Reimagining Workforce Learning: Building Capability in an Era of Continuous Disruption

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Abstract: The contemporary workplace confronts unprecedented transformation driven by technological acceleration, demographic shifts, climate-induced displacement, and the exponential growth of non-traditional work arrangements. This article examines how the convergence of these forces necessitates a fundamental reconceptualization of workplace learning—one that transcends conventional organization-centric training paradigms to embrace holistic, person-centered approaches to lifelong capability development. Drawing from recent research in industrial-organizational psychology, adult learning theory, and workforce development practice, we argue that effective responses to future-of-work challenges require integrated frameworks that address both organizational imperatives and individual learning agency. We explore evidence-based interventions spanning self-directed learning support, personalized skill development pathways, recognition of informal learning systems, and technology-enabled adaptive instruction. The article concludes by identifying critical research gaps and proposing practice-oriented recommendations for fostering sustainable workforce capability across organizational boundaries, with particular attention to vulnerable and marginalized worker populations.

The accelerating transformation of work has become a defining feature of early twenty-first-century economic life. While scholars have contemplated workplace futures for decades—from early concerns about technological displacement (Leach & Chakiris, 1985) to contemporary analyses of artificial intelligence and automation (Autor, 2019)—the pace and scope of disruption have intensified dramatically. Recent projections suggest that over 85% of workers will need to transition jobs between 2021 and 2030, with even those maintaining their positions experiencing substantial task-level changes (Lund et al., 2021).

This dynamic landscape creates both imperatives and opportunities. Organizations require adaptable workforces capable of rapid skill acquisition and application across evolving contexts. Simultaneously, individual workers—whether organizationally affiliated, independently engaged, or seeking employment—need capabilities for continuous learning to remain productive, engaged, and employable throughout extended careers. The COVID-19 pandemic starkly illustrated these realities, accelerating workplace digitization and remote work adoption while simultaneously exposing profound inequities in access to learning and development resources (Rudolph et al., 2021).

The Case for Expanded Perspectives

Traditional industrial-organizational psychology approaches to training and development have predominantly emphasized organizational effectiveness, viewing employee learning primarily as a mechanism for enhancing organizational capacity and performance (Aguinis & Kraiger, 2009). While this organization-centric perspective has generated valuable insights into training design, implementation, and evaluation, it inadequately addresses the broader learning needs emerging from contemporary workforce realities.

We contend that workforce learning scholars and practitioners must broaden their lens to incorporate genuinely person-centered perspectives—frameworks that prioritize individual capability development, employability, and career sustainability alongside organizational objectives. This expanded view recognizes that effective learning ecosystems must serve diverse stakeholders: employees within traditional organizational structures, gig economy workers navigating platform-mediated arrangements, informal economy workers sustaining intergenerational livelihoods, and job seekers attempting to decode opaque skill requirements in dynamic labor markets.

Such broadened perspectives have particular urgency given persistent inequities in learning access. Workers facing precarious employment, those in informal economies, older workers confronting age-related stereotypes, and displaced populations navigating climate-induced migration all experience systematic barriers to skill development opportunities—barriers that existing approaches inadequately address. Industrial-organizational psychology's historical tendency toward organizational service (Gloss et al., 2017) risks perpetuating these disparities unless the field intentionally expands its scope and commitments.

Conceptual Foundations: Defining Contemporary Workplace Learning

Before examining specific future-of-work trends and their implications, we establish conceptual clarity around key constructs that inform subsequent analysis.

Core Learning Constructs

Learning encompasses mental processes yielding knowledge, skill, or affective change that persists over time and transfers to performance contexts when needed (Kraiger & Ford, 2021). For present purposes, we emphasize intentional learning—conscious, goal-directed engagement in learning activities—though acknowledging that incidental learning remains important in many workplace contexts (Tannenbaum & Wolfson, 2022).

Work-related learning refers specifically to intentional learning focused on acquiring or enhancing knowledge, skills, and competencies relevant to work performance and career development. This learning may occur within organizational boundaries (e.g., employer-sponsored training programs), outside organizations (e.g., massive open online courses pursued by unemployed individuals seeking to reskill), or through hybrid arrangements (e.g., apprenticeships combining on-job and classroom instruction).

Training, Development, and Self-Direction

Training traditionally denotes systematic approaches to modifying knowledge, skills, or attitudes for enhanced individual, team, or organizational effectiveness (Kraiger & Ford, 2021). Training programs typically feature formal structures: defined learning objectives, structured content delivery, designated timeframes, and assessment mechanisms. Development encompasses broader experiences—formal training supplemented by coursework, mentoring relationships, stretch assignments, and other activities preparing individuals for future roles (Dachner et al., 2021).

