It’s impossible to miss how AI has begun to impact every part of the modern business. As organisational leaders it’s important for us to understand two things: how to use AI effectively in our day-to-day roles, and how AI is going to disrupt our industries, workforces, and operational processes.

I’ve recently completed a short AI training course that has made me rethink what I thought about both of these things. The ProfAI course (free, under an hour) is one of many that have sprung up to teach the world how best to use generative AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude.

But what really struck me wasn’t what the training contained, but how it did it. Because ProfAI uses AI in a way that fundamentally changes what we think we know about L&D in our organisations.

It starts by asking two questions:

• Describe your industry/organisation
• Describe your role and responsibilities

It then uses these responses to personalise and contextualise the course content, the review questions it asks, and feedback on answers you give. Indeed, a generic answer won’t allow you to move on – you’ll need to provide an answer that aligns with your responses to the initial questions.

Perhaps surprisingly, the mechanics of this are relatively simple – indeed, you could recreate the concept in an AI chatbot like ChatGPT using just a few sentences.

Deliver training to me based on the following:

Q1: Ask me my job and industry

Using the answer to this question, customise the below to be highly relevant:

Section 1:

Effective prompting: You should explain how to assemble effective prompts, with the formula: [Instruction or goal] + [context or background] + [desired format/output]. Provide an example derived from the response to Q1 and then break it down. Then test me on the concept, setting the task of writing a prompt for a common process. You should create the task using my response to Q1 to identify a relevant process. When I have answered by creating a prompt, you should rate the response based on the earlier formula and recommend improvements.
 
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Copy and paste the above into an AI assistant to try it yourself.

Four Fundamental Shifts for L&D

This simple example reveals four fundamental shifts that will reshape how we approach learning and development in our organisations:

1. Conversational Learning at Scale

We’re witnessing the return of conversational learning, but without the traditional constraints. Historically, we learned from tutors who could answer questions and provide feedback, but this was limited by availability and cost. The printing press democratised knowledge through books, leading to self-directed learning that reached its peak with e-learning modules and multiple-choice assessments.

AI brings back the tutorial experience – learners can ask questions, receive immediate feedback, and engage in dialogue about complex topics. But unlike human tutors, AI is available 24/7, can handle unlimited learners simultaneously, and maintains consistent quality across all interactions.

2. Adaptive Learning Pathways

The ProfAI example shows basic personalisation, but AI’s true power lies in adaptive learning. Rather than following predetermined paths, AI can adjust content difficulty, pacing, and approach based on real-time analysis of learner responses, comprehension levels, and performance patterns.

Imagine compliance training that automatically provides additional examples when someone struggles with a concept, or leadership development that adapts scenarios based on the learner’s management style and challenges. This isn’t just personalisation – it’s intelligent responsiveness that evolves with each interaction.

3. Prompt Engineering as Core L&D Competency

This represents the most significant shift in required L&D skills. Prompt engineering – the practice of writing clear, comprehensive instructions for AI systems – is fundamentally a communication and instructional design skill.

L&D professionals are uniquely positioned for this transition. You already know how to:

• Break down complex concepts into digestible steps
• Anticipate learner questions and misconceptions
• Build guardrails to keep learning on track
• Consider how instructions might be misinterpreted

The difference is that instead of designing static content, you’re designing dynamic learning conversations. You’re not coding – you’re crafting the intelligence that will guide thousands of personalised learning experiences.

In fact, many AI failures stem from technologists with excellent coding skills but no experience managing diverse learning groups. Your expertise in guiding learners through complex topics is exactly what AI systems need to succeed.

4. From Content Creation to Learning Orchestration

With AI handling content delivery and adaptation, L&D’s role evolves from creating materials to orchestrating learning ecosystems. Your focus shifts from what content to include to what outcomes to achieve; from building courses to designing intelligent learning experiences.

This means:

• Defining learning objectives that AI can interpret and work toward
• Creating assessment frameworks that measure genuine understanding
• Building feedback loops that improve both learner outcomes and AI performance
• Integrating AI learning with human mentoring and peer collaboration

The Strategic Imperative

These shifts create both opportunity and urgency. Early adopters will gain significant competitive advantages through more effective, efficient, and engaging learning experiences. But success requires strategic action now.

