Early-career employees need more than formal training to build judgement, confidence and practical their skills. Hybrid work and AI have made every-day learning less visible and more important. Don Spear explains how organisations can recreate observation, coaching, practice and feedback to help people move more quickly from potential to performance.
Companies face a talent-development challenge that many leaders overlook. Early-career employees still need the learning that happens around the work, not just the training that organisations assign to them.
For decades, employees learned as much from observation as they did from formal instruction. They listened as experienced colleagues navigated difficult customer conversations. They watched managers turn ambiguous problems into clear recommendations. They asked quick questions before small mistakes became costly ones.
That informal, everyday learning never appeared on a training calendar, but it helped people develop judgment, confidence and practical business skills.
Remote and hybrid work changes how people learn
Remote and hybrid work have become enduring features of the modern workplace. That flexibility delivers meaningful benefits, but, also, remote and hybrid work changes how people learn. Early-career employees often miss the customer debrief, the impromptu coaching conversation or the explanation that reveals why one recommendation succeeds while another falls short.
Assumptions around learning
Hybrid work is not the problem. The real problem arises when organisations assume employees will absorb context the same way they did when everyone worked side-by-side five days a week. If companies still expect that learning to happen, they must design it intentionally.
AI makes that challenge even more urgent. PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer found that US entry-level roles with the greatest AI exposure are now seven times more likely to require traditionally senior-level capabilities, including leadership, creativity and strategic decision-making. Between 2019 and 2025, job postings for these “seniorised” entry-level roles increased by 35%, while comparable entry-level roles declined by 10%.
Those trends fundamentally change what it means to be ready for work. Today’s early-career employees do more than learn established processes. They must decide when to trust AI, when to question its output, how to communicate uncertainty and how to transform information into recommendations that others can act on. Success requires AI literacy, but it also depends on communication, critical thinking and sound business judgment.
Employees once developed many of those capabilities simply by watching experienced colleagues at work. Organisations must now build those experiences into the way people learn.
Leaders can recreate informal learning without recreating yesterday’s workplace. Five practices make the biggest difference.
1. Make expert thinking visible
Managers should not assume employees understand why decisions were made simply because they saw the outcome. Teams should routinely explain the reasoning behind important decisions, discuss the alternatives they considered and identify the trade-offs that shaped the final recommendation.
A 15-minute debrief after a customer meeting or project review often teaches more than another hour of formal training. When experienced employees narrate their thinking, they help newer colleagues develop judgment as well as knowledge.
2. Create opportunities to observe great work
Observation remains one of the fastest ways to learn. Invite early-career employees to join customer calls, planning sessions, executive presentations and project reviews. Make it clear that they are there not simply as attendees, but as learners.
Before the meeting, explain what to watch for. Afterward, discuss what happened, why certain decisions were made and what signals experienced employees noticed that others might have missed. Those conversations turn everyday work into a classroom.
3. Build peer learning into everyday work
Pair newer employees with experienced colleagues for short-term projects, regular office hours or rotating “ask me anything” sessions. Encourage cross-functional shadowing and project partnerships so employees see how experienced professionals approach problems in different parts of the business. These relationships recreate many of the spontaneous conversations that once happened naturally across desks and hallways without requiring a formal mentoring program.
Technology can reinforce those learning moments. Record project retrospectives, customer debriefs and design reviews so employees can revisit them later. Build searchable libraries of real examples that show how experienced employees solved difficult problems. This is more useful than polished presentations that describe the final result. AI can then recommend the most relevant examples based on an employee’s role, current projects and skill gaps.
4. Give employees a clear path from learning to performance
Too many companies still treat learning as a collection of disconnected courses. Early-career employees need something much more intentional. They need to understand which capabilities matter most in their role, which ones they should develop next and how those skills contribute to business performance.
For one employee, that pathway might combine AI fundamentals, data privacy, project management and customer communication. For another, it might emphasise safety, compliance, technical expertise and frontline leadership. Organisations should not create more training simply to expand the catalogue, they should create learning pathways that make the connection between development and performance unmistakably clear.
Practice matters just as much as instruction. Employees need safe environments where they can wrestle with realistic situations before they face them with customers, colleagues or senior leaders. Give them the incomplete project brief. Give them the AI-generated answer that sounds convincing but contains subtle flaws. Give them the customer problem with no obvious solution. Then coach them through the decisions they made and the reasoning behind them.
5. Equip managers to coach consistently
Managers play a critical role in development, but they should not have to build coaching programs from scratch. Most managers want to help people grow. What they often lack is time, structure and a consistent framework.
The best managers turn everyday work into learning opportunities. Instead of solving every problem themselves, they ask employees to present a recommendation first, explain the evidence behind it and defend the trade-offs they considered. After important meetings, they spend a few minutes discussing what went well, what surprised them and what they would approach differently next time. Those brief conversations build judgment far more effectively than annual performance reviews.
Organisations can make that coaching easier by giving managers simple discussion guides and prompts. Questions such as:
- What evidence supports your recommendation?
- What assumptions did you verify?
- What risks did you consider?
- What would you do differently next time?
These all encourage reflection without adding significant time to the workday. Small, consistent coaching moments accumulate into the practical judgment that early-career employees once developed simply by working alongside experienced colleagues.
Documenting the development
Certifications and job-relevant credentials also play an important role. The best credentials do more than certify course completion, they demonstrate capability. Used well, certifications provide employees, managers and organisations with a shared language for measuring skills and progress. They make development visible and help early-career employees understand where they are headed, especially as career paths become less predictable and expectations continue to rise.
The strongest development strategies combine learning, practice, assessment and coaching. Coursework builds knowledge. Practice builds confidence. Assessments measure application. Manager feedback reinforces learning on the job. Certifications and credentials document progress rather than substitute for real-world experience.
Academic learning and the workplace
Higher education also has an opportunity to adapt. Students need more opportunities to solve workplace problems before they enter their first full-time roles. They should learn how to use AI responsibly, defend recommendations with evidence, collaborate effectively and solve problems that lack perfect information.
Employers must continue that development after hiring. They cannot assume intelligence, motivation or technical ability will naturally mature into sound judgment.
Building for the future
Organisations do not need to return to the workplace of the past. They need to rebuild the development layer that in-person work naturally provided: observation, context, practice, coaching, feedback and clear evidence that capabilities are growing.
The organisations that intentionally recreate those everyday learning moments will develop employees who adapt faster, exercise better judgment and contribute more quickly. Early-career employees still need a bridge between potential and performance. In the age of AI and hybrid work, organizations must build that bridge deliberately.
Don Spear is the Co-founder and CEO of OpenSesame
