Learning Impact Award 2025: Here Are the Nominees!
Established in 2001, the getAbstract International Book Award is one of the oldest continuously awarded nonfiction prizes in the world. Since 2022, the Learning Impact Award, a special L&D book prize, has also been awarded. In line with our mission to provide actionable, business-relevant knowledge, it focuses on titles that help HR and L&D leaders make better decisions for themselves and their employees—in line with our slogan ‘Know Better. Do Better.’
Here are this year’s nominees:
International Book Award: Learning Impact (Longlist)
- Karl M. Kapp: Action-First Learning
- Kristin Saling: Data-Driven Talent Management
- Sarah Mercier: Design for All Learners
- Keith Keating: Hidden Value
- Paolo Gaudiano: Measuring Inclusion
- Peter Woolliams & Fons Trompenaars: New Approaches to Flexible Working
- Hadiya Nuriddin: Quality Management in Learning and Development
- Katja Schipperheijn: The Learning Mindset
- Lida Citroën: The New Rules of Influence
- Ravin Jesuthasan & Tanuj Kapilashrami: The Skills-Powered Organization
Karl M. Kapp:
Action-First Learning
ATD, 2025
Instructional design professor Karl M. Kapp advocates action-first learning that immediately engages learners in applying new skills and knowledge. In keeping with the action-first theme, each of the book’s sections — focused on live interaction, card and board games, escape rooms, comics, “branching scenarios,” AI coaches, and immersive technology — provides practical steps and sample AI prompts to help designers start creating experiences right away. Extensive tips for accessibility ensure options for learners of all backgrounds and abilities.
This book is a powerful resource for people new to instructional design or looking for creative ideas on how to develop more action-oriented learning solutions.
Simon Brown, Juror
Kristin Saling:
Data-Driven Talent Management
Kogan Page, 2024
The US Army may not be the first workplace that comes to mind when you think about a personalized employee experience. Still, data analytics expert Kristin Saling reveals how it is doing precisely that. In this lively book packed with pop culture analogies, Saling makes a compelling case for using data to understand individual workers and build cognitively diverse teams who produce innovative results. With clearly defined terms and plenty of specific examples, Data-Driven Talent Management serves as a first-rate introduction to data analytics that will also inspire seasoned talent managers.
Drawing on practical examples and clear, well-structured models, Data-Driven Talent Management introduces readers to the central role of data in talent and learning, from workforce analytics to AI-driven predictions. It is highly timely in the age of AI, showing how technology can act as a strategic lever for both organizational performance and employee growth.
Donald H. Taylor, Juror
Sarah Mercier:
Design for All Learners
ATD, 2025
The Americans with Disabilities Act reshaped the nation’s streetscapes and restrooms to make them more accessible. Now, L&D experts seek to make virtual content similarly accessible and inclusive. This guide, edited by advocate Sarah Mercier, compiles advice and experiences from more than two dozen advocates and consultants to offer a comprehensive overview of inclusive instructional design best practices. Topics include such challenges as designing for people with color blindness and other visual impairments, hearing disabilities, and physical challenges, such as the inability to use a mouse.
Design for All Learners is an important book, equipping readers with both practical tools and the essential background knowledge to design for all. It is a highly usable guide, making a crucial point: inclusive design creates value for everyone, not just for those with specific needs.
Donald H. Taylor, Juror
Keith Keating:
Hidden Value
Keith Keating, 2025
As entire industries change rapidly, individuals and businesses must dedicate themselves to constantly learning. Leadership often fails to value learning and development’s (L&D) critical role in creating capable, resilient organizations. Through illustrative case studies and exercises that encourage action, Chief Learning and Talent Officer Keith Keating explains how L&D professionals can connect learning programs with organizational goals and stakeholder priorities to demonstrate that L&D is an essential source of business success.
Keith Keating continues his momentum following his well-received The Trusted Learning Advisor. Hidden Value takes the conversation a step further, delivering sharper, more practical insights around corporate learning ROI, including how overlooked initiatives can yield disproportionate returns. This is a theme L&D professionals are eager to explore – and with good reason.
Donald H. Taylor, Juror
Paolo Gaudiano:
Measuring Inclusion
Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2024
Companies that prioritize inclusion see higher profits and happier employees. Yet companies struggle to create truly inclusive workplaces, often facing resistance or uncertainty about the process. Inclusion expert Paolo Gaudiano offers a data-driven approach to improving workplace inclusion that helps business leaders tackle these issues. His practical strategies allow leaders to identify exclusion, implement meaningful change, and track progress with confidence. By shifting the focus from diversity metrics to employee experiences, organizations can foster a culture in which everyone thrives.
