How innovative companies train their employees (Google, Amazon, Uber & more)
Author:
Gary
PUBLISHED ON:
September 11, 2020
June 26, 2023
PUBLISHED IN:
Employee Onboarding
Have you ever wondered how Google share knowledge and create their own learning culture? Where the likes of Amazon and Microsoft are investing their training budgets to upskill and develop people? Or what the ethos is at companies that keep their training strategies under cloak and dagger?
Whether you’re planning a wedding, holiday or your dream home, a little inspiration can go a long way. Looking at what others have done is the window shopping that helps you understand what might work for you. And the same should apply to your training and development strategy, whether you’re the one leading it or hoping to share some tips with those higher up. So, where better to glance enviably through the glass than with a look at some of the most innovative companies?
You’re going to see some interesting themes across our eight examples. Marrying the skills you need tomorrow with the talents people want to develop today being one, while the sharing of knowledge between colleagues is something else you’ll notice as you read through. For others, it’s about shaping a culture where people can thrive whether they’re learning or just trying to be productive on the job. And you’ll also see that tackling potential skill shortages is something the big guns seem to have nailed.
The thing to remember as you read through is to think about what can be applied on a smaller scale. We’re not going to upskill thousands and thousands as they might at Amazon, but the same principles can help our businesses move forward at similar speeds.
Google
Whispering sweet nudges into Googler’s ears
Proving that you don’t need to shout to get people to buy into your development ethos, Google began using Whisper Courses to drive microlearning in 2017. Recognising that the majority of information learnt in courses was lost within days, their idea was to provide managers with a series of weekly nudges in the right direction. In their soothing wisdom, Google opted for the term Whisper.
“A whisper course is a series of emails, each with a simple suggestion, or ‘whisper’ for a manager to try in their one-on-ones or team meetings.”
Their trial run – which you can discover in greater detail here – was the concept of managers creating a psychologically safe team culture, by being given a 10-week Whisper Course.
Source: Google – A sample nudge email
Googler-to-Googler learning leads the training way
This is just one half of the tale, but we bet you’re wondering what Google does to encourage peer learning and train employees socially? The answer is another simple one: give them the platform to become both student and teacher.
“A strong learning culture can better position your organization for future needed skill shifts and primes employees to think and act more like owners when it comes to their own development needs.”
80% of Google’s tracked learnings happen through their employee-to-employee (Googler-to-Googler) network, where over 6,000 employees across the business have become volunteer teachers. They share their knowledge and skills in workshops, one-to-one sessions, job aids and beyond. Notice the word volunteers, there is no obligation to get involved.
Instead, Google encourages passionate teaches who are experts in that content to deliver training to employees, they’re interviewed for the position and given feedback/recognition throughout. Not only does this engage people, it cuts the costs associated with training and ensures the budget is only used for specialised training programs or sessions and niche content that’s needed.
Google is not only a training innovator, they’re completely transparent about their learning and development strategy! That means you can learn from the best in the business via re:Work. It also made our job a little easier in writing this. Thanks, Google, for sharing how you’re training and developing your employees so openly!
Apple
From Google’s transparency to a training enigma. Have you ever Googled ‘How Apple train their employees’? Being honest, we hadn’t either until it came to writing this. But what’s interesting is that little is known for certain, and the search results paint an interesting picture of how Apple has evolved over time…
A short history of Apple training, according to Google search results
Google search results for ‘How Apple train their employees’
In 2012, Gizmodo published ‘How To Be a Genius: This Is Apple’s Secret Employee Training Manual’, a pretty negative take on how they were training employees to get inside your head through language. Gizmodo claimed that Geniuses were trained to “become strong while appearing compassionate; persuade while seeming passive, and empathize your way to a sale.”.
Fast forward four years and Shopify’s 2016 article on the tech giants indicated that the culture was instead about finding people already passionate about the brand and products. They also pipped us to the pun of ‘picking the right apples’. Although it referenced Gizmodo’s take, Shopify gave the impression that the focus had shifted (or was possibly all along) to creating value over prioritising sales. By 2018, A Guardian article focussing on the physical stores and Ron Johnson (who developed the concept) revealed that Apple had been able to “foster a sense of commitment to a higher calling while flattering employees that they were the chosen few to represent it.”.
What’s the training reality at Apple’s core?
When it comes to ways to train employees outside their organisation, their ethos is that “designing world-class technology is only part of our job. Teaching you how to master it is the other.” But trying to discover their approach to employee development is like the iPhone X files! The truth is out there, kind of..
According to the New York Times, employees are discouraged from sharing their experiences. However, they were able to interview three former Apple employees that remained anonymous in 2014.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Apple’s employee training programs take place in-house and year-round. They have full-time academic staff that design and deliver their courses, with employees able to sign up for courses tailored to their position and background on an exclusive internal website. They’re also assigned courses related to the product or part of the business they work in. All pretty standard so far, right?
Well, there is something interesting in the article, at least in terms of how Apple encourages people to think and develop. A course on ‘Communicating at Apple’ used Picasso’s drawings of ‘The Bull’—which demonstrate how something complex can be broken down into its essential, core components. If you look at how Apple’s products have become increasingly more slick with a decreasing number of buttons, you get the impression that this ethos goes from training employees through to product launch.
While a Steve-Jobs-inspired course named ‘The Best Things’ encourages “employees to surround themselves with the best things, like talented peers and high-quality materials.” Despite their cards being kept close to their chests, this gives the impression that social learning is happening behind the scenes.
Amazon
What’s Amazon’s current training strategy and rationale?
When you stop to think about it, Amazon’s current employee training program and approach seem so obvious. And yet, it’s quite rare that companies apply these ideas on a large scale. Amazon analysed data on their workforce and US hiring to determine their fastest-growing highly-skilled jobs over the past five years.
