HR Professionals
The skills obsession is creating a performance blind spot
Charles Jennings highlights the issue no training programme addresses: behavioural patterns inside teams that derail performance. He shows why Behavioural Risk should be on every L&D leader’s agenda, shifting focus from individual upskilling to interaction. Diagnose dynamics, track psychological safety and knowledge flow, and strengthen collective outcomes where strategy sticks. Learning and development teams are stretched. Skills taxonomies and individualised learning pathways are growing more sophisticated. AI is seen by L&D leaders as both a challenge and an opportunity. And…
From controller to keyboard: Why gamers are an untapped IT pipeline
Could your next cybersecurity analyst be a gamer? Ben Smith explores five gaming-honed strengths, from pattern recognition to resilient problem solving, and shows how L&D can convert them into job-ready capability. Expect practical ideas for onboarding, labs and simulations that bridge technical gaps and expand pipelines beyond traditional credentials today. Speedrunning Super Mario 64 may not appear on a CV, but the skills developed through modern gaming are increasingly relevant to today’s IT workforce. As organisations face ongoing talent shortages…
Gen Z – rebuilding workplace culture, break by break
We’ve been told that Gen Z are reshaping the workplace, and not always for the better. They’ve been typecast as less focused, more demanding, and more likely to challenge traditional ways of working. Russell Cowley argues that taking proper breaks may be fixing something that the rest of us broke. Across the UK workforce, the lunch break has been in steady decline for years. Various studies consistently show that many employees now take fewer than 30 minutes for lunch, and…
The global team trap: 5 mistakes leaders keep making
Leading teams across time zones means more than adding Zoom calls. Mykhailo Voitovych explains five common mistakes that derail multicultural, distributed work, from fuzzy definitions of “done” to undocumented decisions and clumsy feedback. He shares practical fixes: structured handoffs, decision logs, and flexible communication norms that keep progress steady globally. In the era the World Economic Forum labels as one of “geoeconomic fragmentation and geopolitical tensions”, businesses seek flexibility. For leadership and talent development, it means multicultural teams are popular…
The leadership blind spot: Managers who stop listening when it gets awkward
Difficult workplace conversations are now routine, but many managers lose confidence when emotions rise and listening matters most. Joseph Conway explores why employees feel dismissed, what the psychological safety data reveals, and how L&D can build people’s skills for listening under pressure, with practical strategies that strengthen trust and wellbeing. Difficult conversations in the workplace are no longer few and far between. For line managers, they’ve become a routine part of leadership, whether it’s navigating performance concerns, responding to interpersonal…
Research: CIPD Skills and Learning at Work Survey 2026
L&D professionals have a valuable and important opportunity to share the reality of workplace learning today. Honest responses will help benchmark current practice, shape future tools and resources, and inform national policy, making it vital that voices from across the profession are heard. Find out more about the CIPD research. The CIPD Skills and Learning at Work Survey 2026 is open, and it matters that L&D voices are part of it. Since 2020 the CIPD have worked with Laura Overton,…
L&D in the age of reinvention: Four imperatives for the CLO
Chief Learning Officers are being asked to reinvent organisations, while AI rewires jobs and careers. The route is unlearning: letting go of ladders, fixed roles and ‘training as an event’. Dr Helmut Schuster and Dr David Oxley set out four imperatives for CLOs to build experimentation, trust, AI and capability. We are entering an era in which organisational reinvention is not optional. It is constant and structural. Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping roles and workflows. Career ladders are collapsing into…
SOFest: A learning festival where everything is an invitation
Kirsty Lewis shares what makes SOFest different, from focused speaker sessions and practical workshops to silent discos, sound baths, business development and creative reflection. With everything framed as an invitation, delegates choose their own route through learning, connection, rest and experimentation. All at this year’s must-attend festival for learning professionals. Learning events can sometimes feel over-designed. Delegates are moved from room to room, sessions are fixed, choices are limited and the day can become something to endure rather than explore.…
From breakdown to backbone: Helping people thrive under selfish leaders
Selfish leaders can drain confidence, distort reality and trigger burnout, but support can be a turning point. Drawing on a case study, this article shares coaching tools to build awareness, protect boundaries and respond strategically. Josefine Campbell shows how clients can restore resilience, reclaim agency and even thrive at work. Selfish leaders prioritise their personal gain over the well-being of their teams and can create a toxic ripple effect in the workplace. Whether as a professional coach, an empathetic colleague,…
From job redesign to work transformation: How organisations can future-proof roles in the age of AI and skills shortages
Technology isn’t the blocker, work design is. Many organisations trap people in low-value tasks while layering AI onto old workflows. Johnson Wong argues leaders must shift from updating job descriptions to transforming how work flows at task level, prioritising high-impact roles, and investing in skills to unlock productivity and engagement. Across industries, leaders are confronting the same paradox: technology is advancing faster than organisations can adapt, yet productivity growth remains stubbornly slow. AI tools are proliferating, automation investments are rising,…
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