This is a comprehensive and practical examination of inclusion, offering clear, realistic strategies for diagnosing exclusion – for example, identifying patterns in promotions or meeting participation – making DEI more concrete and measurable in everyday organizational life.
Jana Eicher, Juror
Peter Woolliams & Fons Trompenaars:
New Approaches to Flexible Working
Emerald Publishing, 2024
Consultant Fons Trompenaars, PhD, and professor Peter Woolliams, PhD, conducted evidence-based research to explore the pros and cons of flexible work. This practical guide explores why employees value flexible work and why some companies may hesitate to offer flexible work options. The authors’ data-backed insights and illustrative examples demonstrate how companies can mitigate risks associated with remote work, balance employee satisfaction and organizational efficiency, and otherwise leverage flexibility to drive success.
This is a valuable deep dive into the pros and cons of flexible working and the way different generations perceive it, presenting new research to help understand benefits and challenges. The book also explores some of the broader aspects of remote work, including security risks and cultural or geographical differences.
Simon Brown, Juror
Hadiya Nuriddin:
Quality Management in Learning and Development
ATD, 2024
Learning and development professionals need to create standards, policies, and processes that support consistency and effectiveness, L&D expert Hadiya Nuriddin argues. In this helpful guide, Nuriddin presents a structured, sustainable approach to building quality management systems for L&D. Nuriddin’s concrete frameworks and valuable strategies — from designing better review processes to implementing guidelines that keep teams accountable — deliver a detailed road map for elevating the quality of learning and development in organizations both large and small.
Quality Management in Learning and Development provides a focused, L&D-specific look at quality control—an area rarely addressed in depth.
Jana Eicher, Juror
Katja Schipperheijn:
The Learning Mindset
Kogan Page, 2024
Embracing a “learning mindset” — an openness to continuous learning and adaptability — is critical for individuals, companies and governments in the modern era, urges consultant Katja Schipperheijn. She dispels myths about diminishing learning capacity and highlights the importance of a growth mindset throughout life. Schipperheijn believes firms must transform into “LearnScapes,” where visionary leaders, or “LearnScapers,” combine human competencies such as curiosity, empathy, and imagination with advancing AI.
Katja Schipperheijn’s The Learning Mindset condenses insights and guidance on how to develop a growth mindset and culture of continuous learning as AI impacts the workplace more significantly. This book conveys essential messages on how to prepare for the upcoming age of AI.
Simon Brown, Juror
Lida Citroën:
The New Rules of Influence
Berrett-Koehler, 2024
Modern leaders need to be trustworthy change agents who make a positive impact on those they lead. You may think that’s Leadership 101, but in today’s world of change and uncertainty, leaders face new challenges and need fresh leadership guidelines. To respond to that need, personal branding expert Lida Citroën provides an empowering framework that will enable even the most perplexed leaders to become more effective and generate lasting influence.
The New Rules of Influence offers insightful lessons for leadership in today’s complex world. Many of its findings and clarifications resonate – and the book overall provides helpful guidance for anyone looking to hone their leadership skills and behaviors to gain influence.
Simon Brown, Juror
Ravin Jesuthasan & Tanuj Kapilashrami:
The Skills-Powered Organization
MIT Press, 2024
In today’s fast-evolving world of work, organizations and workers alike must prioritize the identification, development, and deployment of employee skills. In this helpful guide, talent management experts Ravin Jesuthasan and Tanuj Kapilashrami provide a framework for a skills-centric approach to talent management and work design that renders companies more agile, resilient, and high-performing. Their detailed case studies demonstrate how to deconstruct jobs into tasks, leverage internal talent marketplaces, and foster a culture of continuous learning as a skills-powered organization.
If you are looking for a compelling case for shifting from rigid job structures to skills-based ecosystems, this is your book. Its vision of dynamic talent allocation across internal and external networks is forward-looking and highly relevant to evolving work models, emphasizing adaptability in a maybe more-than-ever VUCA environment.
Jana Eicher, Juror
The winner of the Learning Impact Award will be announced on 22 October 2025. Click here for the nominees in the Business Impact category.