These were data mapping specialist (832% growth), data scientist (505%), solutions architect (454%), security engineer (229%) and business analyst (160%). In customer fulfillment, meanwhile, highly skilled roles increased by over 400%. Next, they put their money where their mouth was in 2019 and announced they would spend $700 million to upskill 100,000 of their US employees by 2025.
This would enable people across the business to access platforms and resources that develop and move them into these higher-skilled positions. You can read the full list of new training opportunities and what they’re doing to build upon existing courses here, but here are some of the important takeaways: knowledge sharing, learning in the flow of work and microlearning.
How Amazon plans to upskill its people
Source: Amazon Upskilling 2025
Amazon Technical Academy equips people with the skill to transition into software engineering. Another proponent of peer-to-peer training sessions, this was created by Amazon’s software engineers and uses project-based learning to ensure trainees understand how they’ll apply these skills in practice via tuition-free learning.
Associate2Tech program is a 90-day course for IT support technician roles, in which they receive on-the-job training and Amazon pays for their A+ Certification test. With no degree required, there are little barriers to entry.
The Machine Learning University, on the other hand, is open to those with a background in tech and coding. These six-week modules only require a half or full day of participation each week, during which Amazon Machine Learning scientists help them develop the skills needed to progress.
The idea that Amazon are taking control of the supply for their in-demand positions is an interesting one, but it could be what primes them for success. With the company and machine learning/tech growing at such rapid speeds, there’s no guarantee that the talent will be available to plug those gaps in the coming years. And, if better engagement, morale and retention is a by-product of upskilling their people, that $700 million could turn out to be a shrewd investment.
Isn’t there a risk that upskilled employees will seek other opportunities?
Perhaps, but looking a little further back shows that Amazon’s investment in people is selfless to an extent. Amazon Career Choice was designed to give hourly associates that had been with the company for more than a year the skills to move into four in-demand industries and occupations: Healthcare, IT and computer science, transportation, and mechanical and skilled trades.
Jeff Bezos stated that “we pre-pay 95 percent of tuition, fees, and textbooks (up to $12,000) for certificates and associate degrees in high-demand occupations”. Inc. summed it up excellently in their coverage of the announcement: “Amazon has a lot of lower-wage, warehouse-type jobs that have higher turnover rates than much higher paying tech roles. Amazon effectively embraces this reality and figures: Why not make these important laborers as happy as they can be in the time they are going to give to Amazon?”
Becoming a superhost and driving employee staycations
Airbnb might have been founded in 2008, but by 2015 they’d already had an epiphany: it wasn’t just their customers that deserved a good host, their employees deserved a five-star experience too. Mark Levy, Global Head of Employee Experience, had only joined the company a couple years earlier, but he realised that:
“If Airbnb had a Customer Experience Group, why not create an Employee Experience Group?”
That’s exactly what he did, putting employee experience at the core of what they do. If the headlines are anything to go by, it was a move that paid off. ‘Airbnb, spearheading the employee experience’, ‘How Airbnb Became The World’s Best Place To Work’, ‘How Airbnb is building its culture through belonging” – these are just some of the articles you’ll find if you search for their approach to the employee training program.
Glowing reviews from Airbnb employees
With such praise and glowing recommendations about their culture, it’s no wonder employees are willing to share their experience at Airbnb. Which gives excellent insights into how they develop people. It’s certainly a case of learning from each other and being encouraged to have the initiative to self-learn.
Let’s take the first point. Chip Conley wrote about his experience of joining the company aged 52 and with 20-plus years in hospitality, giving a pretty funny account of how he relied on listening to his younger colleagues to settle in. In fact, the article does an excellent job of summarising Airbnb’s philosophy at the time: Create, Learn, Play. The middle part of that sandwich involved looking “inside and outside for inspiration and learning”
Another employee, Mark Curtis, wrote about his experiences in 2014—the year between Levy’s arrival and the creation of the Employee Experience Group. It seems that the culture of learning in the flow of work already existed to an extent, and Curtis stated that: “Our culture, tools, and processes all revolve around giving individual contributors accurate and timely information that they can use to make great decisions”. He also added that “we default to information sharing” in order to provide engineers with as much information as possible so that they can find it and work autonomously.
Forget the culture trip, tell us about their training!
Ready for the training-heavy, juicy part of the Airbnb rundown? If they think a course or platform isn’t up to delivering what they need, they’ll simply create their own. Which makes sense, given that it has to work in the culture as well achieve the goals. In 2016, they created Data University to improve data literacy among their staff, because existing courses just weren’t tailored to their data and tools. This comprised of multiple courses tailored to different roles, technical literacy and departments across the business. For example, “more intensive courses on Python and machine learning have helped engineers brush up on necessary skills for projects.”
In the months that followed, a total of 500 employees took one class and use of Airbnb data science tools rose from 30 to 45 percent. Interestingly, it wasn’t their first attempt at a project like this but it seemed to be their most successful. Product Manager, Jeff Feng, gave three reasons why he believed it worked this time around: Designing an accessible curriculum for everyone, working with leadership across the company to set data literacy expectations and finding ways to measure success.
Uber
When you start to unpick what training must look like at Uber, there are no pangs of jealousy, we’ll be honest. First, there’s the issue of training their 22,000 core staff but there’s also the slight issue of 3.9 million drivers across 60-plus countries.
Those drivers are all over the world, speaking different languages and they’re often without access to a computer. When was the last time you hailed a ride and hopped into a car with a laptop on the passenger seat? Exactly. Bring all those drivers together physically and you’re probably looking at more air miles than most cover over the ground in a month!
