In the last L&D newsflash of 2025 there are reports, research and updates, personally compiled by TJ’s Editor, Jo Cook. This week: From uninspiring compliance training to Gen Z’s confident leadership, toxic cultures, surging AI regulation demands, stress-induced mistakes, and empathetic leadership, organisations must adapt or risk falling dangerously behind.
TJ60 on video: The takeaways L&D needs to know
What does 60 years of workplace learning tell us about what comes next? Our TJ60 video roundup pulls out the themes that kept surfacing: impact over activity, evidence without fear, and why AI raises the bar for L&D.
Gartner urges businesses to ‘block all AI browsers’ – what’s behind the dire warning
- AI browsers are too risky for adoption today, Gartner said
- CISOs need to block them until existing security concerns are reduced
- Automation is useful, but convenience shouldn’t replace security
MI6 boss extols ‘the mastery of technology’ in first public speech
Newly-installed MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli has used her first public speech in the role to emphasise the need for the Secret Intelligence Service – as it is formally known – to have “mastery of technology” as a core skill.
Metreweli said advanced technologies would “accelerate the pace and scale of every threat and opportunity, and increasingly, individualise them too”.
Read more on our sister publication Civil Service World.
McDonald’s CEO warns that his career advice may ‘Hurt your feelings’
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski recently shared a piece of “tough love” career advice that he openly admits may “hurt your feelings.”
In a recent video posted to Instagram, titled “Tough Love with the McDonald’s CEO,” Kempczinski urged professionals to stop waiting for someone else to manage their careers and instead take full ownership of their paths.
As diversity commitments lessen, corporate America risks losing progress for women
Corporate employers could jeopardize the progress made in women’s representation in recent years — unless they recommit to gender diversity goals, according to a report from LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Co.
About half of the surveyed companies said women’s career advancement is a high priority, marking a sharp decline since 87% said the same in 2019. In addition, only 46% said the same about advancing women of colour.
Only 9% of organisations offer fully personalised compliance training, a VinciWorks poll reveals
Generic training continues to fail to change behaviour, and the urgent reality is that most firms remain unprepared for 2026. Despite expectations for employers to take action on cyber risk, harassment, and sanctions, most organisations still use one-size-fits-all compliance training that fails to change behaviour. A new VinciWorks poll shows only 9% of organisations offer fully personalised learning paths, leaving gaps for various roles and risk areas.
The poll, which gathered responses from 131 HR, L&D and compliance professionals, shows that:
- 32% of organisations provide the same general training to most employees
- 40% offer some tailoring by department or role
- The remaining organisations are unsure or planning to introduce personalisation in future
Fail to adapt to Gen Z’s management style and organisations face weaker leadership pipelines
Gen Z is increasingly bringing confidence, digital fluency, and strong value-driven instincts to management. Yet this confidence is not without tension with some older leaders worrying that experience is being undervalued.
- 86% of Gen Z say they felt ready when first given leadership responsibilities
- 61% of Gen Z describe their leadership style as collaborative
- 53% of Gen Z equally rank salary & work-life balance as essential rather than perks
- 49% of Gen Z say hybrid working has supported their leadership development
Workers call time on bad behaviour
Workplace culture is now front and centre for many UK employees. But an increasing number of employees are reporting toxic work environments and a growing number of company HRs feel business leaders aren’t spotting what makes for a hostile work environment.
Of the 1,000 people surveyed between the ages of 18 and 65 in INTOO’s latest Future World of Work report, over three-quarters of workers (78%) say they have experienced a toxic culture in their current workplace. The survey canvased HR professionals and those in the public, private and not for profit sectors.
Scores of UK parliamentarians join call to regulate most powerful AI systems
More than 100 UK parliamentarians are calling on the government to introduce binding regulations on the most powerful AI systems as concern grows that ministers are moving too slowly to create safeguards in the face of lobbying from the technology industry.
The push for tougher regulation is being coordinated by a nonprofit organisation called Control AI whose backers include the co-founder of Skype, Jaan Tallinn. It is calling on Keir Starmer to show independence from Donald Trump’s White House, which opposes the regulation of AI. One of the “godfathers” of the technology, Yoshua Bengio, recently said it was less regulated than a sandwich.
Over half of Brits make mistakes at work due to stress, research finds
According to new research, over half of Brits (52.6%) are making mistakes at work due to stress, and 1 in 4 Brits have rung in sick at least once due to how stressed they’re feeling. The HSE revealed their latest statistics, showing that 964,000 workers this year have suffered from work-related stress, depression or anxiety.
The Astutis report states that over 1 in 4 (28.5%) Brits have missed deadlines due to stress, and a third (32.9%) of Brits have also clashed with someone in the workplace due to stress. These stats are costing workplaces millions of pounds each year, and workplaces need to take workplace burnout and stress more seriously.
Police forces ‘need central support’ in adopting AI
Police forces would be helped by central control and financing to fully realise the potential of AI technologies in their sector, according to IT industry association techUK. The association’s justice and emergency services committee has published a report on AI in policing in England and Wales, aimed at demystifying the applications and looking at the prospects for wider and new types of deployments.
It says that AI – often combined with data analytics, automatic number plate recognition and the Police National Database – is providing efficiencies and speeding up investigations, and machine learning is the most deployed AI technology – used in analysing large, complex and incomplete datasets.
Empathy in leadership could prevent burnout and boost engagement in 2026
Depression and anxiety cost the global workforce 12 billion working days per year, and only 23% of employees report feeling engaged at work. In 2026, burnout will test leadership more than ever. With 82% of employees near exhaustion, leaders who fail to act risk falling behind. Doing nothing costs an estimated US $1 trillion in lost productivity, and surveys from Mercer and DHR Global attribute burnout to excessive workloads and financial pressures.
Allison Howell, Hogan Assessment’s VP for Market Innovation, says: “Empathy is the new efficiency. In 2026, smart leaders won’t wait for people to burn out; they’ll build cultures that prevent it.”
