One plan for 2025 has been to try and get more involved in different professional groups again. This is, in part, as I am conscious I rely more and more on webinars, videos and podcasts rather than the more interactive and synchronous networking.
Therefore I’ve joined, or been more involved with, the below – all of which might be of interest to others:
Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective – a lot of L&D talk focuses on corporates and office-based work. This group is more niche and hosts regular sessions for those working in non-profits. I have joined a few sessions already with some good conversations spilling out into follow-ups and 1-2-1s.
GLDC (Global Learning and Development Community) – I’ve been a member of this for a long time, but only in 2025 attended anything (that I can remember). The Wednesday catch-ups are a nice mix of networking and a quiz (I’m a sucker for a good [pub] quiz).
LPI Hive – I have not spent too much time in this group yet but it was handy for finding out about a few new podcasts. I have not used Slack very much over the years, so it will be interesting to see how this compares long term to LinkedIn, Ning and other sites that have been used by L&D-related communities.
As we enter 2025, a lot of people will be looking for new roles as part of their new year resolutions.
It has been noticeable in my emails that quite a few new job roles are also being advertised – perhaps due to calendar year budget cycles for some organizations.
However, what I have also noticed is that salaries seem to remain stagnant. A selection of roles in different JiscMail emails were all in the 30-50k a year (GBP) range. Out of interest, I put my 17k (first London salary) into the UK’s official inflation calculator and apparently that salary – which was painfully low at the time – is now the equivalent of 30k. That professional positions are being advertised at this rate (compared to my first London role which was a one-year role between graduation and going onto a postgrad) is pretty scary stuff.
A BBC article (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64970708) on the lack of UK wage growth since 2008 covers more on this. Indeed I wrote about the problems from the lack of salary inflation in 2019!
For those in the UK running April financial years – here’s hoping for more of a 2007 mindset in salary negotiations than what has been the norm since.
Learning and Development (L&D) teams are often intensely self-critical.
As a result, L&D orientated conferences can feel like group therapy sessions with never ending quests such as “proving impact” and considering if all the industry talk is just “emperor’s new clothes” (just two example sessions taken from this year’s Autumn Forum sessions which, unfortunately, clashed with other things for me).
Meanwhile, headlines on recent LinkedIn posts in my timeline have included “Are the scope of AI discussions in L&D too limited?” and RedThread have discussed “The Existential Crisis of L&D”. All of this while old arguments continue, sometimes seemingly over mere semantics – such as skills vs competencies, training vs learning, etc.
One issue many L&D teams have struggled with is how to deal with technical or senior experts and how to keep/develop these people in routes other than moves into leadership/management. Back in my L&D for consultants days, this was a particular issue as it was recognized there needed to be a route for people to develop in the firm whilst remaining a technical expert in, for example, Cyber security. This differed from the traditional broad>specialism>broad career path (or “I shaped career”) of the firm – and L&D often focused on the broad (via new hire/graduate/introduction materials and management development at the ‘top’). The Mind Tools podcast picking up on this theme recently, with some discussion of the classic issue that whilst someone may be good at a job they might not be good at managing others. This is another thing L&D then get criticised for – trying to develop “leadership and management” training that is only likely to have an impact if the individuals involved actually want to change their behaviour(s).
So what can/do we (L&D teams) have as options to support those who are best kept away from management (either due to their own desire, financial reasons to keep them as specialists, past failures as a manager, etc)? Well, one option many might have already taken is interest in professional organizations and associations. These organizations are often a great way to keep your current awareness up and may give opportunities for your technical staff to influence future generations, for example how CILIP had a role of working with universities on librarianship programmes when I came through for chartership and early career.
However, there is another option that I do not think I have ever really heard talked about in L&D discourse – standardization.
The opportunity to contribute to national, regional or international standards will be of real interest to many of your experts as well as a benefit to your organization (not least keeping your experts aware of trends and changes).
While I won’t get political here, there is one thing of interest to me in this election (that has not had a huge amount of coverage):
The boundary changes.
I really like my current MP but she will no longer be my MP after this election, not due to the vote but due to boundary changes. These changes resulting in my address being grouped in a different political geographic entity.
The changes in the boundaries for this election had been assessed as hugely benefitting the incumbent Conservative party. Instead we are seeing predictions of an opposition Labour landslide, perhaps even bigger than 1997.
So a lesson from this campaign can be seen as for us all not to give up on what we believe in.
The UK Centre-Left appears resurgent, when just a few years ago it risked terminal decline. With elections in France, the USA and elsewhere ongoing there is a lesson for the eventual losers – don’t give up.
Just some of the previous evaluations of the boundary changes that were expected to reinforce Conservative dominance:
I have recently been thinking again about the nature of workplaces – this has been triggered, in part, by some staff survey results and related activity in the day job.
Discussing the topic with colleagues has brought me back to various previous activities over the last ~15 years whilst at the same time trying to be conscious that there are new(er) ways of tackling some of the issues too.
One of the more interesting reads I have found at the same time is a recent article (from Journal of Workplace Learning 36:9):
This considers the workplace under study, in the research, as “phygital”. I probably have heard of phygital before without really acknowledging it, however, it seems to be primarily a marketing term so is perhaps not universally known? It also probably does not help that it’s not very easy to write/say until someone explains it is a portmanteau of physical and digital (as kindly demonstrated by this cricket team):
What I quite like in thinking about p/Phygital is that it represents that many knowledge/office workplaces are now hybrid daily. Gone are the days where my work from home days would be to plough through certain tasks – now its more the norm and you are expected to be available on Teams, email, etc. as needed. Therefore, as many orgs are now allowing people to spend more time at home how do we increase the digital workplace to create a more “joined up” experience with the physical office/workplace?
I would imagine the findings of the article will sound fairly familiar to many people:
Digital technology extended learning opportunities by providing flexible possibilities for interaction, collaboration and access to a wealth of information. On the contrary, digitally mediated presence could restrict learning if the attendance and learning remained superficial. The complexity and constant change in digital workplace environments presented challenges that could potentially restrict learning. Information overload, constant interruptions and changes were burdens that required employees’ skills to manage these challenges.
The “superficial” point is particularly interesting to me. I recently passed four years with my current organization and this time has flied by in many ways – covid, working from home a lot, a relatively pain-free commute when I do go to the office, relatively little travel for work (compared to some past roles) and other elements have perhaps all contributed to this. However, this has triggered me to consider if, even with all 4 years, this has led to a more superficial experience than previous roles. My conclusion on this is that whilst the work has not necessarily been as superficial the relationships perhaps are – however, I am also very conscious there is a risk of “rose tinted glasses” in reflecting on past experiences. For example, I can certainly say I was superficially involved in work in the past when, for example, I was forced into a regular commute by an office change that made me want to leave that job at the time.
Another key element, for me, from the article relates to the social:
social environments, where people interact, collaborate and relate to each other, are formed not only in physical but also in digital work environments
and I would say that this is an area that we hear a lot about. Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) did not live up to the hype a while back, even the Wikipedia page focuses on lack of adoption. However, there remains the question of how to maintain social relationships virtually – the article identifies some important elements such as “informal meetings”. If we consider the success of, say, Twitch which has been compared to having people in your living room – does the Phygital workplace need a variety of social channels for different work, and non-work, related topics? Or, as the article puts it, “constantly open lines”. This trade-off between social engagement and not interrupting deep work seems to be the remained challenge for the Phygital environment.
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 