Talent & Skills
Why your top talent is quietly checking out
Why do high performers disengage from careers that seem successful on paper? In this article, Laura Simms unpacks how competence, conditioning and misdiagnosed burnout can hide poor fit, and argues that better support starts when organisations help people question the path they are on and redefine work around meaning sustainably. The professionals most likely to feel disconnected from work are often the last ones anyone suspects. They perform well. They get promoted. They earn the salary that was supposed to…
Your capability framework didn’t fail. Your rollout did.
Ben Satchwell challenges the default diagnosis when capability frameworks sit unused after twelve months. Low usage often signals a failed launch, not flawed content. Before expensive redesigns, audit sponsorship, manager understanding, communication and reinforcement. Distinguish neglect from design issues, fix sustainment, and resist rewriting artefacts that were never truly introduced. A capability framework that nobody uses at the twelve-month mark gets a predictable diagnosis: the content was wrong. The levels were too granular, or not granular enough. The language didn’t…
A capability framework is a change programme, not a document
Ben Satchwell argues that capability frameworks fail when treated as a design deliverable instead of a change programme. The document is only the opening move. Prioritise sponsorship, manager enablement, behaviour change and reinforcement before taxonomy perfection. Budget for adoption first, run communication as a campaign, and plan beyond go live. Most capability frameworks are commissioned as documents. Someone signs off a project to define the capabilities the organisation needs, a team spends three or four months drafting them, and the…
Compliance theatre is over: Accredited online learning is the grown-up option
With budgets squeezed and the UK Employment Rights Act 2025 raising the stakes, distance learning is no longer second best. Nathan Tod argues accredited online qualifications can satisfy compliance, boost retention and cut costs, if L&D stop treating learning as an event and start building continuous development into work culture. The pressure on learning and development (L&D) professionals has rarely felt greater. Budgets are tighter, expectations are higher, and the Employment Rights Act 2025 has introduced a new layer of…
The leaking talent pipeline: How AI is quietly undermining leadership succession
AI is speeding up work while quietly eroding the early-career experiences that shape future leaders. As entry-level roles decline, judgement, emotional intelligence and organisational fluency have fewer places to form. Leena Rinne argues succession strength must be measured in capability, then rebuilt through deliberate practice, feedback and engineered development pathways. There’s a shift happening inside organisations right now that doesn’t show up on any succession plan. As AI absorbs more entry-level and early-career work, organisations are gaining speed but losing…
The mid-career crisis employers aren’t talking about: How L&D can fix the mid-career plateau
Somewhere between ‘settled’ and ‘stuck’, mid-career talent hits a quiet dip that drains energy and invites exits. Drawing on workplace happiness data, Kimberley Rowbottom shows why employees at the five/ten-year point feel least recognised and developed. Potential solutions include personalised pathways, visible appreciation and renewed social connection across the organisation. We’re at a critical, yet overlooked, inflection point in the employee experience: the mid-career dip. According to the Global Workplace Happiness Report, employees with five to ten years of tenure…
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…
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,…
When leaders run on empty, strategy turns into firefighting
Workplace stress is surging, executive burnout is a systemic risk to organisational performance. In a DUSTy polycrisis world, traditional wellbeing initiatives barely touch the root causes. Steve Macaulay sets out a practical HR and L&D roadmap to redesign roles, build psychological safety, embed structured support and impact the whole organisation. The signs of workplace stress are everywhere: UK sickness absence is at its highest for 15 years. According to a CIPD survey, 64% of organisations are taking steps to identify…
The apprenticeship metric L&D teams can’t afford to ignore
Qualification Achievement Rates are one of the most practical indicators of whether apprentices reach the finish line, yet many employers overlook them when selecting providers. Harry Hobbs argues that completion is where training becomes productive capability, calling for clearer, comparable data so provider choice strengthens retention, performance and long-term skills. The latest statistics from the UK Department for Education (DfE) highlight significant variation between apprenticeship providers on Qualification Achievement Rates (QAR). With rates varying by as much as 82.1 percentage…
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