For L&D leaders, the immediate priorities are:

Audit and Identify: Review your current learning portfolio to identify programmes that would benefit from conversational, adaptive delivery. Start with high-volume, standardised training that requires personalisation.

Build Capability: Invest in prompt engineering skills for your team. This isn’t a technical training need – it’s about applying your existing instructional design expertise to AI systems.

Pilot and Learn: Launch small-scale AI learning experiments. Test the technology, understand the challenges, and build organisational confidence in AI-enhanced learning.

Prepare for Scale: Develop frameworks for managing AI learning experiences, including quality assurance, learner support, and continuous improvement processes.

The organisations that master AI-enhanced learning will create more capable workforces, reduce training costs, and improve learning outcomes. Those that don’t risk being left behind with static, generic training that fails to meet modern learner expectations.

The question isn’t whether AI will transform L&D – it’s whether you’ll lead that transformation in your organisation or be forced to catch up later.

Reciprocal mentoring is gaining in popularity, with employers across the spectrum regaling incredulous business reporters with stories of ‘breaking down barriers’ and ‘bridging the generational skills divide’. But is this just another buzzword, or could it be the answer to the perennial problem of workplace diversity programmes that rapidly lose traction?

Mentoring is a concept that should take little introduction. The idea of experienced seniors teaching a favoured youngster the secrets of their trade goes back into antiquity. The modern workplace retains many aspects of this ancient tradition, especially the outsized influence of familial connections and the emergence of self-replication bias by those hoping to train their own legacy.

But the demands and structure of the modern workplace have also reduced opportunities for mentorship and air gapped the most senior leaders from the most junior employees.

These hierarchical structures can have unexpected consequences. The ‘father of modern management’, Peter Drucker, found that many senior leaders believed the success or failure of an organisation was primarily influenced by their making of important decisions which are then implemented downwards.

However, Drucker discovered something quite different. In most cases, leaders were being asked to choose winners between a small number of similar ideas or plans. Those initiatives had often started out as very different beasts, many layers down, but were homogenised as they progressed through decision making structures, with any radical concepts gradually eroded by the successive reviews of increasingly conformist management layers.

This idea was built upon by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma, where the author demonstrated how today’s market leaders almost always miss tomorrow’s market breakthroughs due to completely logical managerial decisions based on an innovation’s incompatibility with current operational processes and customer demands.

What is Reciprocal Mentoring?

Reciprocal Mentoring is a two-way mentoring relationship. Both parties, regardless of their position, learn from each other, fostering mutual respect, understanding, and growth.

This shouldn’t be confused with reverse mentoring, where junior employees mentor senior leaders. These will often either be shorter term, ending when the senior mentee decides they have extracted as much value from the relationship as they need or want; or will naturally develop into a reciprocal arrangement.

It’s for this reason HR leaders should be careful with reverse mentoring schemes, which by design are exploitative one-way value transfers from the weak to the strong.

In a reciprocal mentoring arrangement value should flow both ways:

The senior party shares knowledge of organisational cheat codes to circumvent bureaucracy, provides an amount of patronage, and delivers support with overcoming career and life challenges.

The junior partner shares perspectives that the senior party is simply unlikely to encounter in their social bubble, discloses information on how the organisation actually works, revealing informal cultures and behaviours, and delivers the unfiltered and unrefined ideas that truly innovative organisations require to succeed.

What are the challenges with reciprocal mentoring

Reciprocal mentoring, unlike conventional mentoring arrangements, is designed to be challenging. Where conventional mentoring deliberately matches mentors and mentees with similar interests and experiences, reciprocal mentoring works best when both parties discover their common ground through the sharing of differences.

This requires a level of vulnerability and openness that many, especially those on the more senior side of the relationship, may struggle to reach.

It can also be challenging for those on the junior side of the relationship to bring their whole selves to the relationship, in the same way that organisational cultures convince them not to bring their whole selves to work.

Building the trust required to really establish the reciprocal mentoring relationship is, therefore, the biggest challenge to any reciprocal mentoring scheme. And in truth, the reciprocal relationship is not without real and perceived risks for participants.

The junior party will be constantly wary of the power held by the senior. A comment or revelation shared could impact senior colleague’s perceptions of them for years or decades to come. The Executioners Axe is ever present should an invisible and unknown cultural line be crossed.

