Making Learning Work for Everyone: The 5 Learner Profiles

Workplace learning programs are business-critical. They are integral to creating organizational agility, supporting employees’ work readiness, and filling talent and skills gaps. They can also help retain and engage employees, giving them the opportunity to develop their skills, qualifications, and future career prospects. When companies invest in their employees, helping them build their capabilities and their careers, employees are more likely to feel a greater sense of inclusion and are more likely to stay with the same organization. For all of these reasons, learning programs that live up to their potential align with and accelerate company strategy and growth, helping to address key organizational issues and needs.

In many ways, company-wide investment in developing learning programs has never been more essential. Globally, 60% of businesses say that skills gaps in their local markets are holding back the transformation of their businesses, according to the World Economic Forum [1]. 

Yet, it goes without saying that skills-building takes more than simply providing opportunities, resources, and courses. It requires understanding what types of learner profiles exist within the workforce, including the motivations, behaviors, and conditions that help each employee learn best. When organizations take the time to recognize these differences, they can create learning experiences that feel more personalized, more engaging, and ultimately more effective at building the skills their business depends on.

In this report, we outline our findings based on our investigations into learner motivations, mindsets, and measures of success to establish five learner profiles. We describe how they generally learn best and lay out important considerations for managers and learning leaders to aid in effective learning design. We’ll cover the 5 learning profiles:

1. The devoted learner
2. The social learner
3. The confident learner
4. The emerging learner
5. The practical learner

What is a learner profile?

A learner profile is a research-based snapshot of the attitudes, motivations, and behaviors that shape how an individual approaches learning. Rather than describing fixed traits, a learner profile highlights the patterns that influence how someone engages with new information, responds to structure, seeks support, and stays motivated throughout their learning journey. Profiles help make sense of the diverse ways people learn, whether they prefer hands-on exploration, structured guidance, independent discovery, or collaborative environments.

Understanding learner profiles gives leaders a practical way to design learning experiences that resonate with different types of employees. Since no two learners have the exact same needs or starting point, these profiles act as a guide for creating programs that are more inclusive, more engaging, and more effective. They also acknowledge that learning behaviors exist on a spectrum and can shift depending on context, workload, or the skills being developed.

Most importantly, learner profiles allow organizations to move beyond one-size-fits-all training. By recognizing what motivates employees and what challenges them, learning leaders can build environments where every individual feels supported, empowered, and equipped to grow—ultimately driving stronger outcomes for both learners and the business.

Why tailored learning matters

In order for learning programs to meaningfully influence strategy, delivering maximum results for employees and companies alike, they need to be tailored, accessible, and engaging to individual learners.

Understanding how to personalize learning delivery, and providing the best methods to engage, enable, and support all types of learners, is essential.

The latest Udemy research covered in this report is designed to help learning leaders do just that. With a better understanding of learning profiles and attitudes among employees, learning and development leaders and people managers alike can better support all members of their teams to be the most engaged and successful learners possible. Carrying out this approach at scale not only benefits the company, but it also benefits the individual employee as they build skills and enhance future career prospects.

How enterprises can use learner profiles

Before we dive into the research, it’s important to consider what understanding learner profiles can teach us. First, we can think about these profiles not as fixed categories, but instead as tools to bring awareness to tendencies that we all may have, depending on the context.

Like personality types, many of us may align most with one type, but generally function somewhere on a spectrum, and where we fall can vary day by day. Decades of research into the science of human behavior teach us that when it comes to understanding why we do the things we do, context matters. This means that our learning behavior isn’t only explained by innate tendencies or characteristics, but also by the environment and situation in which we’re learning.

While individual learners who become aware of their learning profile can use that knowledge to lean into strengths and address weaknesses, leaders can use it to adapt learning environments to ensure all learners can thrive.

For instance, learning leaders will find particular value in understanding which learner profiles learn best with more structure and guidance, and which learners may prefer a more open learning experience to develop their skills.

Each profile’s relationship to learning varies. Developing pathways for success that support a learner’s motivations and challenges — and engage their interest in learning — will help the entirety of the workforce to upskill to meet the needs of today’s workplace. Another critical area to consider is how to integrate different learning styles within teams or groups of learners, which we discuss more in-depth later.

In this report, we outline our findings based on our investigations into learner motivations, mindsets, and measures of success to establish five learner profiles.

We describe how they generally learn best and lay out important considerations for managers and learning leaders to aid in effective learning design. Insights from this report are derived from a mixed-methods research survey in 2023 of approximately 12,000 global online consumer and business learners.

Profile 1: The Devoted Learner

Devoted Learners are proactive knowledge-seekers who are excited and energized by learning. Learning is its own reward and its own motivation. They have varied interests across multiple topics, and they learn both for fun and exploration, as well as in support of their careers. Learning increases their confidence in themselves, and they love to learn new things, acquire skills, and build their knowledge, regardless of the subject. 

They prefer to learn at their own pace and can engage with learning anywhere at any time. With curiosity driving their engagement in learning, they tend to be more individualistic learners and want to dive in independently. They measure success more by their sense of personal fulfillment rather than by external validation.

Learning attitudes

Devoted Learners like to figure it out on their own and at their own pace, learning for the sake of learning. They can easily weave learning in when and where they have the opportunity. Learning is about the journey, and as such, they prefer their learning to be open-ended and to see where it takes them, rather than learning solely in service of a specific goal, such as a certificate or badge. They like to compete against themselves, rather than others, and they prefer a challenge.

How these learners like to learn

Devoted Learners like to follow their individual inspiration as they choose new topics and ideas with which to engage. They prefer to identify and set their own learning goals and tend to process information best when they can see how something works. To that end, putting what they’re learning into practice through hands-on experience is particularly important. On the other hand, providing personalized recommendations, guidance for achieving learning goals, or structured timelines may not be as critical for Devoted Learners.

Considerations for managers and learning leaders

In many ways, the Devoted Learner may be one of the easiest learner profiles to support, given how self-motivated and engaged they are in their learning. These learners do not require either a carrot or a stick to find time and energy to learn new things.

However, it will be important for learning leaders and managers to determine the best ways to channel these learners’ energy into the programs and upskilling initiatives that their work requires. The fact that this profile learns best by researching things themselves means that there may be some work to do in guiding them to follow more prescriptive learning goals or paths. More often than not, reskilling and upskilling in the workplace are not open-ended endeavors, so there is work to be done to convince this group of learners that they should engage with a structured learning experience defined by an external purpose, timeline, or goal.

Use learner profiles to upskills your workforce with Udemy Business

Understanding learner profiles is a powerful way for organizations to build training programs that meet employees where they are. When learning leaders recognize the motivations, preferences, and challenges that shape how people learn, they can design experiences that drive deeper engagement, stronger skill development, and more meaningful business impact. In an environment where skills are evolving faster than ever, this level of insight helps enterprises stay agile and prepare their workforce for the future.

This overview introduced just one of the five profiles uncovered in our research, but there is much more to learn about how these profiles can impact your organization. Download the full report to dive deeper into the remaining four profiles and learn how each one brings unique strengths and considerations to your learning strategy:

• The Social Learner
• The Confident Learner
• The Emerging Learner
• The Practical Learner

Sources

1. World Economic Forum: “Putting Skills First: Opportunities for Building Efficient and Equitable Labour Markets”