These constructs historically implied organizational sponsorship and direction. However, contemporary workforce realities increasingly involve work-related self-directed learning—intentional learning behaviors aimed at acquiring work-relevant capabilities, executed through learner initiative and self-regulation, occurring within or beyond organizational contexts. This formulation extends beyond organization-focused constructs like informal field-based learning (Wolfson et al., 2018) to encompass learning by workers without organizational affiliations.

Self-directed learning demands considerable self-regulatory capacity. Learners must identify skill gaps, select appropriate learning resources, schedule learning activities amid competing demands, monitor comprehension and skill acquisition, and judge when sufficient mastery has been achieved (Tannenbaum & Wolfson, 2022). These metacognitive and motivational demands distinguish self-directed from organization-directed learning, where needs assessment, content selection, and evaluation occur through institutional mechanisms.

Upskilling, Reskilling, and Skill Ecosystems

Two contemporary terms merit attention: upskilling—engaging in development activities to maintain competitiveness within one's current profession—and reskilling—pursuing learning to qualify for substantially different roles (ATD Research & DeVry Works, 2018). These concepts cut across formal/informal and organization/self-directed dimensions, focusing specifically on skill acquisition for maintaining or changing employment.

Upskilling aligns closely with traditional training by enhancing capabilities for existing job performance. Reskilling more often involves self-directed development as individuals pursue fundamentally new competencies for career transitions. Both concepts implicitly acknowledge that workers bear increasing responsibility for managing their own skill portfolios across career lifespans—a shift with significant equity implications we explore subsequently.

The Future-of-Work Landscape: Five Critical Disruptions

We identify five interconnected disruptions reshaping workforce learning requirements and opportunities. For each, we examine implications for both organizational and individual learning approaches.

Remote Work Proliferation and Workplace Digitization

The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed wholesale migration to remote work arrangements that persist post-pandemic at levels four to five times pre-pandemic rates (Lund et al., 2021). Remote work yields documented benefits including flexibility, improved work-life balance, and reduced commuting stress (Allen et al., 2015). However, it also creates distinctive challenges for workplace learning.

Impacts on learning systems: Organizations responded to pandemic disruptions by shifting training from face-to-face to online delivery, with in-person classroom hours declining from 40% to 16% between 2019 and 2020 (Association for Talent Development, 2021). While technology-enabled learning can be highly effective when properly designed (Sitzmann et al., 2006), hasty pandemic transitions often sacrificed quality for availability, leaving workers with suboptimal learning experiences.

More fundamentally, remote work eliminates or substantially reduces opportunities for informal, observational learning from colleagues and supervisors—learning mechanisms whose importance has been acknowledged but inadequately quantified (Tannenbaum et al., 2010). New employees particularly suffer from reduced exposure to organizational socialization, skill modeling, and professional network development during remote onboarding (Sani et al., 2023; Woo et al., 2023).

Person-centered implications: From individual perspectives, remote work increases reliance on self-directed learning while potentially reducing access to supports that facilitate such learning. Remote workers must proactively identify development needs, seek resources, and maintain motivation without the scaffolding provided by collegial presence and supervisory oversight. This burden falls disproportionately on workers with caregiving responsibilities, disability-related needs, lower incomes, or other factors limiting their capacity to create optimal home-based learning environments.

Demographic Transformation and Workforce Aging

Global workforces are aging significantly. In the United States, workers aged 55 and older represent the fastest-growing labor force segment, projected to constitute approximately 25% of workers by 2030 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024). Similar trends characterize workforces across Asia, Europe, and South America (International Labour Organization, 2024). This demographic shift intersects with technological acceleration, creating imperatives for older workers to continuously acquire new skills throughout extended careers.

Cognitive aging and learning: While individual aging trajectories vary considerably (Hertzog et al., 2008), fluid cognitive abilities supporting novel learning—particularly processing speed, working memory capacity, and abstract reasoning—typically decline beginning in early adulthood (Beier, 2022; Salthouse, 2010). Simultaneously, crystallized abilities reflecting accumulated knowledge and expertise can increase throughout much of the lifespan, potentially compensating for fluid ability declines when learning content relates to existing knowledge domains (Beier & Ackerman, 2005).

These patterns suggest that learning interventions for older workers should leverage existing expertise, connect new content to familiar knowledge structures, provide extended time for skill mastery, and potentially offer personalized instructional sequences matching individual ability profiles. Critically, older workers also confront age-related stereotypes regarding learning motivation and capacity (Posthuma & Campion, 2009)—stereotypes that can restrict access to development opportunities and become self-fulfilling when internalized by older workers themselves.

