Learning in the workplace is more than just a benefit – it’s an essential
Why embracing a growth mindset is critical in the next 25 years
What is the difference between L&D and upskilling?
How does workplace learning attract and retain talent?
Embracing a continuous journey of growth, training and curiosity empowers employees, but it can also give organisations a platform to succeed, writes Arielle Domb
In order to launch impactive educational programs, organisations must differentiate learning and development (L&D) from upskilling. While the former usually focuses on long-term career goals, the latter is often more about enhancing and expanding skills. For example, a leadership-development programme could be part of a company’s L&D strategy, while teaching employees new digital tools to boost productivity would be classified as upskilling.
Futurist Tom Cheesewright distinguishes three versions of workplace learning: “I think most corporations now need to think about training in three different segments: L&D, upskilling and reskilling.”
According to Cheesewright, L&D serves a maintenance function within an organisation, addressing core considerations like good safety procedures and cybersecurity. Upskilling, on the other hand, “is about your vertical journey through the ranks. How do we as a corporation accelerate the advancement of our best and brightest so that we get more value from them, and they feel more beholden to us?”
Focusing on the needs and goals of both the employer and employees is a key part of developing a strategy that includes both L&D and upskilling. The modern workforce is more diverse than ever before. For the first time ever, five generations coexist in the workplace. Graduate employees may be better suited to upskilling their efficiency with digital tools, given that gen Z workers tend to be more focused on rapid promotion within a short tenure with a company, whereas L&D may benefit more mature employees who want to consider their growth over a longer period.
And the current cohort will soon be joined by gen alpha, true digital natives who will have an even greater appetite for online learning. Mentorship – and reverse mentorship – can harvest the benefits of the diversity of skills and knowledge within the multigenerational workforce. The old guard can impart decades of experience and knowledge, while the younger generations can pass on digital skills and perspectives senior management lacks.
Cheesewright also notes the importance of ‘reskilling’: “What we want from our people is changing. Embedding people in a corporate culture can be slow and expensive. Much better to retrain the people you have”.
Developing training programmes and workshops alone is not enough. The 70-20-10 model theorises that 70 per cent of learning happens through doing, 20 per cent happens by interacting with peers and only 10 per cent happens from formal training programmes. In other words, learning is also social and collaborative. It is not something that should be confined to specific, allocated time frames, but a process that occurs constantly through a variety of interactions in an organisation.
Cheesewright emphasises that learning styles are most important at the general L&D stage: “Here, AI tools make it increasingly easy to translate written documents into spoken podcasts, avatar-delivered videos and even interactive exercises.”
At the upskilling and reskilling end of the spectrum, “the learning is deeply focused on specific capabilities, actions and tools, so the training needs to be more focused around the ability as it will be exercised in the real world”.
Supporting multiple generations can be challenging, but there are tools that can manage those difficulties. MHR, a leading HR, payroll and finance provider, has one such platform in People First Learning, which helps to support a diverse workforce, providing opportunities for both L&D and upskilling. It enables leaders to design and build an entire catalogue of training courses, creating customisable learning paths tailored to individual employee needs and ensuring that everyone – from graduates and apprentices to senior leaders – receives the appropriate support and reassurance. It is designed with employee engagement and collaboration in mind, enhancing both individual and organisational motivation and growth.
Workplace learning is essential for engaging, securing and retaining talent. Following the pandemic, thousands of employees quit their jobs, a mass exodus that has been dubbed the Great Resignation. In Q2 2022 alone, job resignations reached a record breaking 446,000. According to a study conducted by McKinsey & Company that year, the main reason employees said they quit their previous job was a lack of career development or advancement.
Dissatisfaction with their total salary packages came in second, but third was ‘uncaring and uninspiring leaders’ at 34 per cent of those responding, and ‘lack of meaningful work’ at 31 per cent.
Economic uncertainty and challenging market conditions only exacerbate the situation, with research showing that L&D budgets are one of the first things to be cut in periods of economic downturn. Despite often being viewed as ‘non-essential’ to an organisation’s financial survival, the same research shows that 83 per cent of employees view L&D as a ‘vital factor’ behind their choice of employer.
