7 HR Trends 2023: Read These And Win The Year Ahead
Author:
Gary Stringer
PUBLISHED ON:
September 9, 2022
July 20, 2023
PUBLISHED IN:
Must-Read Articles
If you’re looking for HR trends and predictions based on the best reports published in 2022, this is the article for you.
Working out what’s coming next isn’t a ‘sticking a wet finger in the wind’ exercise! That’s how you end up with the same culprits as the year before, the year before that, and the year bef… you get the picture.
Did you know that people don’t really value friendships at work anymore? Nor did we until we read the latest research, but that certainly changes the game for HR and people teams in 2023 and beyond.
So does the fact that 20% of people felt catfished by job descriptions, 54% feel burnt out, and just 14% think their feedback drives change. The good news is that it’s not too late to turn that ship around, and we’re hopefully giving you a head start with these seven HR trends for 2023.
HR to start listening more (or at least show it is)
In short
The latest research revealed that employees don’t think HR is taking their feedback on board.
Why are we including it?
When 85% of HR staff think they’re using feedback to improve the employee experience and only 50% of staff agree, you understand the issue pretty quickly. There is an obvious disconnect between the feedback expectation of the HR team and the company’s people.
Why? And how can we remedy that in 2023?
The same Tivian report revealed that just 14% of people believe their employer uses feedback effectively to drive change.
And this really is a leave your ego at the door issue. If you presume it doesn’t apply to you and this could never be the case in your company, stop and reflect on whether you’ve spoken candidly to your people about the issue.
How can HR respond?
Communicate how feedback will be used as it’s collected and demonstrate how it’s being used to drive change. It seems so obvious, but this answers the audience’s question of what’s in it for me? Why should they bother taking the time and energy to respond!?
Two statistics emphasise why those two steps above are so important:
38% felt the company was rarely or never open to their ideas = there are flaws in how feedback is collected.
70% of staff said they had little or no influence over how things were done at their company = the way feedback is actioned or how that is communicated doesn’t make it clear where employee responses have driven real change.
Treat the feedback process as a product
To understand how HR can approach the process better, we picked the brains of our Product Marketing Manager, Alfie Gardner.
“Essentially, it’s about doing something from conception to the end, and not putting in a process for processes sake but designing it to alleviate a specific problem.”
And if we remember that people feel feedback isn’t being actioned right now, we have to start with this as our conception point and problem to be solved! Then we can build a process that not only captures feedback but uses it to drive performance and solve problems.
Here are some of Alfie’s tips for getting this right:
Recognise that feedback doesn’t operate in a vacuum: It’s often indicative of a wider problem or larger job to be done – there is always context that needs to be applied.
Understand the risks and problems: Especially of how you currently operate and not doing anything to change it.
Don’t decide on a solution before you define the problem: That old adage of don’t come to me with problems, come with solutions is counterintuitive to collecting actionable feedback.
Establish if something is a root cause or a symptom: People come to you with what they believe are problems but they could be symptoms of something deeper to be tackled. This is especially important when analysing and actioning feedback.
Ensure total readiness across teams: Thinking from a product or project launch perspective, you need everyone to be ready, clear on the objectives and on board. But HR and L&D might not always have the influence to do this, which is why we have to be so clear on the problem to be solved and the benefits of solving it to get others on our side.
Performance management to actually be about performance and development in 2023
In short
65% of HR Directors told Clear Review that their performance management process had been put on the back burner over this last year, while people development was at a three-year low as a key HR focus.
Why are we including it?
Perhaps it was a response to our emergence from the depths of the pandemic and into a changing hybrid world. But the performance focus shifted away from development towards productivity and engagement in 2022.
However, this is probably a little short-sighted. People are productive when they’re building relevant skills for their role, and they’re engaged when progression’s on the table. Does a productivity or project management tool make people productive, or do the talents needed to drive performance really move the needle? As the report points out:
“Performance and engagement are inextricably linked, and great performance management leads to engaged employees!”
How can HR respond?