Likewise for the senior party, the Sword of Damocles hangs over every interaction. For people whose careers are often built on diplomacy, influence, and the control of information, being vulnerable with someone who has very little to lose by being loose lipped can destroy a life’s work.

Changing behavioural expectations are another hazard. Isolated in a social bubble, senior parties will be wary of committing a faux pas or causing offence. Fear of an omnipresent, all-powerful ‘diversity police’ will often cause those who would most benefit (and have most value to give) from reciprocal mentoring to avoid it, or simply fail to fully participate.

Establishing a Reciprocal Mentoring Scheme

Reciprocal mentoring is an excellent opportunity for participants to learn from each other and build coaching and communication skills. It also helps develop the relationships that underpin wider organisational initiatives such as allyship and employee networks.

Defining purpose is crucial before embarking on any mentoring scheme. Why does your organisation need a scheme like this and what problem will it specifically solve?

As described earlier, engaging senior leaders with the programme is the difference between success and failure. This is particularly the case at the pilot stage, where impacts and results are unproven. Starting with a limited scope will help you to select the right participants to test the concept.

With every organisational culture being different, the challenges that emerge will likewise be unique. It’s entirely probable that unrelated policies and procedures will act as barriers to the relationship forming, and this testing phase helps to identify and resolve these issues before rolling out to a wider audience.

Given the innate power imbalance between participants, establishing a confidential ‘get out’ mechanism is highly advisable. Even the best matches on paper can fail in real life, and mentoring is no different. Ensuring both participants feel confident to share honest feedback on the relationship keeps you, as the scheme coordinator, in the loop, and able to step in as and when required.

Work with Umbrella HR to ensure the success of your mentoring programmes

Crafting an Agile Training Strategy in the Age of AI and Technological Innovation

In today’s rapidly transforming work ecosystem, marked by the swift emergence of AI and digital innovations, the role of HR is more pivotal than ever.

 As HR leaders, it’s time to re-evaluate our training strategies, ensuring they’re not just robust but also inherently adaptive to the ever-evolving demands of our times. This article  guides you in this journey, helping shape a framework that’s not just reactive but anticipatory of technological advancements.

We need to empower our greatest asset – our workforce – to excel in an environment that’s as dynamic as the technology shaping it.

Assessing Capability Gaps

The starting point for an agile training strategy is to ask ourselves ‘why do we need one?’

Secondary benefits to great L&D opportunities are employee satisfaction, increased efficiency, and appeal to potential employees. The number one reason for any L&D strategy is to ensure the organisation and its employees have the skills they need to deliver its capabilities.

Organisations with a comprehensive capability model has a central point of truth from which to work.

It’s impossible for HR and senior leaders to understand all the skills needed to deliver business area capabilities. Most of the work is delivered by specialists who may be unique in the organisation.

HR must understand which capabilities are vulnerable, where there is low redundancy and poor continuity planning. This involves asking senior leaders to identify where chokepoints or skills monopolies exist in their teams.

Your actions:

• Conduct skills audits to identify gaps
• Anticipate future skills needed for new tech
• Align training to strategic business goals

Measuring Training Effectiveness

Learning and development is in constant conflict with work. Managers, running with the bare minimum hours to complete the job, see it as a threat to delivery. Learners often see mandated training as an irrelevance which puts them behind with their work, whilst experiencing exasperation that genuinely helpful training has been blocked by bureaucracy and budgets.

This is a communications problem where  L&D is seen as a disabler for the business, rather than an enabler.

How would I change this?

We need to start communicating the metrics of success both downwards and  upwards. Managers need to know 99% of employees completed health and safety training; employees want to hear that the training has reduced workplace accidents and injuries by 50%.  We need to better measure the effectiveness and impact of training and share it in a way that helps people recognise the value created.

Measuring outcomes is crucial when managing budgets.

Take for example, the ‘lock-in’ approach to training. the ‘we’ll put you through this training, but you have to stay or pay’. It’s natural to fear that an employee may take the training and move to a new employer, but it’s worth remembering that if an employee is forced into doing learning in their own time, they’re doing it for their next employer, not for you. If you end up forcing an employee to do their own development, they’ve already quit.

