SPECIAL AD SECTION
Adaptability Is Key
in the Future of Work
BY PAULA KETTER
C
onstant change in the workplace, including
in terms of technology and the need for new
skill sets, is placing huge challenges on talent
development professionals. A rapidly evolving busi-
ness environment is forcing organizations to have
strong change management initiatives, nurture criti-
cal competencies such as emotional intelligence and
relationship building, and create development pro-
grams for a diverse workforce.
TD magazine spoke to five of its partners about
their thoughts on the complexities of the business
world and the challenges they put on TD professionals.
International Coach Federation
Among the biggest challenges—and opportunities—
for TD professionals are the changing landscape of
the workforce, multiple generations working to-
gether, and the growing population of Millennials
assuming leadership roles for the first time.
“In 2017, the International Coach Federation part-
nered with the Human Capital Institute (HCI) to
research leadership development for first-time peo-
ple managers and emerging leaders—many of whom
are members of the Millennial generation,” says
Magdalena Nowicka Mook, CEO and executive di-
rector of ICF. “We found that individual contributors
become first-time people managers between the
ages of 31 and 35. These new leaders need immediate
support and development opportunities to success-
fully navigate the transition and cultivate essential
leadership competencies.”
Further, “offering employees access to professional
coaches, investing in accredited coach-specific train-
ing for managers and leaders, and incorporating
coaching into existing leadership development learn-
ing and development activities seems to be a good
start to preparing the leadership cadre for tomorrow,”
Mook explains.
Technology has created many opportunities for
the TD function, making it easier than ever to de-
liver and track learning and development on a
continuous basis. Used wisely, technology can help
a large, complex organization feel smaller. A first-
time team leader in New York can connect with an
internal coach in Omaha, Nebraska, via Zoom for a
coaching session. A manager in Los Angeles can log
onto a learning management system for coaching
skills training delivered by a team based in London.
The opportunities are limitless.
“At the same time, it’s crucial for TD professionals
to remember that their number 1 goal is to develop
people,” Mook adds. “In a networked, tech-dependent
world, they will help employees and organizations
‘stay human’ by nurturing critical competencies like
communication skills, emotional intelligence, and re-
lationship building.”
October 2018 | TD 85
 SPECIAL AD SECTION
The future of work is coming at a fast pace, and
the skills needed to stay up to speed are changing
even faster. That’s why this year’s ICF-HCI research
focuses on the role of coaching in change manage-
ment initiatives.
“One of the most important takeaways from this
research is that the value of coaching in change
management initiatives cannot be overstated,”
says Mook. “When asked to rate the helpfulness of
various change management activities, survey re-
spondents rated coaching activities as the most
helpful in achieving the goals of change manage-
ment initiatives.”
One final reveal from the research centered
around TD’s role in today’s fast-paced work
world. “We also found that it’s vital for talent
development professionals and internal coaches
to have a seat at the table during strategic change
management conversations at the planning
stage,” Mook explains. “If organizations wait
until a project is derailing before they enlist
the TD function, it will probably be too late
to drive meaningful, positive change.”
OpenSesame
With the huge level of technological change hap-
pening all around us, companies are struggling to
transform and adapt to be businesses of the future.
At the forefront of this change, TD practitioners
are preparing workforces to meet the needs of the
future as well as the challenges of today. “According
to the 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Report,
the biggest gap between what employees want
and what their employers offer is the range of
learning and career development opportunities
provided to employees by their employers,” says
Diane Haines, vice president of marketing for
OpenSesame. “Organizations need to provide more
innovative learning experiences to help develop
leaders capable of thriving in the modern, rapidly
changing world.”
Thus, TD’s role has changed. Today’s TD profes-
sionals need to help their organizations overcome
the complexity of helping individual employees
86 TD | October 2018
gain new skills to meet their businesses’ changing
needs while addressing the diverse needs of the
entire workforce.
