Jordan Hammerstad, L&D lead at The Josh Bersin Company, argues that L&D must step out of the course factory and into the messy reality of performance where influence evidence and business proximity decide whether change sticks. L&D needs to build capability before gaps bite adaptation as part of everyday work.
Recently, Training Journal produced a special report on the state of Learning and Development (L&D) and introduced the TJ Readiness Enablers Index. It concluded this is a vital practice being reshaped by constant organisational change, tighter business expectations, and the need to prove real performance impact rather than simply deliver learning activity.
Wider labour market pressures are shaping L&D’s evolution
A central theme emerged was adaptation as a core capability. L&D is positioned as a potential “adaptation engine” for organisations, helping people maintain performance while strategies, systems and priorities keep shifting. At the same time, wider labour market pressures are shaping L&D’s evolution, including expanded digital access, rising cost of living, climate pressures, geopolitical and economic instability, and demographic change.
Together, these forces raise the baseline expectation for workforce capability and agility and highlight a community ready to embrace that change (59% saying they feel somewhat or very ready for change, while 41% feel only a little or not ready), for example.
The analysis suggests the biggest bottleneck to progress is not tools, but access and influence. The index identifies decision-makers as the most common barrier, followed by constraints around usable data, time, and permission to experiment.
A pivot to enablement
Overall, it’s important to see how this data highlights a clear shift in how L&D is being reframed away from delivery and towards purposeful, performance-driven enablement. A key idea the study surfaces is the importance of purposeful adaptation. While many in the field feel they are constantly adapting, this is often reactive, responding after performance has already declined or skill gaps have already emerged.
In sharp contrast, purposeful adaptation is forward-facing, based on a clear-eyed perspective on where work is changing, what that means for our future capability needs, and enabling people before gaps become critical. As shown in the report, all of the above reframes L&D from a reactive service into a positive force for shaping how organisations can change, making learning not something “delivered”, but an always-on capability.
Change that lands vs change that fades
This idea is reinforced by the report’s emphasis on how L&D can make the difference between change that lands and change that fades. Change does not succeed through communication plans or training completions alone; it lands when employees understand expectations, have access to relevant knowledge, can practise new behaviours, receive managerial support, and are supported directly in the flow of work.
In other words, L&D’s real value lies in making change executable in day-to-day operations.
A related challenge the report emphasises is the need to move from volume to focus. L&D teams say here they are frequently overloaded with requests and competing priorities. Meaningful impact depends on identifying the most critical capabilities, workflows that matter most, and the areas where enablement will deliver the greatest return. Without this discipline, effort becomes diluted and impact weakens.
Another major conclusion is the importance of being close to the business. L&D simply cannot influence performance effectively from the periphery; it needs to be embedded in organisational decision-making and closely connected to business strategy, talent priorities, and operational needs.
Here, being involved early in conversations about change is particularly important, as it elevates L&D from reactive “order-taking” to proactive performance consulting. When involved late, L&D is limited to addressing symptoms rather than shaping systemic solutions; early involvement prevents that, as it enables deeper diagnosis of capability requirements, workflow constraints, and the conditions needed for change to succeed.
Speaking the right language
Closely linked to this is the importance of language. The study shows L&D must move away from its own internal terminology, such as programmes, completions, and content, and instead speak in business terms: productivity, readiness, quality, customer outcomes, retention, and risk. In other words, credibility is built not by describing a learning activity, but by clearly linking development work to execution and organisational performance.
Another key point for me from this data is L&D must operate within a wider ecosystem, not as a standalone function. Performance has to be measured by collaboration between HR, business leaders, IT, managers, subject matter experts, and employees. We need to see L&D’s role as a glue for connecting people, systems, and processes that collectively enable capability and performance, rather than controlling learning centrally.
For me, the findings on evidence and impact reinforce this. The emphasis is now shifting from learning activity to business performance. Traditional metrics such as completion rates or satisfaction scores are increasingly seen as insufficient, as they do not demonstrate real-world improvement. Instead, the focus needs to be on whether capability has improved performance in the workflow and whether business outcomes have changed as a result.
A key concept of huge value here is skills velocity: how quickly an organisation can identify, build, and deploy the skills required for its priorities, reinforcing the need to define success before solutions are designed, ensuring measurement is built into the process rather than added afterwards.
Is L&D ready to accept the challenge to change?
Ultimately, the strongest thread running through the report is the long-overdue pivot from seeing L&D as delivering learning to enabling performance. Delivery-focused L&D was measured, or supposed to be, by outputs such as programmes and participation; enablement-focused L&D is measured by whether people can perform effectively in real work conditions.
This includes clarity of expectations, access to knowledge, opportunities to practise, manager coaching, workflow support, and increasingly, AI-enabled assistance. So, this study aligns with many other serious evaluations: L&D must reposition itself as the architect of performance enablement. And going forward, its purpose is not to deliver learning for its own sake, but to ensure people can execute, adapt, and improve as work changes.
The report also backs up our own analysis, incidentally, on many fronts. In February, The Josh Bersin Company released findings on the current paralysis of the L&D ecosystem, as despite the over-$400B invested in corporate training, fewer than 30% of companies are satisfied with their workforce’s skill development today.
Given the speed of task, process, and role redesign, e-learning and training through courseware isn’t enough, and it seems evident a new, more AI-enabled L&D can close the gap.
Interestingly, our data also identified this trend as an embrace of “dynamic enablement”, a model which vastly outperforms earlier approaches to employee development, and companies using it are six times more likely to exceed financial targets and 28 times more likely to unlock employee potential.
What both sets of research both confirm is L&D is potentially on a pathway to move from being a mere support function to a central enabler of organisational change and effectiveness. This should be celebrated, for all its immediate challenges.
Jordan Hammerstad is Associate Director, Research at leading people and workplace futures advisory group The Josh Bersin Company