The answer? Using a platform that enables mobile learning, in bite-sized chunks that drivers can find between fares. In South Africa, Uber used the Workforce Success platform EduMe to provide short and interactive sessions using an app. This resulted in time to first trip being 13% faster than face-to-face training sessions, and it also reduced pressure, time spent and costs for the support centre.
In Mexico, Uber turned to Mindflash in order to deliver web-based courses to drivers. The content from live sessions was converted into PDFs, which were uploaded as courses alongside quizzes to improve and measure knowledge retention. As was the case in South Africa, mobile learning was also made available—giving the option to study between fares. Since, they’ve managed to deliver up to 30,000 courses in a single week, and record 13,000 mobile course completions in three months.
Microsoft
Some of the companies on this list really took some digging, Microsoft is an open book! In fact, there’s probably too much information out there, that’s how open they are. Below is a screenshot from Microsoft’s Empowering Our Employees page. And it certainly implies a culture of continuous learning, knowledge sharing and upskilling towards career development.
Tapping into AI for a better learning outlook
Let’s tackle the top point, that learning should be personalised and relevant. When discussing the topic of cybersecurity at the company, Ken Sexsmith, Director of Security Training and Awareness at Microsoft, revealed how they had tapped into the power of AI to empower knowledge retention and create a personalised experience.
Using a tool from Elephants Don’t Forget, users began to receive emails with questions about training sessions they’d taken and were given explanations for any incorrect answers. As Sexsmith put it, “On a given day, following a training you take, we will send you an email that says, ‘Hey, you came to training and we want you to answer a couple questions about the content.”
Sharing skills and creating a learning culture through Hackathon
Have you heard of Hackathon? Launched in 2014 to help drive a culture change where employees would take risks to improve the world for better, by participating in projects.
“One place for everyone to come together, experience creative and fast-paced collaboration, make a difference, and drive the culture forward.”
Don’t let the name fool you, this is not just for techies or coders, it’s a platform for everyone and their skill set. The projects range from assessing broadband availability, to helping the visually impaired get around more easily and even something as weird as ‘Designing for the Zombie Apocalypse’. These act as platforms for sharing knowledge and ideas, while giving people a different scenario to practice their skills in. 2017 welcomed 18,000 people across 400 cities and 75 countries.
Using gamification to engage employees and collect their feedback
Microsoft were using gamification before it was cool! Although you’ll find plenty of mentions and examples that they use it, the most common example is Communicate Hope. Created by Ross Smith to gather feedback on Microsoft Lync in 2010, “thousands of employees got on board and ‘gamers’ contributed at 16 times the rate of non-gamers.” – this was part of Smith’s ethos that you need to get people excited about participation.
Just a few years later, they used the Language Quality Game to tap into 4,500 users who assessed the quality of translations. They even included some poor translations on purpose. You might not think of these as training exercises, but their employees would become more familiar with the products, learn their faults and be given a platform to share their feedback, which would make them more engaged.
What’s next? Upskilling for the future
Microsoft recently announced that they will partner with education provider General Assembly “to close skills gaps in the rapidly growing fields of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and data engineering, machine learning, data science, and more.”
They’re aiming to upskill and reskill 15,000 employees for AI-based roles by 2022. Microsoft will therefore be a founding member of the GA’s Standards Board and help “define skills standards, develop assessments, design a career framework, and build an industry-recognized credential for AI skills”. The pair will also work together to create an AI Talent Network that sources candidates for project-based work and for hire.
Netflix
You’ll hardly find anything about Netflix’s training strategy or culture from the last decade, and yet they’ve been credited with reinventing and revolutionising HR. So, while we can’t tell you exactly how they train their employees, we’re sure you’ll agree that this deserves further investigation.
In 2009, Netflix shared a 126-slide presentation titled Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility, sharing some ideas that were pretty revolutionary at the time. Ideas like employees deciding the vacation time they thought was appropriate are still seen as madcap by some. The argument in those 126 slides has convinced many more people their approach is the right one.
Source: Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility
The learning takeaways from Netflix’s iconic presentation
“You demonstrate consistently strong performance so colleagues can rely upon you.”
“You learn rapidly and eagerly.”
“Avoid top-down decision making.”
“We support self-improvement.”
Scepticism of independent silos because “work that requires coordination suffers.”
What do we actually know about training at Netflix?
Well, the fact that a Quora reply has become such a commonly-used resource highlights that Netflix’s approach to outward transparency has evolved over the past 10 years. Today, finding information on exactly how Netflix train their people is a well-kept secret. But, let’s look at what we can learn from that infamous Quora question.
Netflix weren’t kidding when they said people get their opportunity and a big challenge to sink their teeth into! The engineer who shared his onboarding experience revealed that his first product was Netflix on Apple TV. Also, the idea of collaborative learning seems to carry through the company, with new starters meeting senior management, CEO Reed Hastings and a dedicated mentor as they settle in.
Booking.com
The first lesson you can learn from Booking.com is that knowing your internal audience is crucial. It’s easy to forget sometimes, but you should consider your employees with the same attentiveness that you’d give to your customers. Recognising the number of millennials in their workforce, Booking.com turned to Udemy for Business as they searched for an “online learning platform that could help its younger employees develop their technical and leadership skills to grow individually and push the company forward.”
The goal was to encourage them to develop new skills and use those to seek out new opportunities in the company, as opposed to new opportunities somewhere else. They were steered in the direction of management and leadership development, public speaking, data science and web development. Having access to the variety of courses and flexibility to learn on the move through the app appealed to the younger generation at Booking.com.
