The HR Community Podcast
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Civitas Talent is excited to bring you a series of podcasts dedicated to the HR community. This is a space where you can learn best-practice solutions from HR community leaders, with host Shane O'Neill.
Whether you’re a CEO, HR executive or operating across the wider HR sector - this podcast is for you!
The HR Community Podcast
How AI Is Changing Learning and Why Soft Skills Matter More Than Ever, with Peter Kokkinos, VP at Udemy
The way we learn at work is finally catching up to the way we actually work. Shane O’Neill sits down with Udemy APAC VP and MD Peter Kokkinos to unpack how AI is transforming learning from a one-size-fits-all catalog into personalized, in-the-flow support that meets people at the exact moment of need. From the early days of laser discs to today’s AI-powered role plays, Peter shares what’s changed, what still doesn’t work, and why soft skills like critical thinking, communication, and leadership now matter more than ever.
We dive into AI fluency as a new baseline capability—less about mastering a specific tool, more about using the tools you have to improve real workflows. Peter explains how demand for AI skills has surged across functions like HR, finance, operations, and marketing, and why organizations that frame learning around outcomes (productivity, mobility, retention) see stronger engagement. We also get practical about culture: how leadership intent shows up in budgets and time, how to personalize learning paths based on current skills and role transitions, and how to deliver learning inside the tools employees already use, reducing friction and increasing adoption.
Measurement gets a much-needed reset. Instead of counting hours, we focus on skills confidence proven in simulations, visible behavior change, and usage of approved AI tools that ties to performance. You’ll hear candid takes on common pitfalls—copy-paste AI undermining learning—and concrete ideas to future proof your HR function with contextual practice, embedded guidance, and smarter metrics. If you’re ready to move past generic courses and build a learning culture that actually moves the needle, this conversation will give you the language, the levers, and the next steps.
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Welcome to the HR Community Podcast. My name is Jane O'Neill, founder of Philip Talent Talent, the HR and HSD recruitment community. Each episode we will host HR leaders and let's coast their journey and let's cover best practice HR solutions across the HR industry. Whether you're a CEO, HR executive, or operating across the wider HR space, this podcast is for you. Please like and subscribe, and don't forget to comment and share your views. Enjoy the episode. Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of the HR Community Podcast. This morning, I'm here with Peter Kokinas. Peter is the vice president and managing director for Udemy. Good morning, Peter.
SPEAKER_00:Morning, Shanay. How are you?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. I'm in a very wet and damp Sydney today. Um, but it looks like the the weekend is bringing some sunshine again. But otherwise, all good. Thanks for joining us. For those that are listening, me and Peter have been speaking in the background about this over the last couple of months. So great that we could finally bring it together. But I guess for those of our listeners, Peter, that uh that are tuning in, maybe haven't heard of yourself or or Udemy, do you want to sort of give us a bit of an overview about you, about your role, about Udemy, and tell us a little bit more about all that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. Look, yeah, I I've I've spent the last 30 years of my career in the ed tech and and HCM space. I've been working with what must have been thousands of organizations at this stage all over the world, helping them build, you know, mission-critical skills to reshape their business. And uh as someone who's really values-driven, it's been sort of the perfect space for me to operate in. And today, as as vice president and managing director of Udemy in Asia Pacific, I lead the strategy and for the business and support over 160 Udemates, as we call them. Yeah, wow. Um, on our mission of improving lives through learning. So, you know, I I love what I do, I love the people I do it with, I have a passion for it. And and especially now as AI reshapes how we work and learn, I think that Udemy has a really important role to play in in helping the world get ready for the future. And there's so there's anxiety around the future and what what's what's happening. So, yeah, that's me a little bit, and we can dive into more detail there. But at a you at a Udemy level, we define and it's it's evolving very quickly. The whole industry, our industry is evolving really quickly, and define Udemy as an AI-powered skills acceleration platform. I think that's what they're uh we're talking about, uh, reframing it. There's a lot of factors that differentiate that, an AI-powered skills acceleration platform, from what the traditional e-learning platforms that GU may have been used to, and many of the people listening and watching would be used to engaging with. And at its core, it's I see it as a complete reimagination of the traditional fine course, do course model that many people are used to in the e-learning industry and uh that that and they've had access to today. And that that platform, it's really designed to meet the learner at the at that moment in time, in the flow of work, personalized and customized specifically for them, as opposed to just having access to generic e-learning courses. But then take that concept and scale it across any size organization. So, at a high level, that's how I define it.