Person-centered considerations: Aging workers pursuing career transitions face particular challenges in assessing transferable skills and identifying accessible reskilling pathways. Understanding which aspects of one's knowledge and skill repertoire transfer to potential new roles—and which novel competencies must be developed—requires sophisticated self-assessment capabilities and labor market intelligence that many workers lack. Organizations can support older workers' self-directed learning by providing skill assessment tools, career counseling resources, and targeted development programs addressing age-related learning needs.

Climate Disruption and Displacement-Driven Migration

Anthropogenic climate change affects approximately 85% of the global population (Callaghan et al., 2021), with extreme weather events and environmental degradation displacing an estimated 20 million people annually (UNHCR, n.d.). Climate disruption will fundamentally alter work availability in affected regions, particularly for outdoor occupations and agriculture, while simultaneously driving both internal and cross-border migration.

Workforce and skill implications: Climate change creates dual challenges: workers in climate-affected regions must adapt to transformed working conditions or acquire entirely new skills for different occupations, while climate migration introduces diverse populations with varied skill profiles into recipient labor markets. For organizations, this means managing increasingly heterogeneous workforces reflecting diverse educational backgrounds, cultural contexts, language capabilities, and credential systems.

Research on climate-work intersections remains limited but growing. Studies examine worker knowledge about heat-related health risks (Reinau et al., 2013) and safety training effectiveness for extreme-climate work environments (Nielsen et al., 2023). However, much remains unknown about how climate change will reshape skill demands and how workers—particularly those outside organizational structures—can access necessary reskilling resources.

Migration and learning access: For displaced workers and international migrants, accurately assessing skill transferability across contexts is especially challenging given language barriers, cultural differences, credential non-recognition, and the general stress and trauma associated with forced displacement. Educational requirements and professional licensing from origin countries frequently go unrecognized in destination countries, effectively nullifying workers' existing qualifications. Prior educational difficulties may also undermine learning motivation and self-efficacy (Wu et al., 2021).

Organizations in climate-affected or migration-receiving regions should consider partnerships with workforce development agencies to provide displaced workers with skill assessment, reskilling opportunities aligned with emerging "green" occupations, and bridge programs facilitating credential recognition and supplemental training.

Precarious Work and the Informal Economy

The prevalence of non-standard work arrangements—gig work, temporary contracts, freelancing, and informal economic activity—has grown substantially. Over 61% of the global workforce participates in the informal economy (International Labour Organization, 2019), while gig economy workers have nearly doubled from 43 million in 2018 to 78 million currently, with projections suggesting over 50% of U.S. workers will engage in gig work by 2027 (Pew Research Center, 2021; Teamstage, 2023).

Informal economy diversity: The informal economy encompasses tremendous diversity. One segment includes highly skilled, micro-entrepreneurial workers in traditional creative occupations—artisans such as potters, weavers, and sculptors who sustain intergenerational livelihoods through culturally embedded skill transmission (Saxena, 2021). Another segment comprises daily-wage workers in agriculture, construction, vending, and personal services—often poorly compensated and economically precarious.

Despite this diversity, informal workers share common challenges: limited access to formal training and development resources, smaller professional networks for identifying learning opportunities, stereotyping as "low-skilled" even when possessing sophisticated traditional expertise, and minimal government support or regulatory protection (Saxena, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these vulnerabilities, forcing many informal workers to abandon traditional livelihoods when market access disappeared (Carr et al., 2024).

Learning in precarious arrangements: Gig and temporary workers affiliated with platform organizations face distinctive learning barriers. Work scope often narrows, with individuals compensated for executing specific tasks rather than developing broader competencies. Platform workers may lack co-worker contact for observational learning and collegial advice. Practice opportunities for skill refinement may be limited when each task performance directly affects client satisfaction and income. The need to continuously secure work leaves minimal time for non-income-generating learning activities (Wu et al., 2021).

For informal economy workers, learning and skill development occur primarily through informal mechanisms—observation, mentoring within family or community networks, experiential trial and error—rather than formal training programs (Saxena, 2021). While these informal systems have sustained livelihoods across generations, they may inadequately prepare workers for technological changes or market shifts requiring rapid adaptation.

Person-centered responses: Supporting learning for precarious and informal workers requires creative approaches. Recognition of prior learning through practical assessments can formally credential skills acquired outside educational institutions—an approach successfully implemented in India for informal economy workers (International Labour Organization, 2024). Dual-format apprenticeships combining workplace experience with classroom instruction can strengthen informal learning systems. Community-based organizations and regional workforce development agencies can provide skill mapping services, helping informal workers identify how traditional competencies transfer to alternative occupations when climate disruption, market changes, or other factors threaten existing livelihoods.

