Our expectations on L&D in 5 years

What We Believe Will Actually Happen in L&D in Five Years - Reflections from a Co-Creation Meet-Up

During the Co-Creation Meet-up of L&D Studio members of December 10^th 2025, after sharing our vision on the ideal L&D in 5 years we went on to explore our realistic expectations on what will actually happen: How will Learning & Development be in five years?

Before discussing predictions, we deliberately started with something else: how we would like things to be, particularly in the Greek context. What follows is not a forecast, but a collective aspiration—one that reveals what many of us feel is currently missing and what we hope L&D will consciously work towards.

A central wish was a decisive shift towards skills-based job descriptions. We imagined organisations where roles are defined less by titles and more by skills—skills that are genuinely transferable, enabling people to move across roles, teams, and even organisations. Such an approach would support career mobility, internal transitions, and a more honest matching between people and work.

Leadership was another key theme. We expressed a strong desire for a widely accepted and shared leadership skillset, rather than fragmented interpretations shaped by individual organisations or coaches. Leadership skills—such as self-awareness, decision-making, emotional regulation, and responsibility for others—should be recognised as part of the core skillset of managerial roles, not optional add-ons or personal preferences.

Equally prominent was the hope that balance, resilience, and mental health would no longer be treated as secondary concerns. We envisioned organisations where emotions are openly acknowledged at work, where emotional management is recognised as a critical professional skill, and where most enterprises actively invest in supporting their people’s mental well-being. In this vision, empathy is not assumed—it is deliberately cultivated, supported by empathy curricula applicable to all roles and levels.

Inclusivity and diversity were also seen as inseparable from the future of L&D. We spoke about L&D that actively embraces diversity, supports collaboration in teams spanning three or even four generations, and equips people to work productively across differences in age, background, and perspective.

Another strong aspiration was a bottom-up approach to development. We imagined organisations where people are encouraged—and trusted—to initiate their own development, rather than waiting for top-down programmes. Learning becomes something people actively claim, not something assigned to them.

At the same time, we stressed the importance of human-to-human learning. Despite technological advances, we hope organisations will continue to invest in peer learning, shared experiences, and the building of real human relationships. Performance, too, was reimagined: not as a continuous pressure, but as something evaluated in cycles, inspired by athletes’ performance models that allow for intensity, recovery, and renewal.

Technology, of course, has a place in this future. We acknowledged that AI avatars and digital tools will likely be used extensively in L&D within increasingly digitised enterprises. Yet this was not framed as a replacement for human learning, but as a complement—one that frees time and attention for deeper, more meaningful development.

Finally, and perhaps characteristically for our context, we expressed a wish to reconnect with the learnings of ancient Greek intellectuals—not as nostalgia, but as a source of timeless insights on ethics, learning, balance, and human behaviour that can meaningfully inform modern organisational life.

Taken together, these reflections describe an L&D landscape that is more human, more skill-oriented, more inclusive, and more intentional. Whether this vision will fully materialise remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that many professionals in the field are already clear about the direction they want to move towards—and that clarity is a necessary first step for any meaningful change.