SPEAKER_01:And I can hear the passion, and I'm really keen to get in to unpack a couple of uh agenda and topics that we have for today. But um, I mean, I love the learning side as well, you know, particularly having been in on the recruitment side of the wider human resource space for a long time. So at a distance or maybe as an external, uh seeing the evolution of learning. But, you know, even if I was to look at your background and experience specifically, Peter, like you must have seen some amazing evolution in learning and development, like not just the capability that's out there now, the technology and the demand, but also the way people are learning now and the and the competitiveness to keep people engaged. Have you have you noticed that through your journey?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And I'm gonna age myself now, but I've been in, as I said, 30 years, that's pretty much all my career. I I sometimes say it's it's it's a bit like the mafia. I've tried to get out a few times, but it keeps dragging me back in, whether that's by design or by luck or whatever it might be. But you know, go back to back into the 90s. I mean, we were using laser discs. Q those remember those old laser discs? That's that's how people were deploying online learning at the time. They had a computer there, a laser disc, they had full-motion video. It was it was awesome at the time, really expensive, but really cool engaging with touch screens, and then it evolved into putting floppy disks in and sort of more sort of CBT-based learning, and and then the internet sort of changed the way things you know evolved again. And I'm gonna say the the internet uh evolved, it it moved a little bit and it got better. You know, it got a little bit more gamified, it got a little bit, you know, full motion video, all those kinds of things started to come back. But I'm I'm gonna say that it hasn't been until AI sort of impacted it that it's really sort of changed the game. And we're I'm seeing a completely different view of how we can deliver learning to people today. So the journey that I've seen along the way has been one of excitement, but also frustration. It's not always been easy to get people to engage in learning, and we can talk a little bit about that and and and how organizations approach it. But um, I think it's gonna get easier and better. It's more personalized than now what they are. And yeah, it's an exciting opportunity. And I I tell people that come into Udemy now as we're hiring new people, this is the best time to be in this industry. I've been toiling, done all the hard work. Now you get all the uh you get all the accolades and the easy stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that. And it's interesting as well. Like, I mean, I I swore on this uh on this season I wouldn't talk about the dreaded years of COVID, but it's hard not to bring it into conversation. But it's interesting how around that time, particularly with remote working being uh non-negotiable, the increased demand in online and and e-learning. And, you know, I know it was, you know, maybe 10 years prior to that when it started to really ramp up. But then, you know, forcefully some organizations had to invest in it and learn about it. And look, here we are now, what you know, four or five years later, talking about artificial intelligence, which has been around for a long time, but the conversation has just evolved more and more and more. And organizations that we work with and partner with as well are really starting to adopt AI into their business operations and their and their HR and talent functions. Talk to us a little bit about AI, Peter, because I know it's a it's a big part of your your ecosystem at Udemy. What sort of AI skills are you seeing across different industries that are, I guess, rapidly on the rise?
SPEAKER_00:AI is no longer just considered a tech skill. I think going back a couple of years, that's probably the way people viewed it. There was AI technologies that have been around longer than than you know, than the majority of us probably are even aware of. But it's now embedded across sort of all functions, you know, from marketing, finance, HR operations. It's being defined now as a workplace necessity, almost like, you know, knowing how to use a computer a few years ago. And and that's really only happened in the last couple of years. And there's evidence of that in the in the Udemy platform, the demand for those AI skills have quadrupled since 2024. Yeah. So tech skills before, now that now the mainstream's starting to see it, and it's embedding in their their workflows. So up till to 91% from 2023, those that that just general AI skills. And then the sort of more generative AI stuff, 10x increase in that in the last in since 2024 to you know to 2025, which is which is just phenomenal. And again, I I don't think it matters what tools you learn. I think what matters and what we're seeing, you know, the trends we're seeing in our customer base is what AI tools are available to you today and in your organization, and how can those tools help you perform your role more effectively? So it's reframing it away from learning a tool to learning how you can use those tools to actually perform the tasks that you need to do. So right now, there's still fear as to how AI is going to impact our lives, I think. And I think that the more people make an effort to learn how those tools can help them in the context of their own work or their own lives, and we're going to see a further uptake in that advancement, I think. And companies like us, as I said before, Udemy, we're going to play a big role in helping people understand and educate themselves to reduce that anxiety that it is associated with the lack of understanding of the positive role that AI can have on our on our work and our lives. And it's easy to identify and think through where the negatives might be. You know, you can watch Terminator and think, oh my God, now that you know AI is going to take over the world. That kind of from that level to, you know, it's going to take my job over. But but but I think if you reframe that from a learning perspective and really understand how it can impact you and make your life easier, we're going to see people embrace it more and use it the right ways.
