For years I’ve been banging on about things needing to be different and thought that the pandemic will become the catalyst for change. Part of me hopes that workplace learning will realise that the old models we have used to ‘deliver’ learning will be busted; knowing that we have a real opportunity to redefine what workplace learning might be like is incredibly exciting.

But.

I have conversations with lots of LnD people and it doesn’t appear the impetus/will/motivation exists to make that happen.

This lack of drive isn’t solely down to the LnD professionals themselves; quite rightly people feel threatened and scared by the changes that have happened because of the pandemic. People, whose professional career has been defined by the way things were done for decades, will obviously look to return to a form of normality they’re comfortable with.

More frustrating is the number of people who tell me they’re being asked to recreate what they did before by finance, IT, admin and HR leads.

If the time was right to do things differently, now has to be the exact moment when we should be encouraging our businesses, partners, colleagues and sponsors to look at their approach the way they want to develop and support their teams. Now has to be the time for the learning functions to take the opportunity to lead these decisions and become the engineer rather than shopkeeper.