Improve the quality of conversations around performance, and it’s pretty much as simple as that. It’s quite ironic that most people are naming productivity and engagement as the focus of their performance management efforts and not performance!
HR can’t sit in on every conversation, but it can act as a facilitator of better interactions between managers and employees – which , it turns out, is pretty critical right now.
People are having regular conversations about performance with managers, but there are real concerns around the quality:
“We ask employees how meaningful the conversations they have with their managers are, and 31% of them said they feel the conversations they do have are basic or bad, with little or no focus on wellbeing or development.”
If the conversation isn’t wandering into the territory of ‘which performance goal are we trying to reach and how can I help you get there’, it’s unlikely to drive real impact. HR can provide guidelines and frameworks that ensure performance conversations are covering:
Employee and organisational performance goals.
The current challenges and blockers to reaching them.
How they can be overcome through employee development.
Finally settling on flexible working arrangements that work for everyone
In short
More and more employees are working in hybrid settings, but there’s still an inconsistency in their working and learning experiences.
Why are we including it?
73% of employees now work in either a hybrid or fully remote setting, with nearly half (43%) working remotely full-time – according to Beezy’s 2022 Workplace Trends And Insights Report.
Add this to the fact that 32% plan to stay fully remote long-term, an 11-point jump on the previous year, and it’s fair to say this is finally the year that organisations settle on consistent experiences wherever people work.
As you can see from the image below, although we’re close in some areas, there are still huge chasms between how remote and in-person employees work and learn.
Having somewhere appropriate to learn, clarity of personal goals, and a lack of time to learn show huge variances between in-person and remote workers.
Although we’re not given the in-person equivalent, the report also revealed that 56% of employees working remotely struggled to locate digital documents in the past year. Highlighting the need for consistent approaches, especially when it comes to learning and accessing information.
How can HR respond?
Consistency will be your best friend! If you’re offering that in the ways people work, learn and engage, you’ll close those gaps above.
One of the best examples is social learning. Why should someone in-person get more access to your internal experts than a remote employee, or why would the latter get a watered-down version of a face-to-face experience?
Let’s say 40% of your marketing team work remotely. You decide to hold an in-person session on the new brand, they can’t attend, but no worries, we’ll send them the recording after.
Actually, yes worries! Because not only will they miss the opportunity to participate or ask questions, they’ll have to watch others doing it. They are literally seeing what they could have won.
The better option would be to deliver it in a live virtual classroom, allowing everyone to participate on their own terms. Better yet, you decide you’ll add some contextual resources before the session and attach the new brand guidelines after. All you need is a place to do it all.
Use HowNow as centralised place for learning, development and collaboration
What this has all been building up to is a shameless plug for HowNow, so we should own that really!
Our learning experience platform (LXP) brings all your resources to the end of a single search! Consistency, remember… It allows you to personalise learning and deliver relevant resources. It’s a place to capture and distribute knowledge from external experts. Somewhere people can collaborate, your new live classroom and the LXP that connects with all the tools you already use.
A reassessment of the company culture’s role and importance
In short
What a difference three years make! In January 2020, employees were ten times more likely to stay at a company for friendships than pay rises. Now, HR has to contend with the fact that socialising has slipped down the pecking order, and people feel less connected to culture.
Why are we including it?
Almost three-quarters of employees work remotely in some capacity, which has been brilliant in so many ways. But, unfortunately for HR and people teams, it’s driven a wedge between employees and the company culture.
According to Gartner, just 24% of hybrid and remote workers feel connected to their company’’s culture.
“Hybrid and remote work hasn’t necessarily changed our culture, it’s changed the way we experience culture… While employers used to be able to frame their cultural values and hang them on the walls for employees to see, this no longer works today when hybrid and remote knowledge workers spend 65% less time in offices than before the pandemic.” – Alexia Cambon, Director, Gartner HR.