Technological Acceleration and AI Integration

Artificial intelligence and automation are fundamentally reshaping skill requirements across occupations (Lund et al., 2021). While technology eliminates some jobs entirely, more commonly it transforms task requirements within existing roles, necessitating continuous upskilling to maintain productivity as technological tools evolve.

Learning technology affordances: Technology simultaneously disrupts work and creates learning opportunities. Never before has work-relevant educational content been so accessible, with massive open online courses (MOOCs), professional development platforms, and specialized skill-training resources available—often at low or no cost (Beier, 2019). Adaptive learning technologies powered by AI promise personalized instruction tailored to individual learner needs, knowledge profiles, and learning preferences (Committee on How People Learn II, 2018).

However, these opportunities remain accessible only to those with reliable internet connectivity and digital devices—resources unavailable to substantial populations even in wealthy nations. Approximately one-third of the global population lacks internet access (Kemp, 2024). In the United States, about 4% of workers are classified as "working poor"—working more than 27 weeks annually while living below poverty thresholds—with poverty concentrated among women, racial minorities, and less-educated workers (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024). Technology-enabled learning opportunities effectively exclude these populations.

Personalization and adult learners: Most research on technology-enhanced, personalized learning examines undergraduate student samples, with virtually no published studies using working adult populations (Xie et al., 2019). This research gap is particularly concerning given that adult learners present more heterogeneous ability profiles than younger learners—reflecting accumulated expertise, idiosyncratic skill development through varied career experiences, and age-related cognitive changes (Ackerman, 1996).

Effective adaptive instruction for working adults requires understanding how to leverage crystallized knowledge while compensating for fluid ability declines, how motivational factors interact with cognitive capabilities during self-directed learning, and how to design interfaces and instructional sequences appropriate for learners with diverse digital literacy levels. These questions represent critical research frontiers as technology-enabled learning becomes increasingly central to workforce development.

Integrating Organization-Centered and Person-Centered Approaches

Addressing future-of-work learning challenges requires consciously integrating organizational and individual perspectives. Table 1 contrasts organization-centered and person-centered approaches across key learning-related questions.

Table 1: Contrasting Organization and Person-Centered Learning Frameworks

Learning Question	Organization-Centered Approach	Person-Centered Approach
Purpose	Training enhances organizational effectiveness through improved employee performance	Learning enables individuals to remain adaptable, engaged, and successfully employed throughout their careers
Needs Assessment Focus	Organizational goals and performance gaps; work analysis identifying required KSAs; person analysis determining which employees need training	Individual assessment of available job opportunities; identification of required skills, credentials, and education; self-assessment of current capabilities and development needs
Content Selection	Systematic instructional design aligned with organizational performance requirements	Individual identification of learning resources matching personal development needs, timeline constraints, and financial capacity
Delivery Responsibility	Organization-sponsored programs with designated instructors, curricula, and schedules	Individual selection among available options: employer programs, educational institutions, online platforms, apprenticeships, or informal learning arrangements
Success Metrics	Transfer of trained skills to job performance; organizational performance improvement; return on training investment	Individual employability enhancement; successful career transitions; sustained engagement in work that utilizes capabilities

Needs Assessment Across Frameworks

Traditional instructional systems design emphasizes organizational needs assessment examining organizational goals, work requirements, and individual employee skill gaps (Ford, 2021). This systematic process ensures training investments address genuine performance needs and target appropriate employee populations.

Person-centered approaches shift needs assessment responsibility to individuals, who must identify viable job opportunities, understand skill requirements, assess personal capability gaps, and evaluate whether they can realistically acquire needed competencies. This self-directed needs assessment faces several challenges:

Labor market opacity: Job seekers and workers outside organizations often lack clear visibility into emerging job requirements and growth sectors
Self-assessment difficulty: While some research suggests people can accurately self-assess specific, well-defined skills (Ackerman et al., 2002; Zell & Krizan, 2014), other evidence documents systematic self-assessment biases, particularly for novel domains (Kruger & Dunning, 1999)
Resource constraints: Conducting thorough self-assessment, researching occupational requirements, and evaluating learning options requires time and cognitive resources that may be unavailable to workers managing multiple jobs or caregiving responsibilities
Credentialing complexity: Understanding how various credentials (degrees, certificates, digital badges, micro-credentials) translate to labor market value requires navigating complex, often opaque systems

Organizations can support more effective individual needs assessment by providing career development resources, skill assessment tools, and transparent communication about future capability requirements. Regional workforce development initiatives can offer similar supports for non-organizationally affiliated workers.