Rather than neglecting workplace learning strategies in periods of mass resignation and economic instability, prioritising learning and upskilling is emerging as the counter measure. By investing in their people, employers can create an empowering environment, attracting, engaging and retaining the people that make an organisation successful in the long term.
MHR’s People First Learning can empower employees to take their learning into their own hands, allowing them to connect with like-minded colleagues and receive real-time, regular feedback, creating a sense of community. The cloud-based software is streamlined and intuitive to use, making it a popular choice for a variety of companies across different sectors. Employees have access to the tools they need for learning, anywhere and at any time, even with snackable tutorials that can be embedded in the daily workflow, allowing them to learn through doing. This all creates a fluid communication structure, empowering teams and giving businesses a competitive edge.
The phrase ‘growth mindset’ has proliferated in the corporate world in recent years, but what does it really mean? The term was coined by psychologist Carol Dweck in the early 1970s. She had begun to notice that while some of her students seemed to rebound from failure, others seemed to be more affected by small setbacks. After studying the attitudes and behavior of thousands of children, she coined the terms ‘fixed mindset’ and ‘growth mindset’.
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck wrote that people with a fixed mindset have the “belief that an individual’s basic abilities and skills, their intelligence and their talents, are just fixed traits”, while those with a growth mindset believe that “an individual’s most basic abilities and skills can be developed through fixed dedication and hard work”.
On an individual level, having a growth mindset cultivates resilience and an openness to adapt in the face of challenges and change. People who have a growth mindset tend to view failure as an opportunity to learn, which can lead to greater success in their professional lives.
Dweck found that having a growth mindset was important for organisational success too. In one study, she found that employees in a fixed-mindset company were more anxious about failure, leading to an influx of cheating, secrecy and corner-cutting. On the other hand, employees that had a growth mindset were more positive, collaborative and innovative.
“When people understand that their value comes from their ability to learn, not from their current ‘stock of knowledge’ they are better able to [work as a] team, experiment thoughtfully and learn effectively”, said Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School and author of Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well.
“Companies must help people understand the necessity of experimentation, the value of the ‘intelligent failures’ experimentation brings, and the opportunities to ensure excellence in familiar territory to avoid wasteful failures.”
Over the next 25 years, companies will face a number of challenges, from managing an intergenerational workforce (spanning from gen alpha to baby boomers) to developing best practices for AI and other tech advancements. As well as this, Gallup’s most recent State of the Workforce report found that employee engagement stagnated in 2024 and employee well-being declined.
Learning, skill-building and professional development are not just standalone efforts but fundamental extensions of a growth mindset and essential tools to maintain adaptability in a rapidly changing world. If companies want to survive in the long term – engaging, attracting and retaining top talent – developing a growth mindset is more important than ever.
The way we work is constantly changing but, as human beings, some things never change. We want to feel like we are progressing. We crave enrichment, development and growth.
If employers want to retain their workforce and nurture top talent they need to cater to their desire to grow – from the moment they join, rather than it being an incentive for loyalty or a reward for achievements – whether that’s offering training courses, upskilling opportunities or workshops catered to information and technology literacy.
And in 2025, workplace learning can’t be thought of as an added benefit; it must be intrinsic to a business. But unless leaders develop a clear strategy – mapping out existing skills in their business and room for development – they may struggle to engage their workforce. As companies look towards the future, the best-positioned businesses will embrace a growth mindset, cultivating curiosity and learning as a continual journey on a deep, organisational level.