At the same time, we’re in a precarious economic position. High-profile redundancies and fears over job security have followed a period where talent had all the power, and we were experiencing a ‘Great Resignation’. In short, that means we’ve experienced turnover, and we’re in a position where we’re worrying more is on the way.
That’s created short-termism around company culture and how ingrained people should get in it.
63% of employees experiencing above-average turnover on their team believe that it’s become less worthwhile for them to socialise and build bonds with their colleagues, according to Capterra.
How can HR respond?
Speak to people and get some honest answers! You might need to anonymise the feedback channel, but you’ll never get the culture right if you don’t know what people want from it.
We spoke about it from an L&D perspective on an episode of our L&D Disrupt podcast, but when you’re solving the wrong problem, you get everything that follows wrong.
Let’s say you receive the news that remote employees don’t feel connected to their peers. So you start funding their travel into the office once a month to offer face-to-face time. Nice gesture, but what if your remote employees were never bothered about meeting in person…
In fact, their issue was that it never felt like they were working on meaningful projects together. It wasn’t a social issue but a working relationship one.
If you assume the problem or define it poorly, you end up taking actions that never address the root cause. So, speak to people about culture, and don’t do anything else until you have.
Onboarding to finally get itself together (and an end to job description catfishing)
In short
Onboarding’s been in a chaotic state of flux for a few years now, and it’s showing! 2022 research shows that A LOT of employees really haven’t been enjoying their onboarding experiences, so it’s time for that to change. And part of it might be due to misleading job descriptions…
Why are we including it?
Because nearly two-thirds of employees found their onboarding experience to be stressful! And the same Cezanne HR research also revealed that a fifth of employees felt misled by the original job listing.
If we dig a little deeper into the numbers, we get an understanding of why…
Over a quarter of remote workers surveyed said they’d been let down by poor onboarding – indicating that there’s still a disconnect between remote, hybrid, and in-person onboarding programs.
Only half of all new hires said they felt productive and capable of doing their jobs – suggesting that onboarding wasn’t personalised or structured to help them reach productivity in their role.
Over a fifth of new hires said their onboarding made them question their choice in jobs – pointing back to our stat on those misleading job descriptions. It’s human nature to look at where we went wrong, but being catfished by an advert for the role hardly helps.
20% of new employees felt they’d been left isolated or alone during their onboarding – which could be a symptom of those unbalanced remote and in-person approaches.
Only 40% of new hires in larger organisations had the tools or equipment needed to start their roles right away– with 57% of overall employees frustrated by legacy tech, it’s no wonder new hires don’t feel those tools are taking them to productivity.
How can HR respond?
Obviously, there’s a lot to unpack here. The most straightforward place to start would be with a review of your job descriptions, given that they’re often the first domino in the chain. Are they reflective of the role and the performance you’re expecting of the people who fill them? Could they do with a less-is-more clean up?
Build a personalised onboarding plan with goals based around getting people to productivity and able to perform the role – it’s helpful if you stagger those. For example, a new sales rep’s first milestone might be pitching the product internally before moving to simulated prospect calls and then the real thing under supervision.
When you have that in place, you can connect them to people in meaningful ways to prevent them from feeling isolated. An experienced sales rep could coach them through pitching, before a manager practices those calls with them – which is probably far more helpful than small talk.
Lastly, it might be time for an honest assessment of your tech stack. 68% of business leaders believe new software has a high learning curve, and there’s a fair chance a lot of your software will be new to new employees. Add to that the issue of 91% feeling frustrated by work tech generally and 57% by legacy tech, and it could be time for a freshen up.
Wellbeing being more than a webinar or week of support
In short
Burnout, stress and a poor work-life balance are still very much real concerns for employees. And sadly, quick fixes and token efforts like webinars still seem to be the most used tool in the box.
Why are we including it?
Because Employment Hero’s 2022 Wellness Report revealed some pretty interesting findings on workplace wellbeing, namely that we’ve not quite hit the stress nail on the head.
54% of UK workers are feeling work burnout, while more than half feel they have an average or poor work-life balance. Another report revealed that 23% experienced sadness during the previous day, while 44% were highly stressed in the past 24 hours.
