ATD Research Report topics

Janaury 2025
Career Journeys
ATD defines career development as “a planned interaction process between an organization and an individual that allows the employee to grow within the organization.” It includes assessing the employee’s interests and how they can match the organization’s needs. Organizations focusing on career development can prepare the workforce with needed skills, create succession plans, and prepare employees to be future leaders. This study will focus on career paths, facilitating the process, and approaches to career development.
Janaury 2025
Frontline Employees (SOLD)
In this study, we will learn how organizations are training deskless employees. These frontline workers are on the move during their workday, so how are organizations providing them with training? This study will focus on training topics, the modality of training, and the challenges of training deskless workers.
February 2025
Performance Management
In this study, we will explore organizations’ performance management practices in these areas: setting job responsibilities and competencies, developing goals, evaluating performance, addressing performance outcomes, and incentivizing performance.
March 2025
Government Skills Gap (SOLD)
In this study, we will focus on the skills gaps of government employees. We will concentrate on what contributes to the skills gap, the current state of the skills gap, who is responsible for closing the skills gap, and methods to address the skills gap.
March 2025
Knowledge Management with 5 Generations in the Workforce (SOLD)
ATD defines knowledge management as “a systematic approach to achieving organizational goals by creating, capturing, curating, sharing, and managing an organization’s knowledge to ensure the right information and knowledge flow to the right people at the right time in the right way for the right reasons.” This study will focus on how organizations capture, curate, share, store, retrieve, and disseminate knowledge. It will also focus on how organizations prepare for employees leaving and when knowledge is lost.
April 2025
The Talent Development Function
Where does the talent development function occur at your organization? What responsibilities does the department have? This study will answer common questions ATD receives about the typical responsibilities of the TD function, and what trends we expect to see in the future for the function. This study will update the 2015 ATD Research study, “Building a Talent Development Structure without Borders.”
April 2025
Future of Evaluating Learning and Measuring Impact
For TD professionals to measure the impact of their programs, they have to understand business objectives and goals. In this report, we’ll focus on how organizations are gathering, analyzing, and reporting on the effectiveness of their programs and the impact they are making on the business. We’ll also explore how TD professionals think this will change in the future.
May 2025
State of the Industry (includes 2 co-sponsorships)
This annual report provides organizations with talent development trends, spending, and activity benchmarks. With an emphasis on industry and company size differences, this robust, data-driven report will give talent development professionals a better understanding of where the field is currently and forecast 2025 organizational priorities.
June 2025
Microlearning
In 2017, ATD published research on microlearning. In this updated report we will see how microlearning has changed over the years and investigate the primary delivery methods used for this type of learning, as well as the microlearning activities organizations are using.
July 2025
Using AI to Create Learning Content
Most research focuses on TD content topics and delivery methods. This research study will focus on how TD professionals create new training content and how they are using AI to create new training content. We are interested in how organizations decide on what new courses they will create, how they find the content to include in the course, and what AI tools they use to create courses.
August 2025
Manager Development
In this study will focus on how organizations are providing ongoing training for people managers. We’ll investigate the methods they are using, topics they train on, and how they are continuing to provide support for managers.
September 2025
Learning Technology
In this study we will explore how organizations are using technology to support learning. In this study we will focus on TD professionals abilities to identify, select, and implement the right technologies that service the best interest of the organization. We’ll also focus on how TD professionals identify opportunities to leverage the right technologies to help organizations achieve their strategic goals.
October 2025
Change Management
ATD defines change management as “the process of enabling change within an organization by using structured approaches to shift individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a future state.” This study will focus on the basics of change management, change management tools, and how change affects employees and organizations.
November 2025
Data and Analytics
TD professionals consistently tell us that they struggle with being proficient with data and analytics. In this report we will focus on the ability to collect, analyze, and use large data sets in real time to affect learning, performance, and business. We will also determine how organizations are leveraging this data to be a strategic partner in achieving organizational goals.
December 2025
Salary Study
In this study, ATD will investigate key questions about salary and benefits for TD professionals. The study will also focus on the formal and informal training TD professionals have had to learn about the industry. Also, include information about professional development for TD professionals.