This is tied to the phenomena of unrewarded loyalty. Studies identified it’s more financially beneficial for employees to regularly job hop than stay with a single employer. The main reason for this is that, unless you’re working in some sort of super-scaling start-up environment, people evolve faster than their employers do.

Therefore, we need to move away from  ‘turnover’ and leavers and focus on metrics like length of service. In 99.9% of organisations, even middle performers are going to get a better offer if they go looking. HR needs to ask how can we increase the average service length to reduce recruitment and retraining costs? If someone leaves before 75% of the average service length, we should investigate. At an organisational scale, we must identify how much (if at all) improving personal learning opportunities affects that number?

Rethinking training

Dragging dispersed teams of workers into a room for training is inefficient and for remote teams, a massive and unnecessary cost. This is about ticking boxes (they attended;  they are trained) rather than creating valuable and lasting learning experiences.

Of course, when done well, it can be powerful. I’ve previously spoken about Atlassian’s approach, where the remote-first organisation has built dedicated teams to support the delivery of memorable in-person experiences for employees. This approach makes the office a place where people want to go, rather than must go

The training room approach fails to deliver personalised and relevant training that meets worker or business needs. As mentioned work is specialised which requires unique skill sets and specialities.

There are many different workforce L&D  requirements, but they can all be put into two groups, universal, and exceptional.

Universal training, for all employees, tailored for different groups, functions, and seniority levels, generally has the same objectives and outcomes for everyone.

Exceptional training is more niche. It may be for thousands of people, or just for one, but has a specific purpose which involves improving an employee’s performance or skills.

E-learning is an effective way of delivering both these types of training.

Universal training through e-learning is simple. A course is added, completion is tracked, with a goal of 100%. However, exceptional training requires more specific and niche courses. Many of these are commercially available; for example, Umbrella HR has produced an e-learning course for line managers to upskill in performance management. But when we look deeper, we run into issues. Employee’s bespoke training needs are often blocked by managers (especially where not directly related to current job role) or delivered informally by a colleague who may or may not be trained. As a result,, capability gaps are not identified, and employees are forced to upskill outside of work just to do their job, breeding resentment.

Your actions:

• Curate self-service e-learning platforms
• Facilitate peer coaching and collaboration
• Track learning outcomes across locations

The Road Ahead

For too many, ‘learning’ ends at school or university and this is embedded by poor support for learning in organisations. But employers can change this. It’s common to have a volunteering days allowance; so, give employees a personal development allowance and measure the impact of this on organisational capabilities.

It’s crucial to support employees through change. We’re living through a period of unprecedented disruption on the global, local, societal, and working levels. Supporting employees with the skills and knowledge they need demonstrates an investment and appreciation likely to be rewarded with improved retention.

The two specific learning areas crucial for organisations to deliver effectively into the future are  skills and knowledge The organisational ‘lore’ is an often-overlooked part of learning, but codifying what has and hasn’t worked in the past embeds organisational learning and prevents wasteful mistakes being made twice.

Organisational knowledge is a key opportunity which data driven organisations are using AI to exploit. Moving information from employee’s heads into formal repositories via intranets and knowledge banks is a crucial part of the bigger picture behind L&D. Practitioners who take an active role in AI development, will be able to effectively control this learning delivery method.

Finally, we often fail to take note of skills and training delivered before an employee joins. Unless a certification or skillset is a job requirement upon appointment, we rarely understand the other skills or competencies that people bring to a role, which results in poorly constructed job descriptions, or worse, we underuse an employee who then believes themselves to have been slighted. Properly recording and, rewarding the full capacity of our employees is an increasing challenge as skill shortages sharpen.

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The world moves fast. Yesterday’s priorities are superseded by new initiatives by lunchtime. No wonder then that we buy in the skills we need on a project-by-project basis. We’ve begun treating talent like supermarkets treat fresh produce; just in time delivery with minimal surplus. In the drive for efficiency, we’re offloading the responsibility of developing skills to others.

There are other aspects that have led us to this situation. For most organisations, the idea of restricting a vacancy to internal applicants is anathema, for a number of reasons. External applicants are key for diverse workforces. We want to hire experience from outside the sector. We’re preventing institutionalised groupthink.