SPEAKER_01:As you talk about that embracing AI, like some of the events and workshops that we've been doing with some of our leaders, you can really hear and see that in the room. Like there's some amazing business and businesses and HR leaders there that sort of described their journey with adopting it. And you'd probably be across all of this as well, because what we're seeing and hearing in in our community is, you know, you've got different camps. And some camps is like real progressive, like they're just going hell for leather on AI. You've got others who are a bit more conservative, so it's a bit like the the second cheese, second mouse gets the cheese analogy. You know, they're kind of waiting to see who does what and and go from there. And then you've got like a bit of a bit of fearful anxiety within organizations where you know they they've banned a number of tools, including Chat GPT and the likes, from their organizations. But I guess the reason why I bring that up is learning is obviously a big part of an organization's identity and culture. Talk to us a little bit about that. Talk to us a little bit about building a culture of continuous learning. I guess when you when you talk about that whole um AI educational ecosystem.
SPEAKER_00:All the things you said are absolutely right. We're thanking so much for that. The different companies I get to talk to, the different industries and how they're embracing AI, you know, with the banks incredibly conscious of security. So they're limiting and restricting the tools available. Professional services companies are going all out because it's transforming the way they can do business. And then different companies at different levels have got different views on it. So yeah, I agree with what you what you talked about there. But from a continuous sort of learning culture perspective, you know, firstly, I'm not sure on my journey that I've seen too many organizations that have done it, you know, across the whole organization. I think it's easier to do in pockets with the technology and the learning we've had available to us over the over that journey. But that was my goal, is to foster a culture of continuous learning. Three things that I'd focus on. The first one is um is intent at a leadership level, right? So let me give you an example of what that means. Learning isn't an expense, it's it should be a business imperative. And I think everyone listening to this podcast is going to agree. But the reality when you're in the business isn't always, there'sn't always a line. You know, I I hear, I read financial reports, I listen to to leaders talk about uh learning being their number one priority and skills uh being their you know important for their business. But the reality is when when you go to then approach them about making those investments, we've all heard, you know, learning is the first budget to cut. Yeah, times when things get tough, when priorities come up. So, you know, if I if I'm in trying to build that, I would be holding my leaders accountable to what they're saying. If they're saying that learning is important, get them to prove that to you. Show you where are they are they talking the talk or are they walking the walk? So if learning is important, and we know that people leave organizations in the top one or two reasons why is because they don't have development opportunities. So there's nutrition, there's skills gaps, there's so many reasons why leaders say they want to invest, but there is but there is uh the reality on the ground is different. So that's where I would focus in getting alignment there. The next one is personalization, and this is something that's sort of evolving over time. Uh the day of dumping courses in front of an employee at an LMS and saying, here you go, have at it, and expected them to have the time or the or the you know or the relevant content that they need to do that is that's over. Yeah, you know, that's why we're seeing declining engagement in in traditional e-learning platforms because of that reason. And what people want today is is assess me and recognize the skills that I have today. So, firstly, I've come here with a bunch of skills, I know a bunch of stuff already. So don't put me to a generic course where I'm relearning stuff that I already know, and that's how you get disengagement. Then understand the journey that I'm on that I want to want to take. So it could be I want to move from one role to another. These are the skills that I have, these are the skills that that role needs. Understand that journey that I need to be on. So assess me, understand the skills that I need to develop to go on that journey, and then build a learning journey that is specific to the outcomes that I'm looking to achieve. Not, oh, we've got a bunch of competencies. These are the companies for one role, these are the competencies for the other. It's your job to go and work out how to do technology, AI, we can do that today with our tools as well, with AI tools, can build a personalized journey. If you can't do that, you're gonna lose a lot of learners along the way, and that won't allow you to build that culture. Then the last one is leveraging what new technologies. And we've got a product that you'd be called, uh well, a solution called MCP or MCP