As you can learn from Udemy’s case study, this signalled a move away from just providing a learning budget to employees and the low adoption rate associated with this. Instead, the average learner spent five-plus hours on the platform, and a particularly enthused employee summed up why:
“Using Udemy’s iPhone app, I managed to download an amazing course just moments before boarding London Underground and ended my 45 minute train journey (quite boring usually) feeling so empowered.”
Sometimes, upskilling is the only option. Adapt like Booking.com!
Upskilling seems to be a theme here, and it was an approach they also employed when finding developers who could operate with Practical Extraction and Report Language (PERL), Booking.com’s coding language. The issue was finding the finished pearl, and they realised they’d need to crack a few training oysters in order to build their collection. Plus, they’d need to do it on a large scale.
The solution, find developers familiar with other coding languages and use Geekuni to train them during their onboarding process, something they’ve done for over 350 employees. Because their existing teams don’t need to provide this training, it ensures their productivity isn’t affected and enables them to onboard developers on a greater scale. Using the same company for this process ensures consistency. Communication between Geekuni and the onboarding team leads at Booking.com means the company are up-to-date with progress and how ready that person is to move into their role.
How to train employees: What did we learn from these training innovators?
You probably noticed, but we mentioned the word upskill(ing) a lot in this piece, 11 times in fact! But as our Amazon and Microsoft examples showed, it’s important to understand which skills are in-demand before you develop them. Otherwise, how do you know if you’re closing the right skill gap?
Social learning, knowledge sharing, peer-to-peer, however, we dressed it up in this piece, popped up time and time again. That’s because the best resources are sometimes your employees, especially for providing contextual and business-relevant learning. Besides, if Google are happy enough to shout about it on their blog, it’s probably worth a go.
Our last two lessons go hand-in-hand, use microlearning to make the experience manageable and deliver it on mobile to allow learning flexibility. The Uber example was the perfect one, because if drivers had time to kill, they could learn through short lessons, videos and quizzes. But how is that any different to commuting time for your employees? It’s not, and that Booking.com employee was so enthused by the experience that he felt empowered leaving the London underground. If that doesn’t tell you about the power of mobile learning, nothing will.
One last thing, learning this way isn’t some sort of exclusive VIP club for the biggest, global companies, it’s something you can experience for yourself. There’s no waiting line to trial HowNow, you’ve just got to fill in a short form and your journey to learning innovation begins.
Onboarding is one of those things everyone agrees matters and yet it’s still one of the most inconsistently done processes in most organisations. Too often it’s a chaotic first week of back-to-back meetings, a SharePoint folder nobody can find, and a laptop that arrives three days late.
Designing onboarding that actually scales is one of the biggest challenges HR and L&D teams face. Most organisations know their onboarding could be better.
Pauline Taylor, VP of People at HowNow, spoke with Ian Walker on the L&D Disrupt Podcast about what great onboarding really looks like and how to build it properly.
This blog walks you through what came out of that conversation and where to start.
Why Onboarding Matters More Than You Think
Let’s start with the business case, because it’s a strong one.
As Ian puts it:
“The value, of course, is that you are accelerating people’s sense of connection. And the statistic about that is that if people feel that they have been treated well in the onboarding process, their longevity is extended. So from a retention point of view, the evidence is pretty unequivocal.”
Connection drives retention. If a new hire spends their first few weeks feeling lost, anxious, or like an afterthought, you’re already on the back foot, regardless of how good the role is. Good onboarding accelerates that sense of belonging and gets people up to speed faster. Friction in those early weeks doesn’t just feel bad. It costs you time, productivity, and ultimately, people.
Should Employee Onboarding be In-Person vs. Remote?
There’s no universal answer here, but there are some useful principles.
If you’re onboarding in person, you’re making a strategic investment in culture. Salesforce, for example, made in-person onboarding a priority specifically because they believed it was the best way to embed culture from day one. That’s not a logistical decision; it’s a values one.
If you’re onboarding remotely, the goal is to make the experience feel as close to in-real-life as possible. As Ian says:
“Similarly, if you’re doing it remotely, make sure that all of the experience is as far as possible close to the in real life experience.”
The principles are the same: connection, culture, and clarity. The delivery just looks different.
Nail the Employee Onboarding Fundamentals
This one sounds obvious, but it’s where so many onboarding programmes fall apart.
If you’re bringing someone in person, the infrastructure has to be invisible. Ian is direct on this:
“If you’re gonna do it in person, make sure that all of that is properly handled and does not come back onto the individual. Not only will that distract them, it’ll make them more nervous, it’ll make them feel less good about the whole experience. But it will detract from the efficiency of ramping them up quickly as well.”
That means flights and hotels booked correctly, a laptop ready on day one, security badges sorted in advance, and schedules organised. Get the admin right, and everything else has a chance to land.
What Should Actually Be In Your Onboarding Programme?
Your company culture is the most important element of any onboarding programme. Don’t just list your values on a slide and move on. Bring them to life.
Ian’s advice here is clear:
“Bring in managers, bring in people who are living the culture. So it’s not just someone listening to the same person, same voice all day. You’re getting different voices in there, but you’re getting people sharing their lived experience of why is this culture important to me?”
When people share their lived experience, it lands differently. It’s personal, it’s real, and far more memorable than a PowerPoint.
Networking opportunities
When you’ve got a cohort of new starters in a room (or on a call) that’s a real opportunity. Ian puts it well:
“Use this opportunity to build your network as well. Understand what’s happening within the company because not only will you leverage those relationships, but you’ll learn about what are potential career paths that you can also follow?”
Build in time for people to actually connect with each other. Those relationships can shape how people collaborate and grow within the organisation long after onboarding ends.
Setting real performance expectations
Be upfront about what working there actually looks like. Ian recalls:
“I remember talking to a room full of newly hired employees and saying, you’re gonna be expected to work hard. And you could see these big eyes — and it’s like, yeah, it’s just a reality. You are gonna be held to account for what you do. So expectation setting early on, I think, is really key.”
