Features
Beyond generative: The leadership playbook for agentic AI learning
As agentic AI moves to setting goals and acting, workplace learning is shifting into the flow of work. Johnson Wong argues leaders must design AI-enabled workflows, reskill for human oversight, and enable department alignment of IT, operations and the people profession to turn continuous, embedded learning into measurable performance gains. Enterprises around the world are entering a new phase of digital transformation, one defined not just by automation, but by intelligent collaboration between humans and autonomous digital agents. This shift…
Is the UK’s “free AI training” platform actually helping your people — or giving leaders false confidence?
Erica Farmer argues the UK government’s free AI training platform is a useful signal, not a silver bullet. Without learning design, emotional reassurance and workplace context, ‘beginner’ pathways become friction, drop-off and inequality. Erica highlights L&D and HR must build an internal spine that turns content into confident behaviour change. The UK government’s new free AI training platform has landed with a lot of fanfare. Social feeds have gone into celebration mode: “Finally! A national solution. Ten million workers upskilled…
AI jobs apocalypse… or bonanza?
Will AI steal our jobs? Wrong question. AI performs tasks and most jobs involve a combination of tasks. The AI impact depends on organisational choices, not just the technology. David Buchanan and Steve Macaulay explore how the outcome for jobs depends on a combination of replacement, compensatory, and augmentation effects. AI may steal bits of your job, but very few jobs will be completely stolen. Simple admin, content generation, customer support, data entry, financial analysis, and manufacturing tasks can be…
The return of the ‘office first’ culture and what that means for learning
As organisations shift back to office-first policies, L&D has a critical role to play. Jennie Marshall explores how learning professionals can turn a logistical pivot into a cultural opportunity, redefining connection, trust and inclusion, and ensuring that presence in the office doesn’t come at the expense of performance or purpose. It’s back. The phrase that many thought we’d left behind in 2019: “We’re returning to the office.” After years of hybrid experiments, kitchen-table working, and virtual everything, many organisations are…
The value of business simulations for development and change
Business simulations turn learning into lived experience. Instead of talking about strategy, people feel its consequences, make decisions and learn fast. From leadership to onboarding, simulations help close the gap between theory and practice. Steve Macaulay explains why they’re no longer a ‘nice to have’, but a serious development tool There has been an increasing trend to find ways to make learning highly relevant to the context in which participants are working. In an era where every L&D pound spent must justify itself, reducing the ‘transfer gap’ – the distance between what is learnt in a classroom…
Should we be buying AI coaching in 2026, or stick with human?
AI coaching tools are everywhere, promising scale, savings and 24/7 support. But should HR really be buying them, or sticking with human coaches? As organisations plan for 2026, the real question is how to blend both wisely. Jonathan Passmore explores what the evidence says, and what HR should do next Coaching is now a mainstream development tool in many organisations. At the same time, AI coaching agents are moving from novelty experiments to products available off the shelf, like Microsoft 365. For HR, the commissioning…
The Traitors: Jobs most likely to get you banished or murdered
As TV show The Traitors UK fuels watercooler chat, Shane Duffy argues the castle is really a bias lab. From teachers to barristers, players are judged by their job title before they speak. Analysis shows who gets targeted, who survives and what workplaces can learn about trust, status and threat. As the nation remains gripped by the latest season of The Traitors UK, Shane Duffy, Managing Director of serviced office brokerage Click Offices, warns that the hit BBC show offers…
What should HR leaders be looking out for in 2026?
From pay transparency to the right to disconnect, HR leaders face a perfect storm of regulation, technology and rising expectations in 2026. What really matters, what’s overhyped and where should teams focus first? Veronique Lemaire cuts through the noise with practical insight for navigating change without losing people or momentum The future of work is a red-hot topic as the global economy realigns amid developing regulations, rapid technological shifts and changing employee expectations. A third (34%) of jurisdictions predict an uptick in the complexity of HR and payroll services, according to the latest Global Business Complexity Index. This is…
When Uber comes for L&D: Five smart moves before learning and development shifts
Ricci Masero argues L&D has more warning than taxi drivers before Uber changed the travel landscape. With AI-funded edtech accelerating, professionals can choose to adapt, humanise, specialise, diversify or even compete. The message is blunt: stop defending yesterday’s methods, learn the tools, and move while options remain for your career. In 2010, if you were a taxi driver, nobody came to warn you that your industry was about to transform. Uber was being built. Venture capital was flowing. By the…
The evolutionary blind spot undermining leadership programmes
Martin Johnson explores why leadership development fails when it ignores the biology driving behaviour. He examines survival, pleasure and purpose, revealing how stress, disengagement and underperformance persist. The article offers L&D professionals practical diagnostic frameworks to identify psychological states and develop leaders who work with, not against, human evolution workplaces. Leadership development programmes often fail organisations because they ignore a fundamental truth. Before you can effectively lead others, you must understand what drives human behaviour. Without this foundation, even the…
Want smart, useful L&D insight in your inbox (without the fluff)?
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for Editor-only commentary, and exclusive insight that isn’t published anywhere else online.
If you want a quick roundup of what matters, fresh ideas you can use, and the best new reads from Training Journal, this is where it lands
It’s free, only takes a minute, and you can unsubscribe any time.
