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Amid rapid advancements in technology, employee expectations of consumer-like experience and engagement, and a quickly shifting economy, companies are looking for ways to gain a competitive advantage with their people. This puts the spotlight directly on HR. Professional development is important for everyone but is especially critical for businesses to think about when creating learning and growth opportunities for an existing workforce.

Executives increasingly see investments in “upgrading workforce skills, especially retraining midcareer workers” as an urgent business priority in the near future, thanks to increasing growth in automation and digitization.¹ This challenge lies at the heart of training and development for the existing workforce: companies will need employees prepared to move up within the organization.

HR must drive any development strategy aimed at meeting CEO expectations. But in order to successfully level up their organizations, HR professionals must first address their own professional development and they must do so in ways that go beyond simply maintaining SHRM certifications.

HR leaders play a big role in making sure their teams have support for ongoing learning, development, and HR certification and recertification. But even though HR leaders have budget line items for professional development, their own learning plans often fall by the wayside. The “put on your own oxygen mask first” analogy applies here: HR professionals must prioritize their own learning and development in order to have the most up-to-date information on industry trends and technology they need to steer their teams’ skills improvement.

Additionally, team members will be more likely to seek development opportunities on their own if they see their leaders doing the same. Professional development no longer follows a traditional model of seminars and panel sessions at conferences (although those are still quite relevant and useful). At the leadership level, it’s become more and more common to seek out communities of other leaders in which to learn and grow with peer support. Through such learning communities, digital live events, on-demand learning, in-person retreats, and other channels, leaders can take control of their own career development and get the information they need to lead their HR teams.

HR leaders can benefit from building their skills in several areas. But based on current trends, the following are some that they should focus on now:

• practical applications of the latest HR technology
• how robots and artificial intelligence are transforming the workplace
• training managers to lead and engage a remote workforce
• using online advertising and social media to recruit and hire in a very competitive job market
• training and developing future leaders and executive teams

To achieve the best results, any employee development should start with HR leaders first learning about what matters today and about what will be important to HR in the future. They can most efficiently use their time by engaging in on-demand training that also covers credits needed for SHRM recertification as well as executive coaching and participation in a like-minded community of peers, which can help steer them toward the topics that are most relevant to their specific organizations or industries.

Many of today’s HR leaders have spent most of their careers pursuing professional development primarily in seminar or conference sessions led by instructors or panels. But the future of learning and leadership is personal, and professional development is increasingly taking forms that allow individuals to choose what works best for their learning styles, are based on where they are in their career (and helps get them to where they want to be), are flexible, and empower them to make decisions about what they want to focus on next. These new approaches are very different from the programs of the past and will better prepare leaders for the future.