technology, which basically allows us to embed our technology in the flow of work. So meet the learners where they are. So the idea that you can, you know, that you would working away, you need to learn something, you'll go out to another system, go and do it and come back. That's where disengagement happens a lot of the time. So an MCP, for instance, basically, if you're in if you're in any AI tool, you should be able to call up learning inside that tool. I want to learn this, I need to understand how to perform this task. I need to develop this skill. Type it into your AI tool, it brings it directly to you in the flow of work. So that's already available, and I've got customers using that today. The next piece to that will be, and again, this is something that we should all be exploring, the ability for AI to recognize what you're doing, watching you as you work, let's say you're coding, and you're seeing you make the same mistake, it should recognize that and then say, hey, jump, jump onto this course, do a little bit of here, have a look at this video, practice in this environment, and fix that's really where we want to get to. So it's not learning, it's just the flow of work. It's look because we learn on day-to-day in in our, you know, most of the learning we do is day-to-day stuff. So meet them there with the new technologies available is your best chance of getting to that.
SPEAKER_01:Love that. Yeah. And it's a bit like the old, the old saying I remember back in the day started by by uh my career, it's you know, quote unquote learn on the job, essentially, but like a modern day AI influenced approach to that, where you're leveraging the technology. There's been like some some conversations as well in our community, I guess, around obviously we're we're talking a lot about learning here, um, and we're bringing AI into that conversation. Do you see AI maybe used or leveraged in in the wrong way as a bit of a risk as well when it comes to learning? Because I think what you're talking about is definitely how I would describe best practice. You're learning on the job, you're leveraging AI, you're using the tools. Hey, have you thought about this? You're continuously upskilling, but then you're going to have a percentage of people and that are just going to take the, you know, and they're just going to purely copy and paste gen AI, put it into stuff like AU. Well, what are your thoughts on all that?
SPEAKER_00:I was at a at a conference recently and they they they did a study on that where they asked someone to go into AI. And it was, I can't remember the question it asked, but you had to go and it asked a particular question. They went into AI, they basically copied it and pasted it and got it on. Then they asked someone to sort of do that and then uh rearrange it in their own words, and then they asked someone to to uh to to go and use critical thinking to type what they thought about that particular topic. And the drop-off in in recollection from the people that just cut it and pasted versus the people that actually thought about it was stark, you know, 80% difference in the way that they they could recall that, even moments later, let alone weeks or days later. So yeah, you can do that, but if it's you're going to be fanned out eventually. I mean, yeah, you're not learning that way, you're just cutting pastings. I think it comes down to the importance of um because we can we can focus on the technology, but what we should also be focusing us on is the is the skill is the soft skills and uh skills. I think that's uh incredibly important. You know, what we're seeing AI reshaping jobs, reshaping whole industries, focusing on you know, focusing on technology, I don't think is the way to go. But yeah, there's skills like uh leadership skills, communication, emotional intelligence, critical thinking. You know, if you don't have that that the ability, if you don't have those those skills, you're gonna get found out because AI is just a tool. It's about what you put in it, it's about how you how you use it as a tool rather than rather than just uh asking it a question and getting an answer, right? So and we're seeing that, we're seeing an uptick in those types of skills, in product skills, in you know, team building, in business communications, alongside the uptick in the AI technology too, which is a good sign. I I think people are realizing that hey, knowing this tool versus knowing how to use it in context is a very, very different thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's really interesting. It kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier with that whole analogy, you know, when you talk about the Terminator and is AI going to replace my role or is it going to enable it? And I think when you talk about the critical thinking, the soft skills, I agree with you. I feel like those are the elements and the skills that we need to continue to upscale in and develop in while leveraging, I guess, the capability of technology and AI and stuff like that. I mean, for particularly our leadership community, talk to us a little bit about the mindsets around that, like um the importance of leadership mindsets and the importance of soft skills. I know you touched on it there, but like tell us a little bit more about that.
