He's been a leader in the l and d industry working with large financial institutions, technology companies

on integrating,

70 2010 model into their learning development efforts. And his his number one piece of advice

was, I I think, very important, perhaps something that when I talk about, 70, 2010 model with a lot of people, it's definitely very important. And his advice was don't get hung up on the numbers.

And it's important to remember that this is a framework

to refocus

learning

on the behaviors and the and and and performance. Right? These are the outcomes that we want. Learning really is behavioral. It's about changing our behavior, what we do, how we do it, how we communicate in order to get the, results that we're looking for. Right? So instead of wrote memory,

from course material, it's it's really about, how are we applying this to changing how we actually act and behave in the workplace.

And so the the value of learning is is, again, really on the import

improved performance

of of work.

And so when we think about that, it it really changes how we kind of measure and design development efforts where, you know, perhaps we're focusing on what was the participation level for this course, how many people were engaged, and instead focusing on the outcomes, the performance, and the behavior change in role,

and and sorry. In the employee's role as well too.

And so when we think about

really how

social learning has sometimes been, kind of implemented,

it's been something like, you know, a a discussion board or discussion group,

some social enabled feed,

to to to to augment learning as well too. And what was really interesting was that Charles called these 10 plus,

programs. And so what he said is they're very well intentioned,

ways of integrating

a social learning aspect of,

you know, social interaction into,

and on top of the the more formal in courses,

that we are running.

And so

it's it's it's

really 70, 20, 10 is not something that is, like, stacked. It's it's it's more so, integrative. And I think the the the way that you should think about it is not 20% of our learning programs have to be social interaction or 20% of time spent should be on social interaction.

Rather, it's the question back to that point about how is everything that every development effort that we're doing influencing

the applied behavior? Because if we're looking at where an employee is spending their time, where they're generating learnings, it's it's when they're actually doing work. And so the question is not like, how can we add social aspects to learning? It's rather how does formal training impact,

the behaviors of the employee when they're working? How does the social interactions impact the behaviors

of the employee when they're learning? And so that's, I think, one of the the the big things that,

is is often a misconception about the 70, 20, 10 model. And, again, people really like to get hung up on the numbers,

of this as well too.

And I think there's a significant portion

of how employees learn that kind of aligns with,

what programs these these might look like. And so there's a study done by Degreed, every year comes out. It's called the how people learn study,

and,

this particular chart really stood out. And it looked at what are the modalities that, employees use, to learn how to do their jobs better.

And learning from peers and coworkers

was, by a healthy margin, the number one, modality that people use. It also isn't the one where,

a lot of l and d teams spend, their their their efforts strategically

kind of

designing programs to create these relationships between employees and aid employees in developing a network. A lot of times people think, networking for network's sake sounds like a fruitless endeavor, but it's actually a really important aspect of

how employees take information and apply it within the context of the organization.

Right? We're not just reading a textbook and then doing a lot of the work on ourselves,

to try and figure out how this is actually applicable.

And so I think this is a big reason why that social learning is is really becoming

an area in an arena where development efforts, programs, and also technologies

are evolving, coming out

to

really impact and have that strategic

aspect to to this area. Right? It's not just about having an LMS. It's easy to learn having the content on there. People are shifting from that to, like, how can we actually

strategically create networks that aid,

knowledge sharing in the application of this knowledge to work as well too.

And so we we asked the survey, respondents,

what are some of the social learning modalities that you're planning on,

implementing in in 2025?

And learning events and workshops,

as well as mentorship programs stood out as the number one more or less tied for for each of them with coaching programs,

second to that. And so, again, I think this is really kind of emblematic of,

perhaps one, a a misunderstanding of the the 70, 20, 10 model as well too. Like, again, these things on their own are maybe not going to be,

as impactful as the promises of social learning are. But when they're they're designed and they're integrated

with other efforts and when those efforts are designed, instead of saying, did you complete the material? Did you do you have knowledge retention of the subject matter? And instead focusing on how is this changing how you're behaving at work? Is this is this making you a higher performer?

Is a big, I think, question here that that these efforts are aiming to achieve.

And so, Nathan, I I know I've kinda spoken quite a lot there on the social learning.

What what are your thoughts on this in terms of what this is changing, with regards to development programs,

as as well as the tools that are being used?

Yeah. I think, look, the survey,

results show that essentially

events and workshops,

mentoring programs, and coaching programs

are gonna be the dominant medians

of bringing in social learning.

And there's opportunity for all three of those to be part of your existing,

L and D efforts. Like, if you have a manager training, you can,

incorporate

more workshops that have interaction between the participants,

rather than just, like, instructor led. You can match them with a mentor. You can have them with a coach on the side as well. So I think,

in general,

that's,

how I would incorporate into what you're doing already.

And

I think, yeah, like, this

next couple years, we'll see a rise in software that will help with this because it is becoming a priority.

And in the historically, you're like, in LMS, I mean, I talk to our customer

all the time.

And they say this, we're after this, but our

workshops, we don't really love the way it works either. People find it hard to find the event in the LMS. The Zoom integration doesn't work that great. So as the demand

becomes

stronger

for incorporating these elements into these existing programs, I think you're gonna just see better software

come out for for this. We're gonna be one of those

companies that focuses on that. We are having a strong focus on,

development programs in the next,

coming

short

time frame.

And, so that's that's what I'm starting to see is, probably you're gonna see better software and probably

more, you know, budget allocated towards this. I think, last thing I'll add is

those

customers

who did

before using together,

try to incorporate

these, like like, a mentor match or something like that into their programs,

they all had full time FTEs

doing that. And that that time could probably be spent,

more wisely in terms of reaching a larger

employee population instead of just smaller groups.

