December 20, 2024
As we end the year, it’s time for me to join the merry band of L&D professionals reflecting on 2024.
In a nutshell, it’s been a year of resilience, where budget cuts and AI both tested and shaped the charity sector.
Funding crisis
If you work in the sector, most of you have been affected by budget cuts and even redundancies. I’ve spoken to hundreds of charities over the last year and only one hasn’t been affected. I’ve been running Little Man Project for nearly 15 years and I don’t remember when the sector was hit by so many challenges at once.
Firstly, we’ve had the hangover from the reduction in fundraising during COVID. Secondly, the cost-of-living crisis has affected charitable giving by the public, a reduction in volunteers, and money available from councils and central government. This crisis has also meant an increased demand for these services! The third, and perhaps the one less discussed, is the impact of the rise and popularity of Vinted. This has resulted in a reduction in quality donations and spending in charity shops.
All these points are clearly interdependent. COVID and the current recession are connected, leading people to struggle to pay bills while facing job losses, which means those small amounts of income from Vinted, for some, have become essential, not nice to have.
The impact on L&D in charities has been notifiable and predictable. Budgets were cut, services were reduced, and jobs were lost. As a business that supports charities, we’ve had to pivot and find new ways to support organisations as their requirements change. One of those has been our Elearning Unlocked programme, but we’ve also introduced lower-cost elearning solutions and have exciting plans for completely new services and partnerships in 2025. We consider ourselves lucky to have a good reputation, years of experience and a supportive community that continues to recommend and promote us in their network. If you are one of these people, thank you!
AI
This year, AI also hit L&D like a freight train (if that freight train was every speaker, event, solution provider, and LinkedIn posting). Has the freight train actually changed what we do? Maybe, but not as much as they predicted (certainly not in the charity sector, which has little extra money to spend even if it will save money).
For us, as content creators, aside from the ability to improve our text faster, we’ve probably seen the most impact of using AI in the voicing of videos. This is now easier and cheaper to produce, a saving we have instantly passed on to our clients. Changes to authoring tools like Articulate and support tools like Review My Elearning are yet to impress (although we still love both tools!) 😊
Learning and community
In a year when change was happening and fast, I challenged myself to immerse myself back into the general L&D community. I’ve been attending the fabulous Charity Learning Consortium member’s meetings for years, which enrich and enlighten me, but I wanted to attend a variety of other events to expand my knowledge and to share that with charities.
As a small business owner, spending time and money to attend events can be tricky, but I managed to attend:
- Learning Technologies
- Festival of Work
- CIPD Annual Conference
- World of Learning (Birmingham and London)
- Learning Network Conference
- IDTX
Did I learn a lot? Probably not as much as I wanted to (for the investment involved), but enough to make it worth my while. In addition to filming videos overviews (see our YouTube channel to watch) and giving presentations to charities on my experiences, I’ve also found myself regularly suggesting ideas to charities about things I’ve seen people present. This helps to enrich the conversations I have with clients and other charities alike.
So, if you’re considering attending something outside of the charity sector in 2025… I say go for it.. but stick to the free talks in the exhibition… trust me, they are often where good practice and practical ideas can be found.
LinkedIn and networking
This year I’ve also embraced LinkedIn as the new Twitter/X (a cesspool I have long abandoned). It’s a hugely supportive place (on the whole) and full of reflective and supportive information.
Along the way, I’ve met many new people and reconnected with people I haven’t seen for a while. It’s been enjoyable, affirmed my love of my role and the feeling of how powerful our work can be and my general love for the sector!
Tap me up!
If you want to have a call to discuss ANY L&D-related topic, feel free to email me. I’m happy to have a virtual coffee with anyone about anything learning-related. It might not be my area of expertise, but I can probably point you to a book, podcast, person, presentation, or case study that might be helpful.
Takeaways
So, in a year of change, what positive takeaways do I have to offer?
- If you aren’t already demonstrating the value of what you do to your organisation, make this your primary objective for 2025. Focus on aligning with the organisation’s goals and actively contributing to achieving them. Simply saying, “We ran this programme or people completed this much elearning” is no longer sufficient to prove your impact. Instead, concentrate on supporting organisational objectives, helping achieve them, and clearly communicating the impact you’ve made.
- Investing in your staff might seem counterintuitive during financial struggles, but it’s one of the best solutions to navigate tough times. Supporting your team to excel in their current roles or retraining them as the organisation pivots and adapts can have a significant impact. At the World of Learning conference, Robert Peston confirmed that our best way out of this crisis is to increase productivity and invest in our organisations and people. This doesn’t have to be high-priced training programmes (Elearning Unlocked starts at just £995 😊). It can also be books, the time to research, resources or time to attend free events like the Charity Learning Consortium members’ meetings. We should lead by example and use innovative ways to develop our staff, thus demonstrating just how to do this for other departments. If we don’t show it can be done and it is worth doing… then why will other departments do it?
- Keep a watchful eye on AI (if you aren’t already). One of the best ways I’ve found is by looking at LinkedIn or Instagram posts that give recommendations. Check out what the tools can do, how much they would cost/save and have a play with the free versions. I first saw the tool ElevenLabs on an Instagram reel, tried the free trial and quickly saw the benefits to us and our clients. But this research shouldn’t just be about how it can help L&D. Use this as an opportunity to share ideas with other groups in the organisation. Create an AI organisational-wide group to share good practices, build elearning resources to promote its safe use and write and share about your experiences.
In summary
As I close, it’s been a tough year for our sector, but I see optimism and new opportunities in 2025. I’ve referenced a few times this year a quote from Marshall Goldsmith I heard on a podcast that reminds us that ‘What got us here, won’t keep us here’.
We need to learn, change and adapt.
I’ve also mentioned LinkedIn a few times here, so it’s nice to end with a quote from Reid Hoffman, one of the co-founders of LinkedIn, which is, ‘Innovation comes from people meeting adversity with creativity and resilience’.
So, join me in dusting off the pain of this 2024 and innovating the sh*t out of 2025.