SPEAKER_00:I'm gonna make a confession here in the industry, and I've been in b part of it for you know for a long time. We've struggled as an industry to get people to engage soft skills, business skills, leadership skills in the e-learning environment. It's been difficult. And the the reason that is, is because it's really generic. I'll give you an example. If you if you want to have a difficult con having a difficult conversation with somebody, doing a doing a course on you know understanding difficult conversations or learning how to do that, you can get some skills from that, but it's not in the context every conversation is different. Yeah, every conversation is different. So we've been found out in that area. I think what's changing is let's remove the idea of generic learning from that skills and put and allow people to be put in an environment where they can hone the skills that they've already got. Everyone's got some skills in those areas, and I'll give you an example of that. But let's say you are going to have a conversation, a difficult conversation, and you're a leader. Yeah. You know, you're about to do an appraisal interview with an employee that you know is going to be contentious in some way. And we've all as leaders had to had to deal with that. Doing a generic course on that is not going to help you. But using an AI role play, and we have access to an AI role play, imagine being able to say, okay, I'm about to go into an appraisal interview with this person. I know that they have, these are the things that they've achieved and done in their, in their in their work today. Here are some of the areas that I know are going to be contentious for this individual. Build me a role play that allows me to get to these outcomes, and you can define what outcomes in that scenario and let me practice that in that environment. Make it hard, make it easy, make it whatever, you know, make it contentious. And you can ask it to be contentious if you like. And the ability to be able to practice that and work through that process and then walk into that, into that appraisal of you having already experienced it, that's where I think we're going to go with the leadership skills. It's going to be learning in the context of the moment, learning in the context of my knowledge, learning in the context of my business, as opposed to generically learning courses. So that's that can be done today, and we're encouraging customers, and we're seeing a huge uplift of that. But, you know, you know, that's where I think we need to be. I'm not going to go do a generically learning course. And, you know, I'd rather go down that path, my personal view. I'd rather do it that way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think for our HR talent and work-house safety leadership community or the wider audience that are listening, I think it's a great way to adopt AI and leverage it. And, you know, dare I say, and maybe I'm I'm biased to the HR industry, but dare I say there's a lot of uh professionals in our space leveraging it and adopting it, which I think is really good. But I think, yeah, there's there's definitely an opportunity for other leaders across a multitude of businesses and business units, you know, whether you're a small SME family-run business with a handful of staff right through to a senior enterprise, I think everyone can really start to adopt and get involved, which is interesting because I look at HR teams and I'd love to get your perspective on this, Peter. And like at some of our events that we've been doing, I've definitely seen the sophistication of the conversation around AI as well. Looking at HR teams, you know, what are your thoughts on that whole movement from AI awareness through to AI fluency? And, you know, again, going back to your example of the adoption, like talk to us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00:Again, I think people can consider AI awareness or AI fluency as learning the AI tools. And I'm giving this from the context of what I'm seeing is best place to customers, not necessarily my view of it. But the first thing I'd say is don't look at AI fluency as learning how to use an AI tool. That's not AI flu. There were so many tools there would be, and there'll be so many more. And AI will be embedded in everything that we do. If it isn't already, it's in our phones, it's everywhere already. So what I would be thinking about is it's really coming back down to that the software skills, the business skills, but ask yourself, what's the problem you're trying to solve? What workflows are you trying to improve? What impact are you trying to have? And then understanding what AI tools are available or at your disposal and educate yourself on how these tools can help you serve the people that you know that you're responsible for today. Look at it through that lens. So AI fluency is about embedding it in your thinking rather than embedding it in your, you know, in your knowledge of that of that particular tool. So doing a bunch of generic learning on how you know will help you know how to use an AO tool, but it won't help you understand how to apply it in a way that could transform your business. So it's a mindset more than anything else. And and AI is going to get smarter. You won't even see it down the track. You won't have to prompt it. It'll prompt you, right? So again, comes back to how you're thinking, the work that you're doing, you know, that's really where we're going with it. So I'm fascinated to see, but from an HR perspective, there's so many possibilities. You know, and and you know, I'm no expert in that area, but at a high level, that's what I'm seeing best practice.