Skill Mapping and Transfer Analysis

Economists and workforce development specialists have developed tools for matching worker skills to job requirements and identifying feasible career transitions. The Occupational Information Network (O*NET) provides detailed occupational information including knowledge, skills, abilities, work activities, and education requirements for thousands of job classifications (National Research Council, 2010). Researchers have created matrices calculating similarity scores between occupations based on these factors, enabling identification of relatively accessible career transitions (World Economic Forum, 2018).

Regional skillshed analyses apply similar logic at community levels, crosswalking declining occupations with growth occupations to identify reskilling pathways. For example, analysis in Columbus, Ohio revealed that transitioning from computer operator (declining) to web developer (growing) would be relatively straightforward given substantial skill overlap, while moving from sewing machine operator to web developer would require extensive reskilling (Khalaf & Jolley, 2020).

These tools offer valuable support for person-centered learning by helping individuals understand:

Which current skills transfer to potential new roles
What additional capabilities require development
Relative difficulty of various career transition pathways
Training resources aligned with specific transition goals

Organizations can leverage similar approaches for internal workforce planning, identifying employees whose skills position them for emerging roles and designing targeted development programs facilitating internal transitions.

Self-Regulation and Metacognitive Skill Development

Person-centered learning inherently demands strong self-regulatory capabilities: goal setting, planning, attention management, progress monitoring, and adaptive strategy adjustment (Tannenbaum & Wolfson, 2022). These metacognitive skills—thinking about one's own thinking and learning—often receive insufficient attention in workplace learning contexts despite their centrality to lifelong learning success.

There exists substantial literature on helping adults "learn to learn" (Cornford, 2002; Merriam & Baumgartner, 2020), and organizations like the Center for Creative Leadership have documented effective experiential learning practices through extensive interviews with successful executives (Dai et al., 2013). However, translating these insights into accessible resources for diverse worker populations remains underdeveloped.

Practical tools supporting self-regulated learning include lifelong learning matrices that prompt learners to systematically identify competencies, map developmental opportunities, reflect on learning progress, and track goal achievement (Kraiger et al., 2020). Such tools provide scaffolding for workers developing stronger metacognitive and self-regulatory capabilities—capabilities essential not just for current skill development but for sustained career-long learning.

Evidence-Based Organizational Responses

Table 2: Workforce Learning Disruptions and Learning System Impacts

Disruption Type	Key Trends or Projections	Impacts on Learning Systems	Person-Centered Implications	Vulnerable or Affected Populations	Proposed Interventions
Remote Work Proliferation and Workplace Digitization	Migration to remote work persists at 4-5 times pre-pandemic rates; classroom training declined from 40% to 16% (2019-2020).	Shift to online delivery; reduction in informal/observational learning and reduced exposure to socialization for new hires.	Increased reliance on self-directed learning; reduced access to supports; difficulty creating optimal home learning environments.	New employees, workers with caregiving responsibilities, those with disabilities, or lower-income individuals.	Structured virtual knowledge-sharing forums, virtual mentoring, job shadowing technology, and remote supervisor support.
Technological Acceleration and AI Integration	AI transforms task requirements; one-third of global population lacks internet access; 4% of U.S. workers are "working poor."	Rise of MOOCs and adaptive learning technologies; lack of research on tech-enabled instruction for adult (non-student) learners.	Digital divide excludes many; necessity for high digital literacy and reliable device access for self-directed upskilling.	Workers without internet access, the working poor, women, and racial minorities.	Ensuring universal broadband access, teaching metacognitive/learning-to-learn skills, and creating adaptive instruction for adults.
Demographic Transformation and Workforce Aging	Workers aged 55+ are the fastest-growing labor segment, projected to be 25% of the U.S. workforce by 2030.	Needs assessment must account for cognitive aging (fluid ability decline) versus crystallized expertise gains.	Challenges in assessing transferable skills; necessity for self-assessment and navigating age-related stereotypes.	Older workers (55+) and aging populations globally (Asia, Europe, South America).	Personalized learning pathways, extended time for mastery, intergenerational learning communities, and career counseling.
Precarious Work and the Informal Economy	61% of global workforce is in the informal economy; over 50% of U.S. workers projected to engage in gig work by 2027.	Gig/platform tasks narrow scope, reducing broader competency development; limited co-worker contact for learning.	Informal workers lack access to formal resources; time for non-income-generating learning is minimal.	Gig workers, temporary contractors, freelancers, and daily-wage earners in agriculture/construction.	Practical assessment for Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), dual-format apprenticeships, and community-based skill mapping.
Climate Disruption and Displacement-Driven Migration	20 million people displaced annually by environmental events; affects 85% of the global population.	Need for organizations to manage heterogeneous workforces with diverse credentials, languages, and cultural backgrounds.	Difficulty assessing skill transferability; credentials from origin countries often unrecognized; trauma and stress affecting efficacy.	Displaced workers, international migrants, and those in outdoor/agricultural occupations.	Partnerships with workforce agencies for reskilling in "green" occupations and bridge programs for credential recognition.

