What’s one of the leading causes of turnover within an organization?
The answer might surprise you: learning and development challenges.
Professionals today don’t just want a competitive salary—they want to feel like they’re growing, both personally and professionally.
Organizations today are now beginning to recognize that offering continuous learning isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s essential for engagement, retention, and long-term growth.
The fact is that L&D has never been more crucial to business success. In fact, companies with a strong learning culture are over seven times more likely to retain their people—and have 218 percent higher profits per professional, according to a study conducted by the Association for Talent Development.
However, despite the growing importance of learning and development, many L&D programs are struggling to deliver real impact. A staggering 60 percent of companies admit their learning strategy is not aligned with business goals, according to McKinsey.
This disconnect also means organizations end up with a low return on investment and leaves them with frustrated team members who aren’t seeing the development they crave.
But while learning and development challenges certainly exist, there are actionable solutions you can put in place to transform your L&D approach.
By implementing strategies that engage, empower, and align learning with business objectives, you can turn learning programs into a powerful tool for your people and organizational success.
The main challenges in learning and development
Learning and development initiatives can be a strategic driver of business success, but they do come with their challenges—and it’s not just choosing an LMS.
Many organizations are facing two pressing challenges in particular that are inhibiting their L&D programs from reaching their full potential, leading to lower performance and missed growth opportunities as a result:
L&D is disconnected from the business
In many organizations, L&D programs are not fully aligned with the business’s needs.
When they are aligned, they can lead to greater efficiencies and ensure organizations invest in programs that yield measurable results for the business. Because L&D has the potential to bring a host of benefits—from reducing turnover rates to boosting organizational performance.
However, these benefits can only be realized when L&D is integrated with business priorities. Without clear connections to business objectives, L&D efforts can feel like a separate initiative rather than a critical part of driving organizational success.
This disconnect often stems from siloed systems that fail to integrate learning outcomes with broader business objectives, making it difficult to ensure that learning directly supports company goals.
What’s more, a lack of clarity around the purpose of L&D programs can contribute to the challenge. However, by ensuring clarity around their purpose, L&D professionals can show organizational leaders the clear link between learning initiatives and business outcomes. Leaders will then be able to view these programs as an essential part of driving success rather than as a “nice-to-have.” This perception can secure the investment and attention L&D needs to make a real impact.
It’s difficult to prove the ROI of L&D programs
It can also be difficult for HR teams to prove the ROI of LMS and L&D programs.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of relying on vanity metrics such as course completion rates or hours logged, which don’t accurately reflect the real impact of learning on team member performance or business results.
Incomplete data and manual processes also make it more difficult to track how learning drives profitability or growth.
In turn, the lack of tangible ROI makes it even more challenging for HR teams to gain buy-in from leadership for new strategic L&D initiatives and LMS implementation.
The consequences of these training challenges are substantial.
Without the buy-in of key stakeholders, companies may be bereft of learning and development initiatives. As a result, organizations can face higher turnover rates because their people don’t see clear development opportunities.
Businesses suffer from increased costs because of this: Replacing disengaged team members can cost around $15,000+ per person.
What’s more, companies with ineffective learning strategies see 2.3x lower revenue per team member compared to those with high-impact L&D cultures, according to Deloitte.
The good news is that there are solutions to these learning challenges which can help organizations steer their L&D initiatives back on track.
Practical solutions: Learning that connects, engages, and empowers
The key to transforming learning and development lies in bridging the gap between what your people want to learn, what your managers need them to learn, and what your business requires to thrive—creating learning programs that engage, empower, and deliver results across the board.
At the heart of this approach is the understanding that people, managers, and businesses all have unique needs when it comes to learning and development:
- What your people want. Your people crave learning opportunities that help them grow. They want to see how their development will enhance and advance their careers, build their skill sets, and satisfy their curiosity. Learning programs that align with their desires will engage them with their work and make them more likely to stay with you for the long term.