SPEAKER_01:100%. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think that's why, you know, as it continues to evolve, particularly, you know, the conversation that we're having in our community, it's super cool and exciting to hear what some HR practitioners and leaders have the capability to drive forward now. It's almost like, you know, indirectly we've sort of got our seat got our seat at the table, and now we're actually owning this sort of piece as well, because there's nothing more important to an organization than its people, than its culture, than its performance. You know, speaking of which, we talked a little bit about at the start of the conversation, how learning in an organization, you know, in our in my world as well, it's like a big USP for a person's, for a company's brand. Like their their whole EVP employer brand is is built around you come here, you can learn, you can develop. Some organizations do it, do it better than others. And like you say, when the market flips or times get tough, unfortunately, it's it's often the first budget to get cut. But speaking of that and and Ora Y, it might be a hard question to answer, but talk to me a little bit about measurement. So, how how do we manage measure the impact of upskilling beyond just participation and and and what good looks like?
SPEAKER_00:It's the one challenge that in our industry we face and we get asked all the time. Help me, help me, you know, help me uh understand the impact this is having. And and the the I think the majority of people that are on this, you know, listening to this right now would know the things I'm about to say. They would understand them. The challenge they've got is it's the business that are asking them to, you know, build show me ROI. So a lot of times the traditional mess metrics is course completion. That doesn't really reflect ROI, does it? I if how many, you know, if you look at our financial reports, a lot of them say we are going, we've set a target to put all of employees through 20 hours of learning a year. 20 hour learning for what? You know, what it could be learning basket weaving. It doesn't, it's not relevant to their role. So I think first and foremost, if you're going to, if you're going to measure learning appropriately, you've got to set the agenda for what, why you're learning. Why are we, why are we upskilling people? What's the what's the end result we're looking for? Well, we're looking, we're looking to increase productivity, we're looking to create career mobility, we're looking to reduce, you know, attrition. You know, get the organization on the same page agreeing that these are the metrics that we're that we're looking to impact and move them away from how much money did I spend on learning and how much people engaged in learning. What did people do with the learning when they got it is really the question. So that the areas that I've we focus on and we ask our customers to think about are skills confidence. Are employees using the new skills in the in real-world situations? That's that's easier to measure. And it's easy, it's easier now with that role play tool that I talked about, is saying, okay, we put you through this. Now we're going to put you through a role play to show me that there was a material change in the way that you approach that task before and then thereafterwards. So there are ways to track that. Behavioral change is another way. Again, those types of tools that I talked about, are leaders seeing improvements in decision making and collaboration. You know, it doesn't have to go back to 100 hours of learning and therefore being measured on that. Are your leaders seeing an improvement in that group after they came out of uh learning or after they interacted with your learning solutions that you're made available to them? And the last one is I think about especially if it's AI and AI fluency, because everyone's embarking on that journey now. What are we looking for? We're looking for people to engage AI in a more effective way and engage it itself. Some people aren't even using it. But your your tech teams can tell you, was there an uptick? Are there more people using those tools now than they were using before? Those AO tools have metrics. They can see what people are asking, they can see, you know, there's so much more there. So go to them and ask them, hey, I just put people through some fluency. Are we seeing an uptick in usage? Are we seeing more effectiveness in those areas? Because ultimately, again, your your leadership will know that if they can use those tools effectively, they're going to be more effective, they're going to increase productivity, increase innovation. That'll make the difference. So that's where I'd focus.
SPEAKER_01:That's very cool. And crystal ball time, you know, you've got your crystal ball, Peter. You've obviously been through some fairly cool and interesting evolutions in learning and development over the uh of your your your 20, 30 years in the space. What's next for learning? What do you see coming up for learning, upskilling globally? You know, crystal ball time, what are you sort of thinking?