Organizations seeking to prepare workforces for future-of-work realities while supporting individual employee development can implement several evidence-based practices.

Transparent Communication and Internal Opportunity Mapping

Organizations should clearly communicate anticipated future skill requirements, emerging opportunities, and potential career pathways. This transparency enables employees to conduct more accurate personal needs assessments and make informed development decisions. Internal opportunity maps showing how current roles connect to future positions, required skill development for various transitions, and available learning resources empower employee agency while advancing organizational capability planning.

Investment in Self-Managed Development Programs

Research demonstrates that organizational investment in employee-directed development yields positive outcomes. Tuition reimbursement programs, for example, reduce turnover while building firm-specific human capital (Benson et al., 2004; Manchester, 2012). Organizations may fear that development support enables employees to leave for better opportunities, but evidence suggests such investments enhance both retention and recruitment by signaling organizational commitment to employee growth (Dachner et al., 2021).

Organizations can extend self-managed development support beyond tuition reimbursement to include:

Time allocation for learning activities during work hours
Digital learning platform subscriptions with diverse content libraries
Mentoring networks connecting employees with relevant expertise
Communities of practice facilitating peer learning and knowledge sharing
Recognition systems celebrating learning achievements and skill development

Redesigning Remote and Hybrid Work for Learning

As remote work persists, organizations must intentionally design these environments to facilitate rather than impede learning. Strategies include:

Structured knowledge-sharing forums: Regular virtual sessions where employees present projects, share expertise, or discuss industry developments create learning opportunities replacing informal interactions
Virtual mentoring and peer learning programs: Formal pairing of experienced and developing employees for regular video conversations supports observational learning and advice-seeking
Job shadowing and rotation facilitation: Technology enabling employees to observe colleagues' work processes, even remotely, maintains experiential learning opportunities
Transfer-of-training support: Supervisor training on providing remote support for skill application, regular check-ins on learning progress, and organizational reinforcement of newly acquired capabilities maximize training transfer in remote contexts (Hughes et al., 2020)

Age-Inclusive Development Practices

Organizations should actively combat age-related stereotypes while implementing practices supporting older worker learning:

Personalized learning approaches: Adaptive technologies or individualized development plans accommodating diverse ability profiles, learning paces, and style preferences
Extended learning time: Allowing older workers additional time for skill mastery compensates for normative processing speed declines
Expertise leveraging: Connecting new content to workers' accumulated knowledge facilitates learning while recognizing valuable experience
Intergenerational learning communities: Structured interactions between older and younger workers support bidirectional learning, with younger workers sharing digital expertise while older workers contribute strategic knowledge and historical perspective
Career development counseling: Support for older workers in assessing skills, identifying interests, and exploring late-career options including phased retirement, internal transitions, or reskilling for new roles

Strategic Reskilling and Green Transitions

Organizations in climate-affected industries or regions should proactively address workforce transitions toward sustainable practices and "green" occupations (Zacher et al., 2023). This includes:

Mapping skills from legacy processes to sustainable alternatives, identifying transferable competencies and specific reskilling needs
Partnering with educational institutions and workforce development organizations to design accessible training programs
Creating apprenticeship programs combining workplace experience with formal instruction for technical skills in renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, or environmental management
Providing displaced workers from declining industries with priority access to reskilling programs and internal opportunities

Research Frontiers and Unanswered Questions

Expanding workplace learning research to encompass person-centered perspectives opens numerous research directions. We highlight several particularly critical areas.

Broadening Sample Representativeness

Industrial-organizational psychology research samples often inadequately represent labor force diversity (Bergman & Jean, 2016). Incorporating a person-centered focus requires intentionally studying:

Age-diverse samples: Most workplace learning research samples younger and mid-career workers; older workers remain substantially understudied despite growing labor force representation
Informal and gig economy workers: These populations rarely participate in I-O research, yet understanding their learning needs, practices, and constraints is essential for comprehensive workforce development approaches
Economically precarious workers: Low-income workers managing multiple jobs, workers without stable housing, and those experiencing food insecurity face distinctive learning barriers requiring examination
Global South populations: Workforce learning research disproportionately examines workers in wealthy nations; expanding geographic diversity reveals different challenges and innovative solutions from diverse economic and cultural contexts

Self-Directed Learning Capability and Support

Critical questions regarding self-directed learning remain unanswered:

Self-assessment accuracy: How accurately do workers assess their own skills relative to job requirements? What factors improve or undermine self-assessment accuracy? How does self-assessment accuracy affect learning motivation, resource selection, and skill development outcomes?
Needs assessment support: What organizational or community-level interventions most effectively help individuals identify skill gaps, locate quality learning resources, and make informed development decisions?
Metacognitive skill development: How can organizations and educational institutions effectively teach learning-to-learn skills? Which interventions best support development of goal-setting, planning, attention management, and progress-monitoring capabilities?
Motivation and persistence: What factors enable workers to maintain learning motivation amid competing demands? How do perceptions of learning difficulty, self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, and goal structures affect sustained engagement in self-directed learning?