- What your managers need. Managers are focused on upskilling their teams to ensure they’re equipped with the right knowledge and capabilities to meet the demands of the business. They also want transparency—knowing which team members are progressing, which areas need more attention, and how learning is impacting team performance.
- What your business requires. For organizations, it’s important that learning is directly linked to strategic goals. Whether it’s improving leadership skills, enhancing product knowledge, or staying ahead of industry trends, it’s essential that learning programs support the business in achieving its key objectives. This can drive better performance, reduce turnover, boost profitability, and make it easier to gain buy-in from leadership.
By connecting learning to individual aspirations, team development, and business needs, your organization can shift away from traditional, disconnected L&D strategies and instead embrace an approach where everyone wins—where your people feel motivated, your teams perform better, and your organization sees tangible benefits.
Below you’ll find practical solutions to transform your L&D by meeting the unique needs of people, managers, and the business as a whole:
Solution 1: Align learning with career goals and business objectives
By aligning learning opportunities with your people’s career goals, you’ll be activating a major contributor to high retention rates. Your team members will feel more fulfilled and engage more with their work when they see tangible support for their development.
When this learning also aligns with business objectives, it’ll make the most significant impact on your organization.
Here are a few ways you can ensure you align learning with individual career goals and business objectives:
Regularly update training programs
To keep in step with the latest industry trends and ensure learning and development initiatives align with business goals, it’s important to regularly update your training programs to address evolving skills gaps and meet business requirements.
Additionally, keeping your learning pathways and content fresh will help your people continue to engage with their training while ensuring what they’re learning is relevant and up to date.
By regularly refreshing learning curriculums, you can ensure your organization remains aligned with the latest industry standards and business priorities. It also shows your people that you’re committed to their growth and wellbeing, fostering greater retention.
With learning curriculums that keep up with the pace of change, your organization will be set up for long-term success.
Tie learning to career growth
People are far more motivated when they see a direct connection between the skills they are acquiring and their career advancement. That’s why it’s vital to design learning opportunities with career progression in mind.
Allowing your people to understand how their development will lead to promotions, new roles, or leadership opportunities will keep them engaged and reduce turnover.
Aligning learning with career growth not only benefits individuals but also the business as a whole. Companies that integrate learning into career pathways reap the rewards of long-term engagement, higher retention rates, and better performance.
Design curriculums that focus on business objectives
Beyond individual career growth, it’s important that learning aligns with strategic business objectives.
Programs that help your people develop leadership skills, gain certifications, or master industry-specific knowledge will have a direct impact on your organization’s success. This dual focus on personal and business goals creates a mutually beneficial relationship, where learning drives individual achievement and, in turn, boosts the company’s performance—helping to prove the ROI of L&D to key stakeholders.
Solution 2: Automate learning processes to free up time for strategy
Many L&D professionals are currently overwhelmed by their increasing workloads. The sheer number of administrative tasks that come with managing learning programs—from course scheduling to tracking completion rates—leaves little room for more strategic work.
If L&D is to have any significant impact on your people and business objectives, it’s important for your L&D professionals to have the time to focus on designing high-impact programs and aligning learning with organizational goals.
Administrative overload can hold L&D teams back from driving real change within your organization.
That’s where automation can help:
Automate course management to reduce manual workload
Automation tools can handle repetitive tasks such as course scheduling, tracking, and reporting, reducing the administrative burden on your L&D teams.
By streamlining these manual processes, your L&D professionals can gain back valuable time to work on more strategic activities like personalizing learning paths, ensuring training aligns with business goals, and addressing key skills gaps.
The benefits of automation are both measurable and substantial. Automation tools can save 14 hours per week for each HR professional, according to a study from Hewitt Associates.
Use technology to streamline onboarding and learning tasks
Automation can also help simplify learning-related tasks for your people, such as onboarding and integrating learning into everyday workflows.
By automating processes like learning reminders, onboarding schedules, and performance tracking, you can ensure your people stay on top of their learning without adding more manual work for L&D or HR teams.