And that’s why quick fixes fix nothing. These are all more complex problems than a webinar or even a wellbeing week can change.
The good news? The employees who rated their employer’s commitment to wellbeing favourably were 48% more likely to be loyal to the company.
How can HR respond?
Get to the root cause of the problem! Why are your people feeling stressed, burned out, or unsupported?
It could be financial pressure, with 59% of respondents stating they were stressed by their monetary situation. Maybe it’s that working remotely is making mental health conversations harder – a concern flagged by close to half of the survey participants. Or it could just be that they’re uncomfortable discussing the topic at work, a statement that 46% agreed with.
Given all of the above, you need to carefully consider how you collect the feedback that helps you tackle the problem. These are sensitive subjects, so consider how you anonymise feedback to remove those fears and pressures. At the same time, you have to ensure there’s consistency between remote and in-person employees – given that almost half feel working outside the office is a barrier to important conversations.
Building skills that can’t be bought or borrowed
In short
We’ve transitioned from a great resignation where talent had plenty of choice to a situation where redundancies and hiring freezes are becoming more and more common. For HR and L&D teams, this might mean needing to do more with less among falling staff numbers or hiring freezes.
Why are we including it?
From Netflix laying off 300 people in June to Tesla announcing 10% workforce reductions across the following three months, and all the smaller stories in between, the second half of 2022 felt a bit bleak.
An economic downturn was a key driver of public redundancy announcements and private communications about hiring freezes. For HR and L&D teams, that means you’re in a position where you can’t bring in new talent to fill skill gaps or borrow those talents from freelancers.
How can HR respond?
In a nutshell, when you can’t buy skills through hiring or borrow through short-term external support, you have to build them! We asked our CEO and author of Learning at Speed, Nelson Sivalingam, to explain:
“With the economic downturn, people are reviewing where they’re spending their money, and they have less budget to hire for the skills gaps they have or use freelancers or contractors.
“So essentially, the most cost-effective way for you to address those skills gaps is to invest in existing talent. And that’s where upskilling and reskilling is the way to build those skills, rather than buying or borrowing to close skills gaps.”
But even before these economic struggles and the challenges of the pandemic, the rate of change in our industries meant that it was never really going to be sustainable to keep borrowing or buying talent.
And besides, if you’re a disruptor in your space or ahead of the curve, you might struggle to hire the skills you need – so you’d have to invest in people anyway.
How HR and L&D teams can leverage internal talent to close skills gaps
Work out your skills gaps and map out your skills profile
You’ll never close skills gaps effectively without establishing where they exist. Essentially, it’s a case of measuring the skills you currently have and comparing them to the ones needed to reach business goals and drive employee performance.
As part of that process, you’ll also build out a skills profile for everyone in your team – which will help you identify candidates for upskilling and reskilling in the future.
Build a culture of talent mobility
Rather than HR always hiring people, there could well be someone capable of filling a role or plugging a skills gap in your team!
For example, someone might have 90% of what’s needed to fill a position in another business function, and just require that 10% of reskilling needed to make them a great fit.
This will never happen, of course, without a talent mobility infrastructure or frameworks in place that allow people to move fluidly through the business. One option would be moving away from static job functions towards a project-based focus, where you’re asking who would be right for this particular problem or project. This will allow you to leverage more people across the organisation!
And the more you carry out exercises like this, the more you’ll build a culture of closing those skill gaps internally when they do crop up.
Deliver relevant learning at the point of need
If you’ve done these first two things well, you’ll find this process a lot easier. You know which skill you’re lacking, you know who the best candidate to build it is – so your next job is to provide relevant learning that closes the gap between that person’s current skills and the ones needed.
And the best part is, you can build that around the specific business context of where it’ll be applied. Let’s say you’re short on customer support staff, but someone in your social media team knows the product well and is used to answering questions through messages and comments.