“It’s no longer about developing talent over many
years—the average tenure of an employee at a com-
pany is quickly shortening,” Haines notes. Because
employees often are staying a mere two to three
years, “businesses need employees to ramp up
quickly and be productive as soon as possible.”
In the next decade, employees will need to know
how to work in a more digital business world to meet
expectations of instant gratification, just-in-time
decision making, and agility in the face of change.
To ensure their employees and companies are ready
for that future, TD practitioners need to transform
training to meet those same expectations from their
learners: instant gratification for learning, just-in-
time training, and flexible and adaptive training.
“To be prepared for the fast-changing workplace,
I’d recommend that organizations look to collabo-
rate with technology suppliers to build a learning
ecosystem that can deliver on expectations of speed,
agility, and adaptability,” advises Haines. “Supple-
ment your company’s L&D resources with resources
that can flex when your demand increases and can
provide the wide variety of training your organiza-
tion needs.”
Businesses also should be looking to automate as
much manual work as possible. Rather than manually
choosing courses, look for ways to leverage artificial
intelligence to determine what type of training your
company should be providing to learners and opti-
mize the use of third-party training content so you
can focus the organization’s valuable resources on
building proprietary training.
DDI
Unsurprisingly, time is the biggest barrier facing
the TD function. As the drive continues toward
an always-on culture and greater productivity,
it’s increasingly difficult to ask people to step
away from their immediate responsibilities to
engage in long-term development. As a result,
TD practitioners must make learning relevant

and personalized to maximize the benefits with
a minimal time investment.
“At a deeper level, the most profound changes
facing TD professionals are not those related to
technology but those related to the learner,”
says Mark Busine, general manager of DDI. “Influ-
enced by several societal, business, and workplace
changes, the modern learner has and will continue
to change. The challenge for TD professionals is to
understand the modern learner and reimagine the
way learning and performance support occurs in
the workplace.”
Technology has given learners access to a nearly
limitless array of options to engage in development.
They can choose from thousands of online courses
and download a wide assortment of tools and games.
However, too many options can make it overwhelm-
ing and difficult for learners to find what they want
and need. Thus, TD is increasingly about being a
curator who helps to personalize the development
process and ensure that people get the right re-
sources based on their specific needs.
“In time, emerging technologies such as artificial
intelligence will anticipate learning and performance
needs and supply the right amount of guidance,
insight, and support at the right time,” Busine adds.
“This has the potential to close the learning and
performance gap like never before. To maximize
these opportunities, TD professionals must acceler-
ate their understanding of new technologies
and develop skills in areas such as analytics
and performance support.”
The different skills workers will need five to 10
years from now has put added stress on TD profes-
sionals to upskill for now and the future.
“Recently, DDI worked with the Conference Board
and EY to publish the Global Leadership Forecast
2018, in which we found some common skills people
will need for the future, such as hypercollaboration,
adaptability, digital literacy, and developing a 360
view,” Busine explains. “The best thing that TD pro-
fessionals can do to build these skills among their
workforce is to make learning a habit. They need to
help leaders regularly practice their skills virtually,
SPECIAL AD SECTION
with one another, and in work assignments that
continuously challenge people to adapt.”
It is easy to be seduced by new technologies and
new learning methods, but be wary of the “build
it and they will come” approach that assumes that
simply making a variety of learning assets (such
as digital learning tools) will be enough to support
learning. TD practitioners must constantly remind
themselves why people learn and the moments
that activate a learning need. How do these relate
to an organization’s learning needs, and what impli-
cations do they have for the type of L&D resources
you provide?
The future of work is coming
at a fast pace, and the skills
needed to stay up to speed
are changing even faster.
GP Strategies
As waves of disturbance continue to wash over the
business, remaining relevant is the single greatest
challenge facing TD professionals.
Many companies are transforming the way
they conduct business. “Aligned with that is the
paramount importance for talent development
professionals to find new ways to deliver value,”
says Matthew Donovan, vice president of digital
learning strategies and solutions for GP Strategies.