Ideally, it starts in the interview process, but reinforcing it early avoids misalignment down the line.
The big picture
Help new starters understand how the company works from top to bottom. As Ian explains:
“If you can explain from a top level down, this is a corporate objective, this is what we try and accomplish, this is how it cascades down within each team and each department — how it all fits together and what role you play in it — people get the sense of the bigger picture they’re playing within the organisation as well.”
When people understand how their work connects to something larger, they’re more motivated and more effective.
The Triangle: Getting the Handoff Right
This is one of the most important (and most overlooked) parts of onboarding at scale.
Onboarding isn’t one team’s job. It’s a shared responsibility across three groups:
The onboarding team: responsible for culture, company-wide knowledge, and the rites of passage every new starter goes through
The enablement or L&D function: responsible for the functional knowledge someone needs to actually do their job
The manager: responsible for supporting the new hire and integrating that learning into day-to-day work
Ian is emphatic about how closely these three need to work together:
“The enablement organisation and the onboarding organisation need to be in a triangle. A really close triangle. So that the handover is happening effectively. The knowledge is being built upon. It’s not being duplicated. Nothing worse than when someone’s being invited to one call for onboarding and then they’ve been invited to an enablement call. You can’t allow that to happen. It has to be sequential and it has to be managed collectively.”
When this triangle breaks down, the new hire falls through the gaps. When it works, everything flows.
Onboarding is a Two-Way Street
Onboarding isn’t something that happens to a new hire. They have a role to play too. As Ian puts it:
“The fourth person is the learner themselves. They need to invest the time in order to onboard themselves effectively. So they need to read the materials, do the out of the room learning piece, as well as relationship building out of the room as well, which is so key to onboarding effectively.”
Setting that expectation early makes a real difference. People who take ownership of their own onboarding get up to speed faster and feel more settled sooner.
How Long Should Onboarding Last?
There’s no magic timeline that works for every role, every person, or every organisation. The length of onboarding depends on the complexity of the role, the individual’s prior experience, and how transferable their skills are.
What Ian suggests is a more interesting reframe altogether:
“You should always feel that you’re onboarding because you are always in your job. And particularly now, jobs are changing so quickly that if you have that beginner’s mindset, you are always onboarding yourself in a new direction. If you are always growing yourself.”
The most effective people don’t stop onboarding when week four ends. They carry that curiosity with them.
The Summary
Great onboarding isn’t about cramming as much information as possible into someone’s first week. It’s about connection, clarity, and getting the fundamentals right so people can do their best work sooner.
Get the logistics sorted. Bring culture to life. Build the triangle. Give new starters the space to take ownership. Resist the urge to put a fixed time limit on it.
Every year, International Women's Day gives us a chance to pause and celebrate the women doing brilliant things around us. This year, we're keeping it close to home.
At HowNow, we're lucky to work alongside some seriously talented women and today we're shining a light on exactly what they've been up to. From hosting podcasts to passing exams, building partnerships to driving innovation, the women at HowNow are busy doing cool things.
So we thought, why not celebrate it?
Before we dive in, here's what our VP of People, Pauline, has to say about the idea of give to get and why it matters more than ever.
Pauline Taylor, VP of People
Pauline is our VP of People and the new host of the L&D Disrupt Podcast. Taking on a brand new challenge in front of an audience isn't easy but Pauline didn't let the nerves win. She backed herself, leaned into the discomfort and treated it as exactly what it was: an opportunity to grow.
Marnie Bliss, Senior Customer Success Manager
Marnie's work is all about impact. As a Senior Customer Success Manager, she partners closely with HowNow's customers to help them get real results through skills and learning and she genuinely loves it.
But it's not just the customer wins that inspire her. Marnie's also quick to shout out the women around her, particularly those in leadership who take the time to mentor and champion others.
As for what's next? Marnie's got her sights set on building even stronger customer partnerships and continuing to do work that actually makes a difference.
We'd say she's well on her way.
"What I love most is partnering with our customers and helping them achieve great things through skills and learning. It's really rewarding to see the impact that investing in people's growth can have." — Marnie Bliss
Lia Ferreira, Assistant Management Accountant
Lia recently passed her second AAT Level 3 assessment and the way she talks about it says everything.
"I am where I am today because, earlier in my journey, a team of women believed in me, allowing me to step into the world of accounting. They made me feel that my curiosity and thirst for knowledge were something to be proud of, and supported me every step of the way whilst I studied for AAT Level 2."
That's not just a professional win. That's the kind of progress that changes the direction of someone's life.
Stephanie Deakins, Learning Content Specialist
"As a Learning Content Specialist, my role truly revolves around building meaningful connections and trusting partnerships. Throughout my career I often felt behind and sometimes admittedly a little directionless as I didn't follow a traditional academic route but I found my greatest learnings through others.
I credit so much of my journey of development to inspiring women I've worked with and sought advice from. An important achievement for me personally has been learning to shift my mindset and actively challenging myself to combat my own imposter syndrome. I've felt empowered to step out of my comfort zone gradually. This collective support from both women and male allies gave me the space to find my voice and take on new challenges on my own terms, turning once-daunting hurdles into manageable milestones."
Georgia Inwood, Marketing Coordinator
"When I joined HowNow, I was pretty shy, but excited to learn. What made the difference was the trust, support and encouragement I received from both the women and men around me, including our senior leadership team. Their guidance helped me build confidence and celebrate my wins along the way.