They might simply lack the process and tech knowledge of logging new customer queries in the right place and need some guidance on dealing with complaints that are more frequent through this channel.
You can build a learning journey that helps them develop these skills, offers practice scenarios and exercises, and provides micro-resources that talk them through it in practice. That way, when the problem arises, and they’re in that moment of need, the support is there to apply information and build knowledge when they’re most motivated.
Tapping into subject matter experts and shared knowledge
There’s also the scenario where a skill might not be lacking completely in your team, you just need more people to have it! An example would be someone is the top dog at closing deals and you need more people to hit similar numbers if you’re going to reach targets.
That don of deal closing has relevant and contextual knowledge that would help drive the performance of others… IF it’s captured and shared in ways that make it easily applied.
HowNow could be that place! 🚀 We’ll help you capture knowledge from your best minds in one single place, organise that content by topics, share it with relevant groups, and then connect it in all the places your people work.
Remember that moment of need? We’ll help you connect people to knowledge in those moments so that your L&D efforts make an impact.
Overview: Based on reviews from learning platform users, Sana Learn is praised for its intuitive interface, easy adoption, engaging interactive content, and AI-powered tools that can speed up content creation and discovery. Customers consistently highlight smooth onboarding, responsive support, and useful integrations with email, calendar, and collaboration tools. However, recurring limitations emerge around content flexibility, AI accuracy, occasional technical glitches, UI quirks, and gaps in admin training, which can create friction as teams scale their learning programs. While Sana Learn works well for organisations seeking fast rollout and straightforward learner engagement, teams needing more customization, reliable AI, and robust integrations may want to explore alternative platforms and see how they compare in practice.
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When you're evaluating learning platforms, everyone has an opinion. Vendors have feature pages. Review sites have listicles. And everyone claims to be the best AI-powered LMS on the market.
What nobody tells you is what it's actually like six months in.
Sana Learn (part of Sana Labs), an AI company founded in 2016 in Stockholm, will likely show up early in your research. It's well-funded, well-marketed and has built a genuine reputation in the AI learning space.
But reputation and reality don't always match. And the people best placed to tell you the difference aren't the sales team. They're the L&D leaders, admins and learners who use it every day.
To help you, you’ve analysed 50+ real customer reviews so you don't have to. Not to cherry-pick the bad bits but to find the patterns that will help you make informed decisions. The things that come up again and again once the implementation is done and the day-to-day reality sets in.
Because when you're making a buying decision that affects your entire workforce, what matters isn't which platform has the best copy or demo. It's which one that will help you build and engage your workforce to proactively build the skills your business needs to grow.
Where Sana Learn does well.
One thing becomes clear when you read through the customer reviews: Sana Learn is easy to like.
Users consistently describe the platform as intuitive, clean and simple to pick up. There's very little friction in getting started which, if you've ever tried rolling out a new learning platform to a sceptical workforce, you'll know is no small thing.
That ease extends to implementation. Several reviewers highlight how seamless the setup felt, with teams barely noticing the transition. For organisations without the time or appetite for a heavy rollout, that's a meaningful advantage.
AI is another area where Sana Learn gets genuine praise. Users point to how quickly they can generate content, surface answers and navigate learning materials with AI woven throughout the experience. When it works, it removes friction from the content creation process in a way that L&D teams with limited resources will appreciate.
The learning experience itself also lands well. Interactive modules, clickable elements and embedded content make it easier to engage with topics that would otherwise feel dry. Learners aren't just clicking through slides; they're actually interacting with material.
Put simply: Sana Learn is a platform that's genuinely easy to adopt and easy to engage with. For teams prioritising simplicity and fast time-to-value, that counts for a lot.
What are the limitations of Sana Learn?
Once you move past first impressions, the reviews become more nuanced; and more useful.
A recurring theme is that while Sana Learn is easy to use, it can feel limiting when you try to do more with it.
Several users point to a lack of flexibility in content creation. Editing options are described as restrictive, with one reviewer putting it plainly:
"Tables are a bit clunky and hard to edit… [there's not] much freedom when it comes to text & layout."