However, the public sector has a number of organisations who show us why internal promotion can be better than importing talent. The Civil Service is highly reliant on organisational knowledge to provide the best support and advice to policy makers. It’s an organisation where change is so constant that organisational knowledge and experience expedites rather than obstructs changing priorities.

Another key part of the Civil Service’s success is encouraging cross-function moves. How difficult would someone in your organisation find it to move from one area to another? No, they don’t know much about the area they want to move into, or have the skills to do the job immediately, unlike an external applicant. But they know other parts of your business, your structure, your values and your challenges intimately. They maintain your organisation’s cultural memory. Beyond this, they can tackle challenges with knowledge from multiple aspects of your organisation – becoming the proverbial two heads which are better than one.

Chasing Retention

But if we think about why people leave their jobs, one thing underlies everything. They want more. For some, it’s more money. For others, more challenges; their work bores them. Self-improvement is a motivator for many; the desire to gain more skills and knowledge.

And realistically, some of these ‘mores’ are great opportunities for your organisation. Employees motivated by a desire to solve your organisation’s problems, if only given a chance. People who want to deliver their work to a higher standard, but feel they have to get a job elsewhere to do so.

Employee turnover is so often an HR metric, but how regularly are you discussing this with L&D teams? I suppose a big challenge is switching from a macro focus to a micro one. We speak on an organisational level, but as HR professionals we’re much less likely to have a ‘scouting’ role where we identify talent for new roles – this is left to line managers. And what we often see is line managers who want to keep talent in their teams, as these top players make their role easier.

So the needs of line managers are a challenge – they expect to recruit the best and keep them. Often due to badly thought out KPIs, line managers are forced to make a choice between meeting team targets or developing their employees. Add in performance incentives which often reward teams financially for beating targets and you create a culture where stagnation of talent is the norm.

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New Challenges, Old Solutions

But we’ve got a powerful tool for upskilling our workforces that is being criminally underused. It’s a method we’ve used for decades, but seem to have abandoned in favour of ‘buying talent’ from other employers.

I’m talking, of course, about apprenticeships. And it makes sense for a lot of smaller employers to be wary of taking on an apprentice. There are costs incurred just preparing to take on an apprentice, not to mention the risk of the apprentice dropping out, being entirely unsuitable or simply not fitting into a small team.

But the thing is, nobody says that apprenticeships have to be for new starters. Of course, there are financial advantages to hiring an apprentice, but if your organisation’s only incentive is being able to pay someone eight grand for a full year’s work, lack of development opportunities isn’t the biggest retention issue you need to be tackling. 

Realistically, if you’re looking to use apprenticeships to upskill existing employees you’ll need to pay them at least the same amount they’re on now, whilst also giving them at least 20% of their contracted hours to train and study.

But there are huge benefits, especially when delivering higher or degree level apprenticeships. For certain skills and industries the funding contributions and employer incentive payments can be significant, and the skills an existing employee can gain through the apprenticeship programmes can be quite literally ‘money can’t buy’.

We need to promote the idea that apprenticeships are not just for kids. We’ve reached a point where everyone in the workforce is expected to learn new things, but the idea of a structured programme of education for workers older than 25.

Remember that employees are just as keen to grow and develop as you are to resolve your skill shortages. Internal progression means organisational memories are retained and shared, employee loyalty improves and informal relationships between teams are strengthened.

Taking Action

So what can you do?

One

Identify employees with the potential to fill your skill shortages. Upskilling existing staff is cheaper and more effective than recruiting new employees, and often (when taking into account onboarding and team integration) quicker too.

Employees can enter Masters level degree apprenticeships on the basis of relevant workplace experience. This means they don’t need to have completed a bachelor’s degree, although having the aptitude and commitment to complete a challenging MSc course will be key!

Two

Raise awareness. There will be plenty of people in your workforce who want to learn and take up internal opportunities. New talent may emerge from the most unlikely of places…

Three

Incentivise managers. It’s pretty normal for senior leaders to have some requirement to develop direct reports, but where this is applied to line managers it’s often copy pasted and fails to recognise the very different roles and responsibilities. In a world where line managers are as likely as their team members to need to look outside the organisation for improvement, a few lines in a performance review on talent is ineffective.

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