5 trends from the Learning Conference Stockholm 2026

2. Learning is moving into the flow of work

Benjamin Laker closed the conference with his talk Learning At The Speed Of Work. Learning should be happening every day, not in a separate event. His test for every role: what will AI do, what will humans still own, and what will this job give back to our people?

Lori Niles-Hofmann argued for AI tutors that deliver personalised, contextual learning. Courses do not have to go to waste – they can actually feed the tutor. The point is to meet people where they already are, with the right help at the right moment, instead of pulling them away from work for a day.

H&M showed what this means in practice. Filip Lam, Global Head of Development and Transitions at H&M, shared how their leadership programme reaches store leaders without pulling them out of the store. Because H&M owns the content, it can change the programme any month of the year. It is already about 40% different from the pilot.

Swedbank Corporate Academy was a finalist for Learning Strategy of the Year for rebuilding how business advisors learn. The old onboarding varied by office and could take up to six weeks of self-study. The new version is a common foundation with module-based paths, a national pool of mentors and blended learning, built to be always on and just in time. Anna Ray worked on this case at Swedbank before moving to Skanska, and she also won this year's Årets Eldsjäl, recognizing her as a driving spirit of the year in learning.

3. The real gap is between strategy and behaviour

Most organisations have a clear strategy. Everyone has slides. A panel with Ian Blake from Alfa Laval, Dan Svensson from Securitas and Anna Bloth Karling from Zebrain asked the better question: what will you do differently in your role tomorrow?

Volvo Group took the same approach with its leadership philosophy, now scaling to 104,000 people in 55 markets. It is not a training programme. It is a common language built into onboarding, talent and succession. Their lesson: a framework without reinforcement and practice does not work. A shared language only holds if people use it in real decisions, week after week.

Measurement came up too. H&M built a manager survey where employees rate how often they see a behaviour, not how good their manager is at it. People who have been through the programme show a statistically significant move in the right direction. It is a way to look at behaviour, not completion.

4. People learn best together

The award finalists had something in common. IKEA's leadership programme runs for 6 to 9 months and combines group reflection with real experiments at work. A technical leadership programme brought together people from ABB, Volvo, Ericsson and Saab to learn across company lines.

Both were more community than course. The learning came from the room, not from a slide deck. People tested ideas on each other, borrowed what worked, and went back to apply it.

The AI adoption panel offered the clearest examples of this. Nicole Oladuji from Praktikertjänst said she learns from her team's AI ambassadors every single day, often from the smallest behaviour. Katarina Noén from Ericsson asked how we tap into what people actually know and make it usable for many, whether for onboarding or preparing for a client. Teemu Lilja from Telia called sharing across countries, industries and companies the most important part. The panel kept coming back to peers as the best source of AI learning.

Donald H Taylor's view was that the future is peer to peer learning and collaboration. He raised the same question Katarina Noén did: how do we capture what experienced people know, so others can use it? When the same question comes up in two different sessions, it is worth taking seriously. That is the quiet challenge behind every community. The knowledge is there. The work is making it visible and usable.

Kevin Oakes called agility a superpower, and added that it is not a solo sport. It is what happens when people learn from each other, fast.

H&M's Leadership Essentials programme shows the same instinct at scale. Filip Lam described how they rebuilt leadership development from scratch for 7,000 leaders, and made it more human. The pre-work teaches no content at all. It is built around sharing, relating and building psychological safety before people meet, and it is where leaders interact with each other.

5. Human skills and shared sense-making matter more as AI grows

Nick van Dam spoke about intuition, integrity, instinct, imagination and identity. Colin Moon showed how culture shapes the way we communicate, lead and decide. Self-awareness and curiosity were named as skills for the future.

Benjamin Laker put it simply: The advantage is not knowing more. It is knowing why.

Ricki Petrini shared what motivates Gen Z: time for family and friends, health and personal growth. The ask for leaders is to connect learning to life goals and make it part of work.

Good pedagogy is still good pedagogy. People need context, relevance and the chance to apply what they learn. As content becomes cheap and endless, the scarce thing is understanding. That is built through dialogue, reflection and time together, not through more material.

What to take back

Content is easy to get. Understanding is harder. Learning is not the end goal. Change is.

Three questions to reflect on how this can be applied to your work:

• Where does your strategy stop turning into behaviour?
• Where do people already share what works, and how can you make more room for it?
• What would you accept as proof that something changed, other than completion?

Start with one thing, then build from there.

When I spoke with Donald H Taylor between sessions, he said something that stayed with me: with everything that is changing in work right now, community and learning from each other is more important now than ever. That is the thread running through all five trends.

So the question to carry with you is not what you will learn next, but who you will learn it with.