Technology-Enhanced Learning for Working Adults

Despite technology's centrality to contemporary learning, major research gaps persist:

Adaptive instruction effectiveness: Which personalization algorithms and adaptive features most benefit adult learners with heterogeneous knowledge and ability profiles? How should adaptive systems account for crystallized knowledge advantages while accommodating fluid ability declines?
Engagement and completion: MOOCs and other open-enrollment programs exhibit notoriously low completion rates; what design features, support systems, or motivational interventions improve persistence?
Transfer facilitation: How can technology-delivered instruction maximize transfer to work contexts when learners lack organizational supports (supervisor reinforcement, peer modeling, structured application opportunities)?
Equity in access and benefit: Beyond basic connectivity and device access, what factors affect whether technology-enabled learning genuinely expands opportunity versus reproducing existing inequalities?

Learning Environment Taxonomies

While substantial research examines organizational training environment characteristics, less is known about learning environments more broadly—particularly for self-directed learning outside organizational contexts. Developing taxonomies of learning environments based on their capability to support effective learning would advance both research and practice. Such taxonomies might classify environments by:

Opportunities for practice (frequency, realism, feedback quality)
Scaffolding provided (instructional support, error correction, worked examples)
Social learning affordances (peer interaction, expert modeling, collaborative problem-solving)
Metacognitive prompting (self-assessment cues, strategy suggestions, progress visualization)
Motivational features (goal-setting support, progress recognition, autonomy provision)

Understanding how environments scoring higher on these dimensions affect learning outcomes—and how individuals can create or select more supportive environments—would inform both institutional design and individual decision-making.

Integration Across I-O Psychology Domains

Person-centered workplace learning intersects substantially with other I-O psychology areas that have received limited integration:

Job crafting: How do workers craft their jobs to create learning opportunities? What role does skill development play in effective job crafting? Can organizations intentionally design roles to facilitate growth-oriented crafting?
Career development: How do career interests and work values evolve across careers? How do perceived career constraints affect learning motivation? Can career counseling interventions enhance self-directed learning effectiveness?
Occupational health psychology: How do work stressors affect learning capacity? How might learning opportunities serve as job resources promoting wellbeing? What interventions mitigate stress that undermines learning among economically precarious workers?
Diversity, equity, and inclusion: Access to learning and development represents a critical equity issue; how can organizations ensure equitable opportunity? What interventions combat stereotypes that restrict access to development for older workers, workers of color, or others facing bias?

Practice Recommendations

Drawing from research evidence and conceptual analysis, we offer recommendations for practitioners seeking to support workforce learning in future-of-work contexts.

For Organizational Leaders and HR Professionals

Reframe development as shared responsibility: Communicate that capability development benefits both organizations and individual careers, positioning development investment as partnership rather than organizational obligation or individual burden.

Create learning opportunity marketplaces: Develop internal platforms where employees can explore diverse learning resources (formal courses, stretch assignments, mentoring, project participation), understand skill requirements for various career paths, and track development progress.

Implement "learning time" policies: Allocate dedicated time during work hours for employee-directed learning, signaling organizational commitment while addressing time constraints that impede self-directed development.

Design roles for growth: Build skill development into job design rather than treating it as supplemental activity. Include expectations for continuous learning in performance management, provide resources for experimentation and skill application, and celebrate learning achievements.

Support career conversations: Train managers to conduct regular career development conversations exploring employee interests, discussing organizational opportunities, and collaboratively planning development activities.

Measure and communicate skill trends: Analyze workforce skill portfolios, identify capability gaps relative to strategic objectives, and transparently share findings to inform individual development decisions.

For Learning and Development Specialists

Expand content modalities: Provide learning through diverse formats accommodating varied preferences, schedules, and learning contexts: microlearning modules, extended courses, simulations, peer learning communities, coaching, and experiential assignments.

Personalize learning pathways: Leverage adaptive technologies and assessment tools to customize learning sequences based on individual knowledge, skill levels, learning preferences, and career objectives.

Build learning communities: Facilitate networks where employees share knowledge, discuss challenges, and learn from peers' experiences, partially compensating for informal learning lost in remote environments.

