Three Trends Shaping Learning and Development in Professional Services for 2025
Learn how the professional services industry is prioritizing high-growth training with GenAI, leadership and human skills, and micro-credentials. Featuring Insights from Deloitte.
In the professional services industry, expertise is the product. How are companies in this space prioritizing the right upskilling for their teams?
The industry—including professional services from architecture to accounting to the Big Three management consulting firms—comprises at least 9.5 million jobs in the US alone. As the global professional services market evolves, so will client demands—L&D leaders in the professional services space are responsible for keeping their workforce equipped with the necessary skills to stay competitive and engaged.
It’s up to you to align your learning programs with the needs of the business. Coursera recently released the Industry Skills Brief 2025, providing a deep dive into the ever-changing skills landscape across five key industries, including professional services. To inform the report, we spoke with learning leaders from influential companies, including Aruna Pawaskar, Director, Deloitte India.
“We are moving towards a skills-based learning organization," explains Aruna. "There are three key skills we are looking at: Enduring skills (the human skills needed in the age of AI), expert skills (such as audit, accounting, and tax advisory, etc.), and emerging skills (such as AI ML, cloud, cybersecurity plays a critical role with its rapidly evolving nature)."
In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at trends geared toward professional services, including:
A growing interest in GenAI trends
The evergreen importance of key soft skills
Cybersecurity as a top area of investment
Three trends shaping professional services skills development in 2025
Prioritizing GenAI skills
Enrollment for Coursera’s GenAI-focused courses skyrocketed by 1,158% across industries, even those beyond those featured in the report. Leadership echoes this sentiment; 89% of executives named AI and GenAI a top-three tech priority for 2024.
Coursera learners in professional services signed up for popular courses like:
When implementing GenAI upskilling initiatives, now is the time to act—a strong foundation in GenAI can help your professional services company guide client organizations toward technical transformation in this new era.
Like many companies Coursera spoke to for our report, Deloitte is upskilling its professionals in emerging technologies through tech-enabled learning solutions.
“How do we use GenAI to build our own internal content? That’s another space that we’re really focusing on. We want to make our learning programs more interactive and therefore engaging, irrespective of its mode of delivery—whether in-person or virtual. How do we use role plays and scenario-based learning? We are experimenting with GenAI enabled content development solutions for our learnings,” notes Aruna.
Deloitte has been using GenAI features like the GenAI sandboxes available in Coursera, which allow learners to experiment with prompting as they work through a course, and Coursera’s Course Builder, which helps training administrators create custom courses tailored to the needs of learners.
2. A shift in focus on leadership and human skills
GenAI enables employees to automate more routine tasks and workflows, which opens the door for top-level strategic thinking. With that, employees in professional services must hone key soft skills—Aruna connects the dots here in firmly advocating that leadership needs to drive technological adoption in professional services:
“If you see Deloitte Global Reports, you'll realize that we truly believe the future of work is human. As AI augments humans to work better through automation of daily tasks, the idea is to create that connection within the organization across levels. The expectation from the managers to lead the team and to lead the team with heart is imperative for us to actually create that future of work being human.”
Skills such as leadership development, change management, negotiation, and collaboration are found among the top 10 skills across multiple industries within Coursera’s Industry Skills Report. This demonstrates the enduring importance of human skills in handling complex challenges and leading through technological advancement.
The top 10 skills in the professional services industry are:
Audit
Cybersecurity
Influencing
Negotiation
Leadership development
Risk management
People analysis
Brand management
Storytelling
Conflict management
A staggering 40% of these skills are related to human skills and leadership. For leaders who are at the managerial level and above, Deloitte assesses competency-based proficiency levels for skill sets including leadership skills, managerial skills, influencing skills, and negotiation skills. Personalized learning journeys are recommended to Deloitte learners based on proficiency standards.
To combat burnout due to changing skills priorities, Deloitte is focusing on human skills while enhancing well-being through its “leading with heart” initiative. Aruna shares its focus on developing empathy, resilience, and trust-based leadership among managers:
“As AI transforms the way we work, strong leadership skills are more vital than ever. Deloitte is focused on developing leaders who can foster deep human connection and inspire their teams in our increasingly tech-driven world. This is why we’re investing heavily in leadership development programs that prioritize empathy, resilience, and authenticity.”
The framework is known as PACT, and focuses on psychological safety, authentic relationships, conscious communication, and trust-based leadership to meet the key learning outcomes of the leading with heart initiative.
3. The role of micro-credentials in professional services
In 2023, the professional services industry saw some of the highest enrollment numbers for Professional Certificates. Yet in 2024, year-over-year enrollment growth in professional services decreased by 44%. Other industries have displaced this ranking, underlining the importance for professional services firms to refocus on credentials that demonstrate skills mastery.
Here’s why: When engaging with clients, professional services firms want to ascertain employee competencies, especially as technology advances and skills continue to evolve rapidly. In fact, 97% of employers are already using or are considering moving towards a skills-based hiring approach.
This belief in the power of credentials is about more than just hiring, though. Micro-credentials, including Professional Certificates, are a vehicle to build credibility and demonstrate specialized knowledge.
The top Professional Certificates for professional services included:
To best serve clients in high-demand industries, like cybersecurity, Deloitte is focusing on associated hard skills for learners. The company upskills learners through Coursera and niche global training partners. When an individual is part of a project, that project might require certifications.
For example, if someone is assigned to a cybersecurity consulting project, they’ll receive a list of certifications and learning programs to complete. These initiatives dovetail into expected outcomes for that particular project.
"We have a host of certifications mandated by the requirements of the specific projects professionals work on,” shares Aruna. “Employees are required to meet those standards to participate in projects. These learning interventions ensure that we have the necessary expertise to succeed."
As a highly collaborative company, Deloitte ensures that multifunctional teams assess learning gaps to become knowledgeable change agents for client organizations. The L&D team surfaces learning needs through this gap analysis and crafts learning journeys that focus on micro-credentials across employee personas.
Navigating these trends in your organization
As the organizational landscape continues to shift, it’s important to not only understand the trends discussed in this article, but find a way to activate them.
GenAI’s transformative potential means it will continue to be a focus area for client organizations—as a professional services firm, your employees should educate themselves in a variety of GenAI competency areas.
In a time where well-being is moving to the forefront, encouraging the development of soft skills across leaders and ICs throughout your company means they’ll be more adept in guiding transformational change.
And focusing on micro-credentials will demonstrate to clients that your employees hit the mark in key hard skills that will enhance organizational operations.
To further explore the top trends for professional services as well as industries like energy, financial services, and retail and consumer, download the Industry Skills Brief.
This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.