Over the past year, I've taken on more responsibilities and grown into owning our events strategy. From negotiating deals, coached by strong women in my team, to orchestrating large-scale events where I run team briefings, coordinate multiple stakeholders and ensure strong execution. These opportunities have stretched me, sharpened my leadership skills and allowed me to make a tangible impact for the company.
This journey wouldn't have been possible without allies across the company and industry who believed in me and offered guidance."
Ishika Dixit, UI/UX Designer
"It actually started with an article I read on LinkedIn about how AI could change the way designers prototype and test products. I was quite sceptical at first. I wasn't sure if it was really possible or just another tech trend.
But curiosity got the better of me. I started exploring different AI tools and cloud models to see whether they could actually help make the design and prototyping process faster and easier. Around the same time, the company was going through a redesign, and that gave me the idea to apply these experiments to our design system. What started as a small personal experiment slowly evolved into building a full prototype workflow using AI.
I spent several weeks working on it, trying to build something that would remove friction from the design process and make product testing much faster. Now the team can generate and test ideas much more quickly without needing to manually build prototypes every time.
For me, growth comes from experimentation, and HowNow gives me the space and trust to explore ideas and turn them into things that genuinely help the team."
Naaz Sameja, People Advisor
"There are quite a few things I feel proud of during my time here. One of the biggest has been scaling the team. When I joined, we had around 30 people in the Mumbai office. The team is now 83% bigger. I've had the opportunity to hire for several crucial roles across functions, and I'm especially proud of the impact the new hires have made on HowNow
Building, scaling and supporting the team independently has been both challenging and incredibly rewarding and it's allowed me to take full ownership of shaping the people function locally.
I'm also embedding myself into operations work. Coming from a pure recruitment background, this pushed me to grow, learn quickly and contribute more strategically to the business beyond just hiring.
A big milestone for me was the effort that went into us receiving our first Mumbai recognition: 'Best Startup to Work For 2025'. Being part of building the culture and employer brand that led to that recognition was incredibly fulfilling."
Akshita Mehta, RevOps Manager
"My journey started in fashion by choice but after graduation and joining my first role, I realised I was drawn to how companies function, the systems they use and the data they review to make strategic decisions. Slowly and steadily I upskilled myself and pivoted to Revenue Operations.
I love this job because I help leadership make decisions based on data and facts in order to achieve company goals. I create processes and systems that help revenue-generating teams focus on the customer rather than manual work. I'm especially excited by the developments happening in AI and how its use in my field is shifting from a cost-saving narrative to one of measurable growth and operating leverage. AI is a powerful tool for operations.
Doing the right thing and standing up for what you believe in, no matter the consequences which is something I learned from my father. His integrity and character were unshaken despite all the pressures that surrounded him. His answer was always: 'I cannot betray my values and morals.' That has left a lasting impression on me."
Kelsey Botne, Learning and Performance Lead
"Being a learning lead means helping organisations connect learning to real work. I'm most interested in moving away from pure content consumption and designing learning that actually changes how people think, decide and perform.
I've been lucky to work with incredible women throughout my career who have challenged ideas, shared their knowledge generously and supported others to grow. They've shaped how I think about leadership in learning and push others to be collaborative, curious and focused on impact.
What excites me about the future is how learning is becoming more embedded in work itself. Platforms like HowNow make it easier to bring the right knowledge to people when they need it and that's where learning really starts to make a difference."
And, this is just a snapshot. We're incredibly proud of every single one of them.
From podcast hosting to professional milestones, partnership building to AI innovation, the women at HowNow are doing a lot, and doing it brilliantly.
On stage, HowNow CEO Nelson Sivalingam was joined by four L&D practitioners who’ve built, broken, rebuilt and completely rethought their L&D strategies:
Tara Ryan-Tedford, Learning & Development Lead at AND Digital
Joe Milton, Learning & Development Manager at Centrick
Penny Simpson, Senior Director of Global Development at InRiver
Stephen Clarke, Head of Learning, Performance & Development at So Energy
We expected to talk about AI. Maybe innovation. Possibly the future of skills.
Instead, the theme that kept surfacing was something far less shiny and far more powerful: Unlearning.
Because before learning and development can evolve, modernise certification, build a skills strategy, or create a true learning culture… it has to let go of what’s no longer working.
Here are the biggest lessons these L&D leaders shared including what they stopped doing to drive real business impact.
1. Admitting When the Plan Won’t Work
Stephen Clarke opened with a level of honesty most leaders avoid.
“Mid-year 2024, I had plans of, everyone’s gonna be skilled, mapped… and I realised, oh my God, my plans are not gonna work. I literally went straight back after and created a presentation labeled "why my plan won’t work.”
That moment acknowledging your strategy needs to change is uncomfortable.
Stephen put it more candidly:
“Maybe a little cry and a glass of wine, first of all… but get tough over it.”
The lesson is that skills strategy isn’t about ambition. It’s about feasibility.
Unlearning starts with humility.
2. Killing the “Completion = Success” Myth
Stephen shared something most L&D teams have experienced but don’t always say out loud.
When So Energy first launched their learning platform, the content was beautifully designed, carefully structured, thoughtful, detailed. The kind of work you’re genuinely proud to put your name to.
But the data told a different story.
Completion rates weren’t landing. When they dug into behaviour, they realised people were spending an average of just seven minutes in modules, rushing through them rather than engaging properly. Sound familiar?
That seven-minute average wasn’t a failure. It was feedback.
“They told me by their behaviour… so meet them with that behaviour.”
Instead of doubling down or blaming attention spans, Stephen and his team made the harder decision: let go of the “beautifully sculpted” content and redesign around how their people actually consume learning in short bursts, in the flow of work, under real-world pressure.
That shift is uncomfortable because it challenges pride. But it’s also where impact starts.