Tom Cheesewright:
‘What we want from our people is
changing. Much better to retrain the
people you have’
Estimated number of job-to-job resignations in the UK 2001-2024
Produced by: Telegraph Media Group
Project manager: Michelle Birbeck, writer: Tom Cheesewright, commissioning editor: Alice Treasure, illustrations: Studio Muti, sub-editors: Tim Cumming, Neil Queen-Jones, video and photography manager: Shin Miura, designer: Jonathan Clayton-Jones, web editor: James Manning
Discover how MHR can enable a culture of learning and drive sustainable high performance
Lifelong learning across generations
Developing a culture that is built on lifelong learning is essential to organisations that want to thrive in the next 25 years and beyond. If leaders want to engage and inspire a multigenerational workforce, create a socially responsible workplace and yield business success, they must embrace a culture of continual learning and growth that doesn’t stop with the success of mastering a new skill or training in a new area. It must be embedded at the mindset level.
Tools like MHR’s People First Learning can be transformative, providing cutting-edge technology that enables connection and collaboration between individuals at all levels. It can facilitate mentoring opportunities between employees and encourage dynamic knowledge-transfer.
Amy Edmondson:
‘In today’s fast-changing, complex
business environment, individuals
and organisations alike face relentless
pressure to learn, innovate and grow’
“In today’s fast-changing, complex business environment, individuals and organisations alike face relentless pressure to learn, innovate and grow,” says Edmondson. “Doing so requires more than just technical expertise or industry knowledge – but a learning mindset, along with the collaboration behaviours through which information and expertise come together to produce better solutions.”
As the world of work continues to reinvent itself, businesses must be prepared to adapt. Fostering a growth mindset and embracing technologies that develop a continuous culture of growth will be key in securing long-term success. If leaders want to retain the best talent and cultivate engaged and motivated teams, they need to develop a culture of learning that goes beyond traditional training programmes and embraces digital learning, in tune with the needs of the modern workforce.
The top reasons employees quit their previous jobs (per cent)
41
36
34
11
13
13
14
26
26
26
29
31
Lack of career development and advancement
Inadequate
total
compensation
Uncaring and uninspiring
leaders
Lack of meaningful work
Unsustainable
work
expectations
Unreliable and unsupportive people at work
Lack of
workplace
flexibility
Lack of support
for health and
well-being
Noninclusive and
unwelcoming
community
Unsafe
workplace
environment
Geographical
ties and travel
demands
Inadequate
resource
accessibility
Source: Subset of respondents from McKinsey's 2022 Great Attrition, Great Attaction 2.0 global survey (n= 13,382), including those currently employed and planning to leave (n = 4,939), those currently employed to stay (n = 7,439), and those who quit their previous primary jobs between Apr 2021 and Apr 2022 )n = 1,154)
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
Number of Job-to-job resignations in thousands (not seasonally adjusted)
Q4 2001
Q3 2002
Q2 2003
Q1 2004
Q4 2004
Q3 2005
Q2 2006
Q1 2007
Q4 2007
Q3 2008
Q2 2009
Q1 2010
Q4 2010
Q3 2011
Q2 2012
Q3 2013*
Q2 2014
Q1 2015
Q4 2015
Q3 2016
Q2 2017
Q1 2018
Q4 2018
Q3 2019
Q2 2020
Q1 2021
Q4 2021
Q3 2022
Q2 2023
Q1 2024
Q4 2024
ANIMATION WILL BE Sparkles hovering, sliders gliding & cursor moving
ANIMATION WILL BE Water dripping, arrow on screen moving in and out of the frame & plant swaying
The graph above shows that in Q2 2022, a record-breaking 446,000 people quit their jobs
Tom Cheesewright:
‘What we want from our people is
changing. Much better to retrain the
people you have.’
people is changing. Much better to retrain the
Lack of career development and advancement
Uncaring and uninspiring
leaders
Unsustainable
work
expectations
Inadequate
total
compensation
Lack of meaningful work
Unreliable and unsupportive people at work
Lack of
workplace
flexibility
Noninclusive and
unwelcoming
community
Unsafe
workplace
environment
Lack of support
for health and
well-being
Geographical
ties and travel
demands
Inadequate
resource
accessibility
Tom Cheesewright:
‘What we want from our
people is changing.
Much better to retrain
the people you have.’
environment, individuals
the people you have.’
the people you have.’
