As expectations around learning change, L&D teams are taking a closer look at what genuinely supports growth in practice. Drawing on expert perspectives, this article explores three areas influencing how learning is designed, delivered and experienced across different organisational contexts.
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How can L&D teams make a real difference and boost performance across the whole organisation? The challenge is making learning stick and work effectively for every single person, no matter where they are. If you're aiming to grow the impact of your training, you'll find that just creating more courses usually doesn't lead to big results.
To find the best way forward, we talked to leading L&D experts. They all agree that lasting success comes from mastering a few simple, essential ideas. Keep reading to discover the three key pillars that will help you grow L&D's influence and map out a clear path for the future.
Pillar one: the Skills Bank
Today, most organisations use talent platforms to map capabilities, which provides the best possible view of skills across teams. However, the continuous challenge for L&D is moving beyond initial data collection to ensure that view is accurate, validated and kept current against emerging business needs.
A job title is never the whole story; two people with the same role often have different strengths, hidden interests and varying readiness levels for new challenges. This lack of clear data makes important strategic decisions far trickier than necessary.
This is exactly why Zu Hui Yap, Director, Strategy and Growth, Montfort Care, recommends starting with a comprehensive skills audit. As he wisely puts it:
“Have a stock take of the skills in your organisation. Without that visibility, it is very difficult to know which skills you can tap on.”
When you pool this information into a centralised Skills Bank, clear patterns immediately jump out. You can instantly see where your organisation has strong capabilities, where the big gaps are and where moving someone internally could be a faster, better answer than recruiting externally.
A Skills Bank doesn't just show what skills exist; it shows how they are distributed across teams and roles. You can spot teams that are overstretched, identify strengths you might be under-utilising and make highly targeted decisions about development investment.
Now, think about what this means for each employee. When they can clearly see the skills they already have and the opportunities that link up with them, development suddenly feels achievable. They know where they stand and what direction they can head in, which naturally builds confidence and makes them take ownership of their careers.
With this insight, every other L&D decision becomes easier, as you finally stop guessing what people need and start working with real, reliable data.
Pillar two: the shift to context practice
For Craig Shim, Director, Alpha Crane Intercultural Specialists, the biggest change in L&D is the necessary move away from a single, rigid definition of 'best practice.' Whether an organisation operates globally, regionally or locally, the reality is that a one-size-fits-all approach is outdated. Teams operate in different industries, job roles and specific environments, making their context critical. As he explains: 'We are moving from best practice to context practice. One size does not fit all.'
Context Practice means paying real attention to your people’s daily working lives. This includes looking at how teams collaborate, the specific industry and job environment they work within and the daily market pressures they face. A learning programme that works well for a head office team might feel totally wrong for a field-based one.
Lucy Butters, Founder of Elembee Ltd and Master Facilitator in Cultural Intelligence, highlights this point using the idea of Cultural Intelligence (CQ). She reminds us that learning only hits home when it truly reflects the people it is designed for. 'Learning design must reflect cultural intelligence. Not everyone learns or engages in the same way.' When your examples, language and scenarios feel familiar, relatable and respectful of different working styles, people grasp the learning immediately. It feels predictable, trustworthy and much easier to apply back on the job. Context practice is a simple mindset shift. It encourages L&D teams to notice the key differences that shape how people work and to design learning that genuinely fits their world.
Pillar three: the ABC of human performance
‘L&D is about helping people feel trusted, valued and capable: autonomy, belonging and competence. Get those three right and everything else follows.’ — Antoni Lacinai, Communication and Workplace Engagement Expert
Building on this idea, Antoni explains that people learn and perform best when three basic human needs, often referred to as the 'ABC', are properly met. This framework, rooted in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), highlights:
A: Autonomy is about having the trust and space to make decisions. When employees feel respected and trusted, they are far more willing to take the initiative and proactively develop their capabilities.
B: Belonging is the critical sense of being part of a valued group where your contribution is genuinely noticed. This need directly influences whether people feel safe enough to speak up, ask for help or confidently share new ideas.
C: Competence is about having the inner confidence that you can perform well and succeed. While L&D often defines competence as the objective skill level, this pillar focuses on the employee's belief in their ability. When employees believe they are effective, learning becomes a natural part of their work, rather than an added pressure on an already busy schedule.
For L&D teams, supporting the ABCs means simple but strong actions: creating clear development paths, encouraging positive team habits and giving people practical ways to build skill and confidence on the job.
Putting it into practice
The three pillars offer a useful way to rethink how learning takes shape inside an organisation, but they only make a difference when they turn into practical steps. If you are ready to bring these ideas into your L&D strategy, you can start with these three steps:
- Map it: Start with a simple skills audit to understand what people can do now and what the organisation will need tomorrow. Use this to create a Skills Bank or a lightweight capability map so teams can quickly see strengths, gaps and where development must focus.
- Customise it: Design learning with context in mind. Use flexible content formats and a range of materials that can be easily adapted to different team needs, job roles, or regional environments. Run small tests to try out formats, gather feedback and prove what works before you try to scale anything further.
- Support it: Make psychological safety a priority in all your learning spaces so people feel truly able to contribute, ask tough questions and take risks without fear of judgment. Finally, link both technical and human skills to clear, transparent development pathways so people understand exactly how to progress and where learning can take them.
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