Others mention having to rely on external tools to get the output they actually need:
"Many features are unavailable and have to be done outside of the platform using third-party providers."
For L&D teams trying to scale content production or tailor learning experiences more precisely, that's where friction starts to add up.
There's also a subtle but telling critique around product direction. One reviewer notes that the platform sometimes prioritises:
"attention-grabbing features over more basic feature development."
That's the kind of comment that tends to surface when a platform is evolving quickly; but not always in the direction its users need most.
Is Sana Learn's AI reliable?
AI is one of Sana Learn's biggest selling points; but it's also one of its most inconsistent areas.
While some users are impressed by the speed and convenience, others highlight accuracy issues that slow them down rather than speed them up:
"There are times when the AI doesn't fully grasp what I'm asking for…"
"Sometimes the AI suggestions are not fully accurate, and it takes a bit of time to find the exact content I'm looking for."
That tension shows up across multiple reviews. The capability is there; but it's not always reliable enough to trust without sense-checking.
For L&D teams expecting AI to meaningfully reduce manual effort, that gap matters more than it might first appear.
What do Sana Learn users say about technical performance?
Another pattern across the reviews is the presence of ongoing, low-level technical friction. Not catastrophic failures; but enough to interrupt workflows when they matter most.
Users mention occasional platform freezing, performance lags when handling complex content and integration challenges, particularly around APIs. One reviewer sums it up plainly:
"The platform can be a bit glitchy at times…"
Others call out specific integration issues:
"Had some hiccups with [the] Bamboo integration API."
These aren't universal experiences; but they appear frequently enough to be worth factoring in, particularly for organisations running a broader HR and L&D tech stack where reliable integrations aren't optional.
What do Sana Learn users say about the interface?
Interestingly, even though usability is one of Sana Learn's most praised qualities, there are still consistent complaints about specific interface behaviours; particularly once users move beyond everyday tasks.
For example, one reviewer points out a frustrating content creation issue:
"When I'm creating a comment… and then pop over to another window, the comments I started typing disappear."
Others find the home screen experience overwhelming:
"The interface can appear a little overwhelming with all the videos visible when you enter the homescreen."
There are also mentions of difficulty navigating back to in-progress courses, and issues with live learning environments around audio and visual quality.
None of these are deal-breakers on their own. But together they create a sense of inconsistency; where the platform feels smooth in some moments and frustrating in others. For L&D teams managing large learner populations, those friction points tend to get amplified at scale.
What do Sana Learn users say about the learning experience?
Beyond the platform mechanics, some users point to limitations in how learning content is actually delivered.
Quiz functionality comes up more than once, particularly around rigid structures:
"When making a mistake… you have to click through the whole exam before being able to repeat."
Others mention repetitive questions and a lack of depth in supporting materials:
"Example videos are not very detailed enough."
There's also feedback around pacing; specifically that learners can move through content too quickly without meaningful controls in place to slow them down or check understanding along the way.
None of these are headline issues. But for L&D teams where learning effectiveness is the whole point, they're worth knowing about before you buy.
What do Sana Learn admins say about the platform experience?
While learners tend to find Sana Learn straightforward, the experience for admins and L&D teams is less consistently praised.
Some reviewers highlight a lack of guidance when it comes to more advanced features:
"Need more training on available features."
Others point to documentation that doesn't quite hit the mark:
"Videos are usually very short and articles can be text heavy."
This creates a meaningful disconnect. The platform feels simple on the surface; but getting the most out of it as an admin can require significantly more effort than the initial experience suggests. For L&D teams who need to move fast and can't afford a steep learning curve behind the scenes, that's worth factoring into your decision.
Should you be looking at Sana Learn alternatives?
That depends on what you need.
If your priority is fast rollout, strong initial engagement and a clean intuitive interface, Sana Learn clearly delivers. For teams that need something up and running quickly with minimal friction, it's a strong option.
