New Podcast: Is Your Learning Tech Ready for the Skills Era?

Sarah Harvey

quinta-feira, 3 de julho de 2025

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This is the final blog post on our three-part Beyond the Grid podcast series. Check out Post No. 1 and read post No. 2.

For years, compliance ruled as a top corporate training priority.

Not anymore.

For the first time, upskilling and reskilling are ascendant, according to Fosway Group.

But even with that momentum, there remains a lot of head scratching happening among learning and business leaders over how to make skills work.

What does it mean for organizations trying to build agile, skills-first learning strategies?

“That’s still an ongoing conversation,” says Fiona Leteney, Senior Analyst at Fosway Group.

In the final episode of our three-part podcast series, Leteney and Degreed Co-CEO Max Wessel unpack the shift, explore the 2025 Fosway 9-Grid for Learning Systems research, and discuss how buyers can thoughtfully work with learning tech vendors.

Where Skills Strategy Breaks Down

While enthusiasm for skills is growing, execution remains complex. Organizations are grappling with granularity—”Are we managing 50 skills or 50,000?”—along with data exchange challenges and systems that don’t talk to each other.

Too often, talent and learning data are still siloed—leaving teams without a clear view of employee capabilities or opportunities to reskill for open roles. Forward-thinking business leaders understand that systems need to integrate and scale with minimal friction and quickly deliver measurable outcomes.

Leteney frames it like this: “Interoperability and the integration of systems within an ecosystem is one of the most important things. ”

Interoperability vs. Consolidation

In some cases, employees have to log into three separate platforms just to access one course. That’s inefficient and unsustainable.

The pressure to consolidate tech stacks and cut costs is real. But when decisions are made without input from learning teams, critical capabilities can get lost.

Advice for Learning Leaders

When asked how organizations can rise to the skills challenge, Leteney is clear: “Partner with your vendors… We saw in all the research, often it’s the partnerships where the value is, so that you can be part of the conversation as a buyer, you can influence the roadmap and you can influence the direction of travel—and also give the reality checks to the vendors.

“The devil’s always in the details, and every organization’s different, and it’s finding those vendors that you can actually have that conversation with.”

That kind of collaboration is exactly what Degreed was designed to support.

We power connected ecosystems that make skill development work—from granular data insights to automated and AI-enhanced experiences that adapt in real time.

Whether you’re launching a new strategy or rethinking your entire learning tech stack, Degreed can help you make it seamless—and scalable.

Let’s talk about how Degreed can help you future-proof your learning ecosystem.