Innovation, insights and the power of shadow L&D
Connect 2025 conference session looks at how L&D teams can uncover what colleagues are really using genAI for, how to use those insights to co-create ways to support it and prove its value to the business.
Employee-led learning, or shadow L&D, – the learning and innovation that takes place day in and day out across the organisation and that L&D and HR are probably unaware of – is something that needs to be harnessed if organisations want to innovate, especially around AI.
In his conference talk at the Learning Network Connect Conference 2025, Martin Couzins, CEO, Insights Media, drew on his experience of creating peer communities to highlight the need for L&D and HR to tap into the innovation that takes place across organisations.
Many employees are using genAI tools in their work and that means they are innovating the way they work. The questions for L&D are: do you know what’s happening? Where in the organisation? Who’s doing it? What’s the impact? And what insights from this innovation are worth harnessing for the wider organisation?
It’s important for L&D teams to deeply understand what people are doing in their jobs day to day and how they are learning and innovating. “Your employees are a very vlaubale source of data and the insights you generate into how they learn and innovate can inform how L&D scales innovation – something that will become more pressing as organisations look to use genAI,” says Couzins.
Insights Media’s research and insights are used to generated unbiased feedback and insights that help suppliers and inhouse teams become more successful – through product and service development, stronger relationships, speaking the language of customers and stakeholders and demonstrating vale and impact.
Couzins adds, “When L&D teams talk about data the focus tends to be on outputs from training programmes. I think there is a huge opportunity to look beyond that and to collect data on how work is done, what innovation looks like, where the blocks exist etc. Innovation is learning and learning leads to innovation and the innovation narrative is far more engaging for senior stakeholders right now as tey look to AI to transform how work is done.”