So the software that will come out and will be purchased in this market is gonna help you incorporate this while then

being able to build more programs for more people.

This is an example,

of this emerging best practice that I was talking about earlier and we're seeing with a number of our customers

is they have an existing leadership development program.

Maybe their program contains content,

some online courses that they take, some instructor led trainings.

Maybe they get to go to a conference as part of this. And there's obviously a component of performance reviews and monitoring and seeing how those leaders are doing.

That's what they did before.

And what either the CEO comes in and says or,

what people are demanding nowadays in this more remote environment

is to combine that

like a mentor match or even a coffee chat roulette among, say, the managers in this leadership development program.

And so,

yeah, that's the part where,

people are coming to us and, an emerging best practice that we're seeing. I think this will

maybe double the impact of these programs just because, as we talked about, becoming a man better manager isn't necessarily only learned through online courses and probably better learned through, social interaction.

Yeah. Great points, Nathan. And I think now

there's

a a lot a lot of case studies I think we have that. Really excited to get into in terms of how have how has this strategy,

actually impacted

the results

on, some of the customers that we are working with in terms of how are they coupling, you know, their leadership development, their skill development,

or even retention efforts with this aspect of social learning. And so the first case study,

that I do wanna share is on a a really wonderful customer that we have. So this is, the admin here is, Jennifer Taylor. She's,

the director of, professional development at the Louisiana Department of Public Health.

And when they started exploring mentorship as a delivery method for, skill development, they they were facing also several additional challenges

that may or may not sound, you know, familiar with you. 1, they had high rates of employee flight risk.

They were really struggling,

with, you know, retention, making sure that employees had skills they need, making sure that they were kind of happy in their roles. They also had,

an aging workforce with nearly 30% of employees nearing that retirement age. And when they dove deeper into this and surveyed their,

their employees, they found that there was a desire for more professional development opportunities, but also different, learning methods as well too. People were getting a little bit tired of just the courses, the trainings,

that were being delivered either, again, via an LMS or instructor led. And so when they built their, mentorship program, they built it around 6 months long,

defined sessions, each with their agendas that are focusing on primarily skill development. And so I think the results and the impact on that KPI for the program, skill development,

is really clear as day, and and this chart

shows it

perfectly.

Where before the program, the self reported rating of their skills, only 16% of people were at practical application.

After the 6 month period,

everybody was at practical application or above.

And there's more to this as well too where the,

a 100% of participants also found value in the program too, and that's between the mentors who participated

as well as the mentees. And so when coupling this with, the existing content,

continuing those sessions, talking about goal setting, how to work, in in in these stressful environments in in this situation

really aided in that skill development,

where we took they took the, the courses and the content that they were doing and really augmented it with, the social learning aspect.

And, Brent, maybe just for for time, we jumped to the,

case study on increasing retention. I just wanted to make sure we we hit this Yeah. We have 3 minutes here. Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

this is a case study around a customer that,

launched,

mentoring and other programs with Together.

And, I wanna show you

the a chart and explain how you can use this,

going forward.

So

what we did is we looked at

this customer's

overall

termination rate of

employees.

And here you can see roughly for a while,

they've averaged somewhere in

rate. So if you think about it on an annual basis, it works out to around 24, 25 percent,

of employees

turning over per year.

When we came in in 2019 and launched these mentoring and other social learning programs,

what we then were able to do is to say, let's look at the turnover rate of people who are registered in those programs instead

and compare it to the rest of the population.

And so what you can look at is the red line,

is the overall termination rate.

So it's essentially across the entire population at this company.

And then the green line would be of those people who participated in these programs, what was their termination rate. And you can see it's markedly different,

tends to be much lower.

And what,

you know, you know,

we try to say that a good portion of that gap, maybe not all of it, but a a decent portion of that gap is related to having a mentor, having a colleague, more connectedness.

And so,

this is something that you can do by looking at your termination rates over time,

and,

highly recommend something like this for all your programs.

We do have a,

calculator

that you can use to approximate,

this kind of thing and what that ROI of that program would be. And it doesn't have to be a mentorship. You can use your calculator for any of your programs, but you can, plug in, for example, number of participants,

your current annual turnover rate, and, the reduction in turnover, and you'd get a number out of that in terms of the cost of that turnover.

So, definitely,

something to look for in your ROI calculations going forward.

Amazing. And I know we're out of time, but I do just wanna leave people with, one final note.

You can continue learning a lot about these social learning aspects. We have a lot of resources, ebooks, guides, reports,

diving into individual use cases for leadership development, new manager training, onboarding,

diving into what programs look like, the best practices,

and what we've seen customers do and the kind of the insights that we've generated over running these programs,

and how these fit into your strategy as well too. There's also webinars as well. So as I mentioned, we had a fantastic conversation with Charles about social learning, what that's like. We've got conversations like that with experts. We've also got,

sort of master classes diving into how to run and manage a mentorship program. We cover reporting,

driving engagement with, mentorship,

and promoting your program as well too.

And then lastly,

final call out is if you are interested in getting started,

we do

work very closely with, all of our prospects in terms of figuring out what is the best strategy, how can we create a program,

that's gonna fit your needs and help you achieve your goals. So if you are, interested in in in booking a demo, seeing how Together's platform,

can work, please feel free to press this button on the screen,

book a call, and we'll be happy to help.

And with that, I just wanna say thank you all, for joining here today.

It was a really great session, and, yeah, we'll be following up soon with, recording and everything. So

Thank you.

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