Unlearning here wasn’t about lowering standards. It was about designing for reality, not idealism.
3. Letting Go of SME-Heavy, Slow Delivery
Tara Ryan-Tedford at AND Digital was brutally clear about what wasn’t working.
“Really long workshops, relying really heavily on SME resources… That content just wasn’t working for us at all. We were too slow to go to market.”
The shift? Micro learning. Lightning talks. Learning in meaningful bursts.
Instead of defaulting to more content (or knee-jerk AI content):
“We created five chapters… Within each chapter there were 10 days worth of learning and each day was just 10 minutes long. Truly bite size… completed in the flow of work and not impact billability.”
The results speak for themselves:
50% reduction in L&D curation time
75% reduction in onboarding admin
Faster consultant productivity
Greater service diversification
And perhaps the biggest shift of all:
“Moving away from being a workshop coordinator to being more strategic enablers.”
That’s unlearning identity (not just format).
4. Stop Pushing Training
Joe Milton from Centrick shared a moment that will feel painfully familiar to many L&D leaders.
When building their function, his initial instinct was to scale delivery by turning subject matter experts into trainers. Train the SMEs, roll it out, problem solved. On paper, it made sense.
In reality, “Everybody’s at 110% capacity. So that’s not gonna happen.”
That realisation forced a rethink. Instead of pushing out a menu of training and asking people to pick from it, Joe made what he described as a slightly controversial pivot.
“Stop pushing out training… start getting people to come to you instead. I stopped saying, ‘this is my training offering’. Now all I do is solve problems.”
It sounds simple, but culturally it’s a big shift. It moves L&D from programme owners to business partners. From delivery-led to outcome-led.
Rather than focusing on filling an academy with “bums in seats,” Joe prioritised measurable impact, building the L&D function from the ground up in a way that contributed to a 25% uplift in service quality.
The goal wasn’t more sessions. It was a better performance.
And that distinction changed everything.
5. Killing the “Insane” Workshop Model
Penny Simpson at InRiver didn’t sugar-coat her view of their certification model.
“One of the things with the partner certifications was the fact that it is blended… then there’s suddenly a three-day workshop. Are you insane?”
It wasn’t just about preference. It was about practicality. When she looked properly at the numbers, the model didn’t make business sense. SME time, facilitation hours, operational disruption… It all added up. So she asked a simple but powerful question: what would happen if this was asynchronous?
The shift wasn’t small. By redesigning the experience, the team saved five hours per session, increased delivery capacity and created a far more scalable learner experience.
But the more significant change wasn’t operational. It was philosophical.
“Lots of people are coming to visit the platform. I don’t care. What I care about is are they able to do their job successfully?”
That mindset cuts through one of L&D’s biggest traps: mistaking activity for impact. Platform visits, log-ins, attendance numbers are easy to report, but they don’t necessarily mean anything has improved.
Unlearning vanity metrics is uncomfortable because they’re visible and easy to celebrate. But if the goal is performance, not popularity, they can’t be the headline.
6. Killing L&D-Centric Language
Stephen also challenged something subtle but powerful: jargon.
“I had eight different ways of describing stakeholder management.”
If leaders can’t translate what L&D means in business language, adoption suffers.
His analogy: “If you put the skill, I can knit a jumper. The skill is knitting. The task is the jumper.”
If there was one message that tied the entire panel together, it was clear: L&D shouldn’t wait for requests. The most effective learning and development teams don’t just react — they proactively uncover the real challenges their business faces.
Tara Ryan-Tedford put it perfectly:
“We in learning and development need to really connect with and understand what are the biggest problems within businesses… and move away from being problem solvers to problem finders.”
Penny Simpson reinforced the point:
“You’ve got to go out and meet those people in their place and understand their space.”
And Stephen Clarke summed it up simply:
“It’s really just observing. Gonna meet them where they’re at.”
This approach — what we’re calling the Great Unlearning — is about letting go of old habits that hold L&D back: the need to own every piece of delivery, pride in perfectly sculpted content, vanity metrics that don’t measure real impact, push strategies, jargon-filled language, and the belief that “we know best.”
In their place, these leaders embraced a new mindset: humility, listening to real behaviour, aligning closely with business needs, building scalable solutions, and focusing on problem-finding instead of just problem-solving.
It’s a simple shift in phrasing, but a profound shift in practice. By moving from reactive to observant, from proud content creator to strategic enabler, these L&D teams are building learning functions that actually make a difference — for the business and for the people in it.
The L&D mindset shift. The Great Unlearning.
The 100th Episode That Matters Most
If you’re rethinking your strategy this year, maybe the question isn’t: What should we build next?
Maybe it’s: What do we need to unlearn first?
And of course, we want to take a moment to thank everyone who has been part of L&D Disrupt, from the incredible guests who’ve shared their stories to all the listeners who’ve tuned in along the way. We couldn’t have reached 100 episodes without you.
2025 was a year of highs, lows, and plenty of hype in the world of L&D. From the rise of skills-based practices to AI adoption, L&D leaders navigated a rapidly evolving landscape where relevance and impact were under the microscope.
We recently hosted a webinar with industry experts sharing their reflections on the trends that shaped the year.
Insights from the panel:
Nelson Sivalingam, CEO and Co-founder of HowNow, globally recognised for reimagining how L&D drives business impact.
Andy Lancaster, award-winning L&D thought leader and Chief Learning Officer at Reimagine People Development, shaping measurable learning outcomes across the globe.
Stella Collins, internationally acclaimed learning strategist, translating neuroscience, AI, and technology into practical learning that drives performance.
Ross Garner, award-winning learning experience designer and podcast host, crafting learner-centric solutions that transform organisations.
Here’s a concise review of the winners, losers, and overhyped trends in L&D for 2025.
