Talent & Skills
Beyond the management ladder: Why Gen Z is redefining career success
Rethink training, leadership and career progression to retain Gen Z talent. Tara Ceranic Salinas explains why younger workers value time, flexibility, mastery and meaningful impact over traditional management titles, and how organisations can create learning cultures that build skills, recognise strengths and support sustainable growth at work for everyone involved. Every generation has their own ideas about what work should look like. Climbing the corporate ladder and reaching the pinnacles of management used to be the aim, but Gen Z…
Reviewers don’t become advocates, co-designers do
Ben Satchwell argues that review rounds create judges, not champions. Sending a near-final capability framework for comment builds critique, not ownership. Co-design brings influential practitioners into the room early, at key moments: framing the problem, shaping the structure, and testing reality. Shared authorship fuels advocacy, accelerating adoption more than perfection. Most capability frameworks go through a review round. The team drafts the framework, then sends it to a group of stakeholders for comment. The feedback comes back, some of it…
TJ interviews: Ravin Jesuthasan on actionable insights for building skills-first enterprises
Conor Gilligan speaks with Ravin Jesuthasan about why job-based models are failing, how skills-powered organisations unlock AI and productivity gains, and the practical steps HR and L&D leaders can take to redesign work, reskill talent and deploy skills faster for stronger business performance in volatile markets today and tomorrow alike. Ravin Jesuthasan, a recognised futurist and authority on the future of work, human capital, and automation is a Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer, an Executive Fellow…
Your capability framework’s completion rate is a vanity metric
Ben Satchwell warns that completion rates make capability framework rollouts look healthy while masking failure. Logging in and self-assessing proves compliance, not impact. Instead, measure one behavioural signal that completion can’t fake, e.g. development conversations, hiring decisions, plans that reference capabilities… One honest metric beats dashboards that only flatter activity. When a capability framework rolls out, the first number anyone reports is completion. 92% of staff have reviewed the framework. 85% have completed a self-assessment against it. The dashboard turns…
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…
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