L&D 2020: Shaping change in learning

The brave new world of workplace learning

Imagine the world of work in 2020. Flexible working has grown enormously and is now common especially among white collar and professional men – and in manufacturing and construction one in five men work full-time hours over four days rather than five. Moofers (Mobile Out of Office Workers) are those growing numbers of people who don’t have a specific place of work; they work in a location best suited to the task in hand – often in restaurants and clubs with designated rooms and office services so moofers can make their deals and recharge themselves and their equipment at any time of day, or night.

These are just some of the possible scenarios proposed in the first stage of an ambitious research project being conducted by TJ and the Institute of Employment Studies; entitled Learning and Development 2020: shaping change in learning the aim is to look at what may lie ahead for L&D professionals in the future.

The project has been generously funded by a group of sponsoring organisations whose names are synonymous with learning: the De Bono Foundation UK; Imparta; McDonald's Restaurants Ltd;  the National School of Government; Reed Learning; TrainerBase and  the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. Through a series of workshops these organisations are going to shape the research to enable us to produce a reliable study that will enable us to make some predictions on what might lie ahead for our profession.

The researchers have looked at available data on what our world might look like in 2020 and how L&D might be affected by social, philosophical, scientific and technological change. They have posed four key questions:

• How will changing demographics and workforce mobility affect the nature of learning required?
• How will the changing nature of business and work affect the type of employee development required?
• How will developments in neuroscience, psychology and adult education influence how people learn?
• How will new technologies, communications and social networks support people's development?

The first stage of this research is completed and the findings from our initial investigations can be found in the following pages or you can download the interim findings.