But if you're thinking longer term; about scaling learning, tailoring content more precisely and integrating deeply into your wider HR and L&D tech stack, the limitations that surface across these reviews start to matter a great deal more.
The question isn't whether Sana Learn is a good platform. For many organisations, it is. The question is whether it's the right platform for where your organisation is going; not just where it is today.
Is HowNow a good Sana Learn alternative?
HowNow tends to come up for teams that want more than a clean learning interface.
Reviews give you a strong starting point but they won’t tell you how a platform fits your specific setup.
If you’re weighing up Sana Learn against alternatives, the most useful next step is to see them side by side.
HowNow built around a different idea: that learning shouldn't sit in a separate platform, disconnected from the way people actually work. It should connect everything together; the content, the skills data, the performance context and the tools your teams already use every day.
In practice, that means bringing learning from multiple sources into one centralised place, linking development directly to skills gaps and business performance, and using AI in a way that supports real workflows rather than just speeding up content generation.
But perhaps most importantly, HowNow is designed to scale with you. Not just easy to start; but built to deliver more as your organisation grows, your needs get more complex and your expectations of what good learning looks like get higher.
If the patterns in these reviews resonate with challenges you're already facing, it might be worth seeing it for yourself.
You’re comparing features, pricing, integrations, and user experience. But there’s one thing that often gets pushed down the list is security.
It shouldn’t be.
Learning platforms sit on a goldmine of sensitive data e.g. employee records, performance data, personal details. If that data is mishandled, the impact isn’t just technical. It’s reputational, legal, and operational.
So before you get dazzled by a slick demo, it’s worth asking more important questions such as:
Is this platform safe? And can I trust this vendor?
Why security matters when buying a learning platform
Security conversations are often left until the final stages of evaluation.
By then:
Data has already been shared
Internal stakeholders are invested
Walking away feels expensive
That’s how risky decisions get made.
Instead, bring security into the conversation early.
Loop in your InfoSec, IT and data protection teams from the start so they can review vendors alongside you (not play catch-up at the end which is what we often see).
It saves time, avoids friction, and builds confidence internally.
What security certifications should an LMS or LXP have?
There are plenty of badges vendors can display.
Not all of them mean the same thing.
When it comes to learning platform security, there are two certifications that actually matter:
ISO 27001:2022 — The Global Standard
ISO 27001 is a globally recognised information security standard.
It’s a risk-based framework that shows a vendor takes security seriously across their organisation (not just in isolated areas).
But this is where many buyers stop too early.
The certificate alone isn’t enough.
Ask for the Statement of Applicability (SoA).
This document shows:
which controls are implemented
how risks are managed
why specific decisions were made
When reviewing it, pay close attention to:
information classification
data leakage prevention
handling of personally identifiable information (PII)
Learning platforms process large volumes of employee data. If a vendor can’t clearly explain how that data is segmented and protected in their cloud environment, the certification doesn’t mean much.
What to double-check
Does the certification cover the whole organisation or just part of it?
Is it officially accredited?
Is it the vendor’s certification, or are they pointing to their hosting provider (AWS, Azure, etc.)?
If it’s the latter, push back. Hosting infrastructure doesn't mean application security.
Cyber Essentials Plus — Essential for UK-based organisations
If you’re a UK-based company, Cyber Essentials Plus should be your baseline.
Unlike the standard Cyber Essentials (which is self-assessed), the Plus certification includes:
independent technical verification
hands-on testing
real validation of controls
For a learning platform handling sensitive employee data, this provides confidence that the basics are properly secured.
As with ISO 27001, don’t just take it at face value.
Learning Technologies is back and we could not be more excited.
L&D is changing faster than most organisations can keep up with. AI is reshaping how people learn, skills gaps are widening and the pressure on L&D teams to prove impact has never been higher. The conversations happening at this year's event are going to matter.
HowNow is already working with companies to build the talent of tomorrow; closing skills gaps, connecting learning to performance and giving L&D teams the data to prove it's working. We want to help you do the same.
Learning Technologies is a great place to start this journey.
