Resources Blog From Vision to Execution: Integrating Learning, Skills, and Culture for Business Growth – 360 Learning – Webinar Takeaways and Recap 
HR and Workplace

From Vision to Execution: Integrating Learning, Skills, and Culture for Business Growth – 360 Learning – Webinar Takeaways and Recap 

Author: Jana Velevska Last updated: February 7, 2025 Reading time: 7 minutes

Nena Dimovska, our head of People Sucess sat down with David James, Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning to discuss how companies can transform traditional learning, find skills gaps and how to properly invest into closing those gaps. Additionally, they discuss how technology and the recent development of AI can transform the learning path but also how technology can help HR give constructive, unbiased feedback.  

Finally, they agree that leadership and business goals must be aligned to achieve success.  

In this article you will find the most important takeaways from each section and some interesting questions that the audience asked them.  

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Why Skills Matter  

To kick off the conversation our host David James shared an interesting report from the State of Online Learning report they conducted earlier in 2024 which says that: 

  • 70% of CEOs say that their companies are facing a critical skills gap  
  • 94% of employees say that they would stay at a company longer if they invested in their learning and development 

This report only stresses the need for an integrated learning experience for both leadership and employees.  

The guest Nena Dimovska, our head of people success, agreed with David on the urgency of skills development and learning and stressed that companies should not wait for problems to become systemic. She adds that return on talent is something many companies are not aware of, and that talent is an intangible asset. Therefore, companies need to invest in L&D (learning and development) to drive performance and feedback culture.  

They both agree that HR needs to challenge the company to close the skill, will and time gaps through a holistic transformation: reskill – redeploy- responsible transition – new talent.  

Aligning Leadership, HR, and L&D  

Wrapping up the previous section on the thought that leadership needs the right tools to close the skills gap, David and Nena move on to discuss how leadership, HR and L&D can be aligned to achieve this.  

David conducted a quick questionnaire with the audience, and the results showed that there is room for improvement when aligning leadership with L&D (you can see full results from the questionnaire in the video). Building on this point, both agree there is room for improvement, but they are happy that at least people know of this, and that indeed is a great start.  

Nena emphasizes that alignment is not nice to have, but alignment gives the company a competitive edge. Additionally, strategic skills pathways are the solution she proposed to achieve this alignment and align company goals with L&D. However, for her it is not about learning new skills but also learning efficiently, which leads to a reduction in retention costs. 

“Revamp your talent strategy to build a truly strategic, less siloed talent system that generates high returns over time.” – Nena Dimovska 

From Traditional Learning to Performance-Driven and Skills-Based Learning  

Moving on into the conversation, David and Nena discuss how traditional measurements in L&D are just not enough. David explains how context is critical to professional skills development and there should be a distinction between technical and transferable skills versus proprietary skills. For him, traditional learning is too generic to be useful, it is centralized, slow, and static compared to performance driven learning, which is relevant and contextual, democratized, fast and interactive.  

What he proposes is a 5-step framework which focuses on:  

  • Change your L&D mindset to impact business KPIs  
  • Understand the problem you are trying to resolve  
  • Focus on employee performance  
  • Show how your actions are pushing things forward  
  • Involve subject matter experts in content creation  

How to apply the framework – technology is the answer, adds David.  

Nena also agrees with him, adding that skills-based learning drives performance, focuses on key capabilities and helps decrease costs by increasing ROI. She also shares the example of Semos Cloud where employees can learn and grow without the added pressure and be empowered, and leadership can easily make data-driven decisions based on the skills needed or acquired.  

Leveraging Technology to Close Skills Gap  

To wrap up the conversation Nena and David focus on how AI and technology can facilitate alignment, learning, and skills development.  

The fact that AI right is a common occurrence in people’s lives David suggests we take advantage of it when it comes to learning to create data sets, perform skills mapping, create career paths, gain proprietary knowledge, and automation.  

Nena agrees with David and adds that technology, paradoxically, can make us more human by helping us foster a more human approach to the employee experience. Technology can help us not just build skills but also create a stronger more human-centered culture by enabling us to utterly understand and optimize our Talent.  

“AI doesn’t replace the human connection; it replaces fumbling along and helps us unlock greater potential.” – David James 

With skills-based evaluations, we can pinpoint exactly where we need to grow, match people with projects that amplify their unique capabilities, and reveal hidden areas for growth that can enable targeted and efficient upskilling, and the results are a more capable workforce ready for the future.  

On top of this technology can help us create personalized experiences, predict future skills gaps, provide real-time data, and most important of all technology enables us to see people clearly, they conclude.  

Final Thoughts 

Wrapping up the webinar both David and Nena agree on the following points: 

  • Leadership and business alignment is the only way to close skills gaps and impact performance  
  • Performance-driven learning is the way forward  
  • Skills are the engine, AI is the GPS, and the manager is the driver  
  • Data-driven, hyper-personalized EX (employee experience) is here and still under construction. Embrace it or be left behind.  

Q&A From the Webinar  

  1. Can you recommend prompts for LLM tools to help develop coaching skills? 
  • Before you work with LLM tools find a peer in your team that you can work with and learn from them because coaching skill is a proficient and complex skill, it is not it is not a technical skill, but it is a people skill. When using ChatGPT, be specific, explain who you are, where you come from and what is the specific thing you would like to learn.  
  1. How would you work with a c-suit that pushes back thinking that skills are a “culture change” that they do not feel the organization is prepared to manage? 
  • Align as much as possible to management challenges and try to solve a challenge in the company. The most difficult job of HR is to be the change agent therefore you need to make sure to clearly present data and ROI if this change happens. Be informed about what works best for the company and be ready to present it.  
  1. Can you give an example of which skills were needed in your team Nena and how those needs showed up? 
  • As part of our skill and intelligence platform, we were able to define stronger skills and skill gaps in our teams and next, we needed to decide whether we would invest in people or technical skills.  
  1. Would you suggest any tools for building skills taxonomy? 
  • SkillsGPT to build your skills muscle and test the power of AI. 360Learning is a powerful learning engine for skills matching and development.  

Watch the full episode here and see what other interesting points our speakers had to share.