2025 L&D trends: winners, losers, and overhyped insights from industry experts.
The Winners of 2025
Skills & Evidence-Based Practice
2025 saw clear winners in L&D - trends that delivered tangible value and showed real progress. From skills and evidence-based practice to systemic thinking and AI adoption, these areas stood out as game-changers for learning leaders.
Skills & Evidence-Based Practice
Skills and research-backed approaches emerged as major winners. L&D leaders are increasingly moving beyond assumptions and buzzwords, focusing instead on measurable capabilities.
Nelson Sivalingam, CEO of HowNow, highlighted the growing emphasis on skills:
"For me, it is actually skills... we're really starting to get the maximum value out of it, and it was a winner for the progress it made in 2025."
Andy Lancaster, Chief Learning Officer at Reimagine People Development, noted the rise of evidence-based thinking:
"I've seen an increase in the use of evidence-based research... more people interrogating, contextualising, using research in their work... get away from just crazy ideas, and actually get some research-based thinking behind what we do."
Together, these insights point to a shift towards credible, outcomes-focused L&D - learning that builds real skills, backed by research and evidence.
Systemic Thinking & Business Connection
Another winner in 2025 was the move beyond the L&D silo, with leaders thinking more strategically about how learning supports the wider business.
Andy Lancaster explained:
"The biggest winner... I'm going to go systemic thinking. At last, at last, we're beginning to think beyond the L&D silo."
Stella Collins, international learning strategist, reinforced this point:
"People are really beginning to think about... how do we actually help people to do their jobs better?... that connection into the business. What's the business need?"
By linking learning initiatives to real business outcomes, L&D is gaining credibility and showing measurable value across organisations.
AI Adoption
AI moved from experimentation to practical implementation, becoming a tool for delivering learning and value at work.
Ross Garner, learning experience designer, observed:
"AI is obviously... of 2025... we had 50% of respondents now actively using AI rather than experimenting with it... it's now being used to actually deliver learning, or deliver value at work."
This shift shows that AI is no longer just a novelty; it’s becoming a practical, performance-enhancing tool in the L&D toolkit.
The Losers of 2025
While 2025 had its wins, some trends stumbled, revealing challenges that L&D leaders must address. From fading DEI initiatives to outdated metrics and talent struggles, these areas marked a step back for the profession.
DEI & ESG Initiatives
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and ESG initiatives lost momentum in 2025, raising concerns about L&D’s role in driving meaningful cultural change.
Ross Garner, learning experience designer, lamented:
"The heartbreaking answer... DEI and ESG... have completely disappeared... it's a real shame."
Nelson Sivalingam, CEO of HowNow, added:
"I think it was put in for largely political reasons, and it was taken out for largely political reasons."
This decline signals a potential step back in embedding these important principles into learning strategies, highlighting the need for L&D to stay committed to social impact and organisational responsibility.
Completion Rates as a Key Metric
Another losing trend was the over-reliance on completion rates as a measure of learning impact.
Andy Lancaster, Chief Learning Officer at Reimagine People Development, explained:
"The big loser is that completion is no longer seen as an indicator of impact... the visibility of value goes way beyond completion metrics."
Stella Collins, international learning strategist, agreed:
"Completion rates are still being asked for because they are super easy to measure, but they are not the answer."
This reflects a broader shift toward evaluating learning through meaningful outcomes, rather than surface-level metrics that don’t tell the full story.
L&D’s Relevance & Talent
Finally, L&D’s influence and its talent pipeline faced challenges in 2025.
Nelson Sivalingam noted:
"Execs really don't see L&D as a part of the solution to a business problem."
Stella Collins added:
"Some of the people in L&D, who are fantastic at their jobs, have been replaced."
These insights highlight the ongoing need to prove the strategic value of L&D and ensure that top talent is recognised, nurtured, and retained.
The Overhyped Trends of 2025
Not every trend lived up to its promise in 2025. Some areas were overhyped, showing that even the most exciting innovations need careful implementation and realistic expectations.
AI’s Unfulfilled Promise
While AI adoption grew, certain claims around personalisation and impact didn’t match reality.
Stella Collins, international learning strategist, reflected:
"The biggest hype... AI personalisation... all it seems to be is you might get asked a few questions... but actually, you still end up doing the same as everybody else."
Ross Garner, learning experience designer, added:
"Overhyped for me... is AI... in a year's time, there's not going to be any work for me to do. That has not been my experience."
Nelson Sivalingam, CEO of HowNow, agreed:
"The overhyped trend was actually AI literacy programs... very generic... piece of training program."
These insights show that while AI is a powerful tool, its potential is often overstated, and leaders should focus on practical applications that deliver real value.
Skills Frameworks
Skills frameworks also received more hype than substance.
Andy Lancaster, Chief Learning Officer at Reimagine People Development, observed:
"It breaks my heart, but I'm gonna say overhyped on skills frameworks... we are in danger of just jumping on the latest bandwagon."
Nelson Sivalingam added:
"The hype part is the skills-based organisation... by the time everyone figures out how to become an SBO, it'll no longer be relevant, because AI would have found a better way."
The lesson here is clear: frameworks need careful planning and strategic intent, rather than being adopted because they’re trendy.
Conclusion
2025 was a year of significant progress, painful lessons, and cautionary tales for L&D. Skills, systemic thinking, and AI adoption stood out as winners, while DEI initiatives, completion metrics, and L&D’s strategic relevance showed vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, some overhyped trends, particularly around AI personalisation and skills frameworks, highlighted the need for careful, evidence-based implementation.
As we move into 2026, L&D leaders must focus on tangible value, align with business outcomes, and harness technology thoughtfully—not just follow the hype.
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