Raise a hand if the following scenario sounds familiar.

An employer has mandated compulsory training for every employee to instruct them on a new operating procedure/technology/software. During their ‘down time’, employees are shuffled into a stuffy training room, usually a disused corner of the office, where they are subjected to cookie-cutter instruction for an hour, from a corporate trainer or ‘someone in HR’ on how to use the new technology/procedure/software in question, but without relating it to their work – current or future.

Thankfully, those days of piecemeal training in a vacuum are over – or they should be.

Deloitte’s 2026 Global Human Capital Trends report explains why. It says the one-size-fits-all approach to training ‘prioritises homogeneity where there is complexity, and it does not always account for workers as individuals with different motivations, work, emotions, needs and preferences, or the neuroscience of how workers process what happens around them in different ways’.

It is also divorced from the nature of the workplace, where the required skills are changing at the same rate it takes artificial  intelligence (AI) to multiply 356 by 24: in an instant (the answer is 8 544).

‘Organisations that commit to continuous reskilling and curiosity build more creative, resilient teams – capable of growing with technology rather than being replaced by it,’ says the Deloitte report.

Vuyokazi Majola, the senior manager of learning and development at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), concurs. ‘One of the most significant trends is the shift from traditional classroom training to continuous capability development. Organisations are moving away from once-off courses towards learning ecosystems that integrate formal learning, coaching, mentoring, stretch assignments and digital learning platforms.’

It’s not just how training is carried out that is changing but also what is being trained, shifting from purely technical skills to include more indefinable capabilities, according to Lynda Gratton, professor of Management Practice at the London Business School.

‘In an AI-enabled world, human capabilities such as judgement, co-operation, discernment, calm, adventure and intimacy become even more essential. Leaders and HR teams need to work together to design work and learning in ways that support these capabilities so that people can thrive in longer, more varied careers,’ Gratton writes in Forbes.

Jodie Martin, head of executive education at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), suggests there’s a trend in the workplace to include ‘personal master leadership competencies around self-awareness, emotional intelligence, vulnerability and courage’. In addition, Gratton points out that ‘organisations are navigating for the first time a truly multi-generational workforce, with people in their twenties working alongside colleagues in their seventies, each with different needs and rhythms of contribution’.

At the same time, workplaces must navigate a shift to skills-based organisations, ‘where companies identify critical future skills and build internal capability pipelines around them’, says Majola. A skills-based organisation, as defined by global workplace consulting firm Mercer, uses ‘a new work operating system that decouples work from jobs and jobholders. As opposed to defining people by their jobs or relying on job hierarchies and linear career ladders, skill-powered organisations look at their employees’ experience, skills and interests to find people to do the tasks needed’.

Quoting the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs Report, Majola says ‘employers expect around 44% of workers’ core skills to change within the next five years, which is accelerating investment in reskilling and internal mobility programmes’.

The Top Employers Institute – whose list of 155 certified top employers in SA include Rand Merchant Bank, Vodacom and DHL Express South Africa – notes in its 2025 report on building a skills-first workforce that taking a skills-based approach results in internal promotion rates that are ‘significantly higher than average’.

It says companies that ‘foster continuous learning, transparent growth paths and internal mobility report stronger loyalty and discretionary effort, leading to enhanced employee engagement scores’.

That is borne out in research from Gloat, a US-based workplace intelligence platform, which shows that internal mobility or promotion is key to retaining staff. It reports that two-thirds of employees would leave a company if it offered no internal mobility, and that internal mobility is a top priority for millennials.

And considering that voluntary turnover alone can cost companies from 30–200%  of an employee’s salary, adopting a holistic approach to skills management is a win-win for the employee and the employer.

‘Employees who receive skills development training and build their experience within that organisation have a greater level of trust and retention value; however, it is important for organisations to be agile and factor in career opportunities for their skilled employees,’ says Martin. ‘So, it is not only about offering skills development but also career and succession development opportunities.’

In addition, focusing on the skills needed by an organisation and not on individuals’ academic credentials widens the pool of candidates to include under-represented groups, of particular importance in SA.

Majola points out that skills development is also ‘embedded in national policy frameworks such as B-BBEE Skills Development requirements, which encourage organisations to invest in building the competencies of historically disadvantaged groups’.

And that includes women. The Top Employers Institute cites the example of Canadian brewing company Molson Coors, which introduced a skills-first hiring programme that replaced traditional CV evaluations with a skills- and behaviour-based assessment. The programme resulted in a 385% increase in applications for manufacturing roles, with 30% of finalists being women in a traditionally male-dominated industry.

As mentioned earlier, the trend towards continuous learning systems includes mentoring – which, while useful to all employees, is particularly helpful to women.

The McKinsey 2025 Women in the Workplace study notes that in the US fewer women than men appear to be interested in being promoted. However, from its survey of 10 000 employees and interviews with more than 60 HR officers and executives in corporate America, McKinsey showed that when women and men receive the same amount of support from managers and senior colleagues, they’re ‘equally enthusiastic about getting promoted to the next level’.

Whether they get that support is another question. According to McKinsey’s data, 45% of entry-level male employees have sponsors/mentors compared to 31% for entry-level women. In fact, at all levels of employment, fewer women have access to sponsors than men. And even then, the rate at which those with sponsors are promoted is lower than their male contemporaries who have sponsors.

Martin emphasises the importance of mentoring to women. ‘It is extremely important for women to be mentored, not only by other women but from a diverse audience,’ he says. However, he stresses that ‘mentoring should not be seen as a plaster to a wound but rather creating a space and culture for ongoing conversations around mentoring and support’.

Majola says that at GIBS, ‘mentoring and coaching are increasingly embedded into leadership development programmes because leadership capability is not built through classroom learning alone. These programmes combine theory with practical application, enabling leaders to embed coaching conversations and developmental thinking into their leadership practice’.

As for whether upskilling should be done in-house or externally, there is a case to be made for both. GSB’s Martin says that while internal upskilling is vital to organisational growth and development of employees ‘it could also create “groupthink” and similar or the usual ways of working’.

On the other hand, ‘external educational programmes create space for diverse perspectives and appreciation thereof, best practice benchmarking and thinking outside business as usual and develop an appetite for curiosity and innovation’.

Whichever approach an organisation settles on, it goes without saying they should avoid the stuffy classroom scenario.

By Robyn Leary
Image: iStock