“Given that the nature of work will continue to
rapidly evolve, constant job and career readiness
will become the norm. Finding more efficient
ways to deliver timely and relevant learning inter-
ventions will take an innovative mindset.”
Matching the evolving needs of the workforce
is the accelerating rate of disruption in learning
technology that can provide valuable data and in-
sights into the learning experience and transfer to
performance in the field. The key is to identify the
innovations with the right return on investment
for both learners and the organization.
October 2018 | TD 87
 SPECIAL AD SECTION
With all these new technologies, TD professionals
need a sustainable innovation engagement approach
to identify those that will yield a positive impact for
talent while remaining aligned to the organization’s
appetite for change.
When thinking about the future, the skills and abil-
ities employees will need will continue to evolve with
the work. “In terms of [the] learner, ‘radical personaliza-
tion’ will become standard,” Donovan notes. New skills
and abilities will combine a mastery of technology, so-
cial network interaction (live and virtual), data analysis,
ethical decision making, and—to varying degrees—
customer education and engagement. These skills
may not all come through traditional learning paths.
“As we shift from traditional learning paths
(i.e., degrees and courses), we’ll need a mechanism
for sorting through the increasing number of al-
ternative credentials, badges, certifications, and
reputation markers to decipher which offer true
validation of mastery,” Donovan explains.
He adds: “Some of the newest and most sought-
after roles in the not-too-distant future could be
drone delivery specialist, automated car leasing man-
ager, personal genetic analyst and modifier, extinct
species reintroduction specialist, memory enhance-
ment specialist, augmented limb maker/installer/
technician, and unique service providers for those
living past 100. Each of these will require a holistic
learning and performance approach.”
For organizations to keep up with the rapid
changes, they’ll need to focus on three components:
• action to increase the strategic accountability
for the workforce to determine what, when, and
where they need to learn in order to perform
• learner-centric tools like user-generated content
platforms
• design thinking approaches to generate in-
novative solutions to current and emerging
challenges.
AllenComm
Among the biggest challenges facing the TD function
today are engagement, completion rates on self-
paced content, and lack of reinforcement on existing
programs and initiatives.
88 TD | October 2018
TD professionals are having to rapidly adapt to
the fact that most learners are having to search, re-
search, and build their own learning paths outside
of traditional learning programs. “The locus of con-
trol between instructor and learner has shifted to the
learner,” says AllenComm CEO Ron Zamir.
For their part, TD practitioners are moving from
event-based activities to supporting learning pro-
cesses, meeting the employee at the point of need, and
trying to be less disruptive to the employee workflow.
Preparing employees for the future workforce is
forcing TD professionals to think about the skills em-
ployees will need five and 10 years from now.
Up-and-coming professionals in the industry need
to deepen their understanding of the cognitive sci-
ences as well as basic marketing principles to help
the programs they develop stand out and cut through
the noise that inundates employees’ work life.
“Employees are having to face a more complex
and noisy information-driven environment,” Zamir
adds. “They need to be able to curate and personalize
their learning independent of learning technologies
or products. Competency-based content needs to
become more accessible within the workflow; sur-
rounding the learner and enabling the learner to
access the content when he needs it, how he needs it,
and where he needs it.”
For organizations that want to ensure that their
employees are prepared for the fast-changing work-
place atmosphere, Zamir offers this advice to TD
teams: “Make your programs less event-specific
and create content that can be used in different
modalities in different levels of depth within a job
or task.”
More than ever, TD professionals have myriad re-
sponsibilities and limited time to ensure that the
organization’s goals are met while developing em-
ployees, creating a lifelong learning culture, and
engaging employees. The time is now to create a
strategic plan to be ready for change on all levels of
the organization.
Paula Ketter is the content strategist for ATD;
pketter@td.org.
Copyright of TD: Talent Development is the property of Association for Talent Development
and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without
the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or
email articles for individual use.