Teach learning skills explicitly: Integrate metacognitive skill development—goal setting, self-assessment, learning strategy selection, progress monitoring—into development programs rather than assuming learners possess these capabilities.

Create learning transfer support systems: Design post-training interventions—action planning, peer accountability partnerships, supervisor coaching, refresher sessions, performance support tools—that maximize skill application and retention.

Evaluate learning, not just training: Shift evaluation focus from program completion to skill acquisition, applying evidence-based assessment methods that measure genuine capability enhancement.

For Policymakers and Workforce Development Agencies

Develop regional skill intelligence: Create accessible resources mapping local labor market trends, growing occupations, skill requirements, and available training programs, supporting informed individual decision-making.

Establish quality standards for learning providers: Implement certification or rating systems helping workers identify effective programs and avoid predatory, low-quality options.

Provide whole-person assessment services: Offer free or subsidized comprehensive skill assessments, career counseling, and transition planning support, particularly targeting displaced workers, informal economy workers, and other vulnerable populations.

Create learning infrastructure: Ensure universal broadband access, public computing facilities, and digital literacy programs, treating learning access as essential infrastructure.

Support innovative credentialing: Develop recognition-of-prior-learning systems that credential skills acquired outside formal education, particularly benefiting informal economy workers and those with nontraditional backgrounds.

Fund community-based learning partnerships: Support collaborations between employers, educational institutions, community organizations, and workforce agencies to deliver accessible training aligned with regional labor market needs.

For Individual Workers and Job Seekers

Cultivate learning mindsets: View learning as continuous career-long activity rather than time-limited credentialing, remaining alert to skill development opportunities in daily work.

Conduct regular self-assessment: Periodically evaluate current skills against evolving job requirements, labor market trends, and personal career interests, identifying development priorities.

Leverage organizational resources: Actively utilize available employer learning resources, seek mentoring relationships, volunteer for stretch assignments, and participate in knowledge-sharing communities.

Build learning networks: Develop relationships with peers, industry contacts, and experts who can provide advice, share resources, and support learning motivation.

Practice learning strategies: Deliberately employ evidence-based learning techniques—spaced practice, retrieval practice, self-explanation, elaborative interrogation—to maximize skill development efficiency.

Advocate for development opportunities: Request training resources, propose skill-building projects, and articulate how your development aligns with organizational needs, actively shaping your learning opportunities.

Conclusion

The future of work presents both challenges and opportunities for workforce learning. Rapid technological change, demographic transformation, climate disruption, work arrangement shifts, and ongoing globalization create unprecedented demands for continuous capability development throughout extended careers. Meeting these demands requires fundamental reconceptualization of workplace learning—moving beyond exclusive emphasis on organization-centered training toward integrated frameworks embracing person-centered perspectives alongside organizational imperatives.

This broader view recognizes that effective learning ecosystems must serve diverse stakeholders across the labor market spectrum: organizationally affiliated employees, independent contractors navigating platform economies, informal economy workers sustaining traditional livelihoods, climate-displaced populations seeking new opportunities, and older workers managing career transitions. Industrial-organizational psychology possesses substantial knowledge and methodological sophistication to contribute meaningfully to these challenges, but only if the field intentionally expands its scope and commitments beyond organizational service toward genuine workforce development.

The path forward requires concerted effort from multiple actors. Organizations must invest in employee development as shared endeavor, creating systems and cultures that facilitate continuous learning. Educational institutions and learning technology providers must design accessible, effective programs serving heterogeneous adult learners. Policymakers and workforce development agencies must build infrastructure and provide supports enabling equitable learning access. Researchers must study diverse populations, examine learning outside organizational boundaries, and generate evidence informing practice. Individual workers must cultivate learning capabilities and proactively manage career-long development.

Ultimately, the question is not simply how to train workers for future jobs, but how to build capability ecosystems enabling all members of the labor force—regardless of age, employment arrangement, geographic location, or economic circumstances—to develop skills, sustain meaningful work, and navigate career-long transitions in an era of perpetual disruption. Addressing this question represents both professional challenge and ethical imperative for industrial-organizational psychology in the twenty-first century.

Research Infographic

Reimagining Workforce Learning Slide Deck

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Jonathan H. Westover, PhD, Chief Research Officer (Nexus Institute for Work and AI); Co-Founder & Chief Workforce and Learning Officer (Future State University); Founder & CEO (Human Capital Innovations); Professor of Organizational Leadership & Change (UVU). Read Jonathan Westover's executive profile here.

Suggested Citation: Westover, J. H. (2026). Reimagining Workforce Learning: Building Capability in an Era of Continuous Disruption. Human Capital Leadership Review, 38(3). doi.org/10.70175/hclreview.2020.38.3.3