The time saved through automation allows for greater emphasis on personalization, innovation, and continuous improvement—all of which contribute to a more effective learning culture.
Solution 3: Update learning strategies to reflect current and future needs
When L&D and HR professionals have the time to focus on strategy, they can ensure L&D programs are truly effective. But to stay competitive and foster continuous development, it’s important to update your learning strategies regularly.
By ensuring your learning programs keep up with the latest industry trends, emerging technologies, or shifting team member expectations, your organization will be more likely to experience higher performance and seize growth opportunities—keeping you ahead of the competition.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Create a personalized learning experience
One of the main training issues in the workplace is that professionals don’t always feel like learning programs are entirely relevant to them.
After all, people have unique career goals, skills gaps, and learning preferences. So to truly engage your teams and foster long-term growth, it’s essential to provide personalized learning experiences that cater to individual needs and aspirations.
When learning is tailored to what matters most to each person, it becomes more than a task to complete—it becomes a tool for real development.
Personalized learning allows each person to engage with content that’s relevant to their specific role, career path, or development goals. By tailoring learning programs to individual strengths and opportunities for growth, you can ensure your team members feel invested in their learning journeys.
Personalization shows your people you’re committed to helping them grow in ways that align with their own ambitions—leading to higher motivation and better performance.
Whether it’s creating customized learning pathways for leadership development or offering skill-specific modules for technical roles, personalization makes learning more impactful.
This personalized approach can help reduce turnover, as people who see a clear path for growth within an organization are more likely to stay and contribute long-term.
Implement performance feedback loops to refine learning programs
Performance feedback loops allow your L&D team to gather data on how learning programs are impacting team member performance. By analyzing this feedback, your L&D team can make timely adjustments to your organization’s learning initiatives, ensuring they’re not only relevant but effective.
Feedback loops provide invaluable insights into whether learning programs are meeting their intended goals. For example, if a particular training module is not driving the expected improvements in performance, your L&D professionals can refine or replace it with content that better meets the needs of the team.
This approach ensures learning remains agile and responsive, directly contributing to better business performance.
When you regularly update and refine learning programs based on performance data, your initiatives will do more than just keep your people engaged—they’ll help drive growth, improve skills, and support long-term business success.
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Embed continuous learning within your organization’s culture
L&D initiatives have the potential to truly transform your organization for the better. In fact, companies with high-performing learning cultures experience significantly better business outcomes.
But what’s the key to nurturing a successful learning culture? Making continuous learning a natural part of daily work.
When you embed learning into regular routines, it encourages your people’s ongoing development rather than treating training as a one-off event. Because it can be difficult for your people to fit in formal learning sessions with their daily workloads—the average professional has just 24 minutes a week free for formal training.
Continuous learning means your team members are always building on their knowledge, making it easier to adapt to new challenges and technologies. By weaving learning into everyday tasks—whether it’s through micro-learning, quick reference materials, or on-the-job training—you can foster a culture where development is part of the workflow, not an afterthought.
This kind of integration helps keep your people engaged over the long term and ensures their learning directly supports their current work and future growth.
Shaping the future of L&D
As organizations face constant change and increasing demands for new skills, the need for forward-thinking L&D solutions has never been greater.
Now is the time to rethink your learning and development strategies, recognizing them as a critical component of business success.
By adopting an approach that aligns learning with career paths, automates administrative processes, and continuously updates strategies to meet both current and future needs, you can establish a strong connection between L&D and successful business outcomes and prove its ROI.
When you personalize learning to individual growth paths, embed it seamlessly into daily workflows, and regularly adapt it to reflect the latest industry changes and skills gaps, it ceases to be just another corporate program. Instead, it becomes a strategic asset that fuels long-term success for both your business and your people.
This shift not only boosts retention and engagement but also leads to higher profitability as your people become more skilled and motivated.
By focusing on the solutions outlined in this guide, you can ensure your people are continually developing, engaged, and prepared to contribute to your organization’s future.