You'll find us at stand E30. Come and find us.
Here's what's waiting for you.
1. Get a Free Learning Health Check
Most L&D teams we speak to already know something isn't quite working. Maybe engagement is low. Maybe learning is scattered across too many tools. Maybe the business is asking questions about impact that are hard to answer.
The Learning Health Check is a free 15-minute desk-side consultation with one of our experts at stand E30. No slides, no sales pitch; just a focused conversation about where your organisation is right now, what's getting in the way and where the biggest opportunities are.
You'll walk away with tips you can apply to your strategy straight away, whether you use HowNow or not. This is exclusive to Learning Technologies and designed to be relevant to you and your organisation.
2. Hear How to Prove Learning Is Actually Building Skills
Day one. 1:10pm. Bitesize Stage
If you've ever sat in a leadership meeting struggling to demonstrate the impact of your learning programme, this one's for you.
Harvey Stead is taking the stage for a bitesize session on one of the biggest questions in L&D right now: how do you prove that learning is genuinely building skills? Join a group of 30+ L&D leaders for a practical, focused conversation designed to give you something you can actually take back to the business.
Arrive at 1pm to secure your seat. Spaces are extremely limited and assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.
3. Learn What It Means to Be a Self-Improving Company
Day one, 11:45–12:15pm in Theatre 2.
Day two, 11:45–12:15pm in Theatre 2.
Every company wants the same thing: people continuously getting better at their jobs. But running that loop manually is nearly impossible. Who's struggling? When do you intervene? What actually helps? Did it work? By the time you've coordinated answers to those questions, months have passed and the moment is gone.
In this session, Nelson Sivalingam; CEO of HowNow, one of the fastest-growing AI learning companies and author of the acclaimed book Learning at Speed; introduces a fundamentally different model: the self-improving company.
Nelson will show how AI agents are transforming organisational performance by monitoring work systems in real time, detecting struggles the moment they emerge, intervening with the right support at the right time and measuring what actually improved in performance data; not surveys.
So popular we are running it twice. No excuses to miss it.
4. Hear Trainline’s Approach to Employee Engagement
Day two, 14:45 – 15:15 in Theatre 2.
Building a learning culture sounds great on paper. Doing it in reality? That’s where things get interesting.
In this honest fireside chat, Trainline shares how they’re approaching employee engagement from the ground up; what’s worked, what hasn’t and where they’re still experimenting. From driving early adoption to making learning feel genuinely relevant across the business, this session goes beyond theory and into the real challenges L&D teams face every day.
Expect practical insights you can take back with you, along with a clear view of what it actually takes to get people engaged in learning.
If you're trying to increase learning engagement, bring a notebook.
5. Meet HowNow Customers at Our Happy Hour
Day one, 15:00 onwards - Stand 30.
Straight after Nelson's session, we're hosting a customer meet and greet at stand E30. Prosecco, canned cocktails, beers and the kind of conversations you actually come to events like this for.
Want to know what it's really like to use HowNow? Don't ask us. Ask them.
Look out for the special 'talk to me' badges; those are the HowNow customers with the real stories. They'll be in and around the stand all afternoon and they're easy to spot. Pull them aside, ask them anything and hear first-hand what's working for organisations just like yours.
6. Get refreshed with us
And if all that wasn't enough, we’ll also have fresh coffee flowing and soft serve ice cream on hand too; because balance is important.
Whether you need a caffeine boost, something sweet, or just a reason to pause between sessions, it’s the perfect excuse to stop by and have a relaxed chat with the team. No agenda, no pressure; just good conversation (and better snacks).
The best moments at events like this aren’t always on stage. Sometimes they’re over a coffee… or an ice cream, but either way, they are together.
And so many more reasons….
So, whether you want to catch a talk, grab a drink, or just have a proper conversation about your learning strategy, we'd love to see you. Learning Technologies is one of the best opportunities of the year to connect, learn and get inspired and we're making sure our stand is worth your time.
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.
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