SPEAKER_00:I touch on some of the stuff, but learning will move away from the traditional the way that we've seen it into the flow of work. So it won't be seen as a learning event, it'll just be seen, I think, as part of what, you know, you know, learning at work. Like we we most of the learning that we've talked about is done on the job, right? So learning will move away more from traditional learning to that. I I think that's the the first piece in the flow of work. AI fluency will become foundational. I think that's really, really important. That's the other area that embrace that. That is coming regardless of whether you like it or not. It is gonna be a fact. So, you know, you we need to focus on how we can teach people to leverage that that AI technology appropriately for their new roles. Personalization in learning is gonna be key. Before you had to, before that, there is no way of personalizing learning for an individual. It was all done at a high level and really generic. So people are going to expect absolute personalization for themselves, relevant to very relevant to the moment in time, my job, my role, my goals, my aspirations. If it doesn't align to that, they're not gonna consider it. And I think soft skills will get even more value. I think there's for not focusing there. And we, these are all the themes that we touched on. chain along the way. You know, short term to midterm, these are the things that you'll see. Longer term, I probably don't have the imagination for it because you know I get surprised every day when our product development guys come and say, oh, we're doing this and we're doing that. Like how? What when? Yeah. So you know that's that's what's happening. So I keep an eye out. More and more coming. Maybe we'll do this again another year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll have more stuff to talk to you about.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And then just I guess selfishly focusing on some of those predictions for our listeners in particular, how do you feel or what sort of advice would you give some of our HR and people, culture and talent community to future proof their functions, future proof their their role and and position within within all that?
SPEAKER_00:Again, ask yourself what ask your learners what's the ideal scenario for them? If you want them to you want them to develop and develop themselves, give them the best opportunity to do that. You know, but don't limit yourself, oh we've we've made this investment, we've got this, but we're going to make the most of this this is the time to change. This is the time to evolve get out there and speak to different organizations about how they can help make it more personal, make it more effective, challenge organizate that you know our our industry to bring more technology, to bring more personalization, more learning in the flow of work. It's time to change, it's time to demand it. You know, we're still seeing so I'm still seeing organizations not and and and LD professionals and and HR professionals worried about going back to the business and asking for more money to to make that happen. I think now is the time to evolve.
SPEAKER_01:Obviously that that whole journey I think I I think is super super fascinating Peter and thank you for for your time and and for all our listeners tuning in. I hope you know might be asking you or or maybe maybe put it out there but you know and our audience can obviously reach out to us as as they do. But for those that are curious you know they're sitting there they're listening and they're going hey I'm only scratching the surface here with AI Peter Peter's preaching some some truth here. What can our listeners do? Can they connect with you? Can they reach out to you? Can they reach out to the Udemy team?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah yeah they can yeah we can go our website there's opportunities there to be able to connect with people jump on that and um people will give will give you a call so that's there's no obligation just to have a conversation with someone about hey here's where I am this is what I'm looking to do. I heard Peter on this podcast I'd like to explore more so you can go through our website to do that. I'm happy to share my details you can come to me if you want to talk about it and uh happy to come in and share what our other customers are doing, what best practice looks like. So yeah please come to us Udemy I think we're uniquely positioned at the moment compared to maybe some other areas of the industry that are sort of lagging behind a bit. So I know I can take a biased view to that but I I promise you the end result is trying to help our customers and deliver learning better and move the needle. So if we can't do that then it'll prove to be the case but I'm really confident that you know if you come to us we can at least point you in the right direction.
SPEAKER_01:Again another reason why I I bring it up is you know I find as well being involved in the wider HR community you know there are certain individuals that you know proactively progressively go and learn. There's leaders that go hey you go and you learn and you get whatever courses you need and you can start applying them in the in the role. There's other leaders and and and another camp where they go this is what we need you to learn and this is how we need you to learn it. And then there's the camp that's like we don't do it we don't care. But my my point being doesn't matter which camp you sit in as an individual I think now is the time to selfishly I guess put yourself out there a bit and do upskill particularly in some of those areas that you mentioned because I think it's so important. But yeah to take it to the next level if you can get your organization involved and drive that across the organization it'll leave a a legacy. So I really appreciate your time Peter it was a good flesh with all out I will take you up on your offer to uh jump on here again for a part two in in in another uh year or two maybe three I think the way things are evolving so quickly it might be 12 months time when we see another huge change. But thank you again and thank you to our listeners. Thanks Sher Thank you for tuning in to the HR Community Podcast remember to like and subscribe and share your views and comments below this podcast was brought to you by Civitas Talent the HR and agency recruitment community whether you're a candidate looking for a new role or organization looking to secure brand new talent for your team please get in touch with us today. Thank you
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