Corporate learning is treated like a chore, with people racing through modules and retaining little. Eric Francia argues engagement is the missing ingredient, backed by neuroscience and the adaptive power of game-based learning. We need to measure behaviour change, design for motivation, and use AI to personalise learning at scale.
Somewhere right now, an employee is watching a video about active listening at 1.75x speed. Another is clicking through a fire safety module they completed last year and can’t remember anything about. Corporate learning has become a paradox in modern business where companies invest billions annually, but the people they’re investing in actively dread it.
Learning still feels like a punishment
Most corporate learning platforms were designed for distribution rather than engagement. Standardised formats, linear modules, and passive consumption make rollout fast and simple, but they rarely make knowledge stick. The Research Institute of America found that employees retain only 10-20% of information after traditional corporate training. I once met a Google engineer who told me he would pay money not to have to do his internal courses. This stayed with me because even at one of the companies with the best resources in the world, learning still feels like a punishment.
Ring a bell?
While mandatory modules ensure minimum standards, they also condition employees to treat learning as a checkbox to tick, not a capability to develop. Many workers simply complete e-learning to satisfy their job obligations without engaging, retaining knowledge, or applying it on the job.
This matters more now than ever before. Reskilling ranked as the number one HR challenge in 2025, overtaking wellbeing and retention for the first time. The World Economic Forum projects that 39% of core skills will change by 2030, with 59% of workers needing significant upskilling due to the effects of AI on work. Yet the infrastructure to reskill employees is broken.
The irony is that employees themselves genuinely want to learn. Three of the top five reasons people leave their jobs relate to wanting to stretch, grow, and develop new skills. Companies are losing their most development-hungry people while wasting money on training that nobody wants to do.
Enjoy adaptable learning
Unengaging training fails because cognitive processing drops, not from any personal failing, but from basic neuroscience. When the brain is engaged, it sends more signals to the memory centre as enjoyment is the neurological precondition for learning. This is one of the reasons people remember something they learned in a game, and forget a compliance module the moment they close it.
Game-based learning is so effective because games adapt, pushing you when you are ready and supporting you when you are not. They give feedback in real time rather than a score at the end of a module, and they make you want to try again. This is why game-based learning produces completion rates of up to 90%, compared to 25% for standard formats. Gaming mechanics make learning stick. Fun isn’t the point, retention is. Fun is simply how you get there.
Do you measure up?
HR leaders need to stop measuring learning by completion and start measuring it by behaviour change. A finished module is not evidence of learning, it is evidence of clicking through. The metrics that matter for corporate learning centre on voluntary return rates, exploring non-compulsory content, and knowledge being applied to the job. Engagement means designing learning that builds internal motivation rather than external compliance and creating formats that adapt to the individual. It means integrating learning into the flow of work rather than it being a tick box exercise once a year.
The companies that build a genuine learning culture, where employees actively participate rather than grudgingly comply, will have an advantage as the future of work continues to adapt in the age of AI. This changing landscape is an opportunity to turn learning on its head, and the technology exists to actually do it. AI can make every employee’s learning as individual as they are, at a scale no team of designers ever could. Until the default shifts away from mandatory one-size-fits-all training, we will see the same outcomes: boxes ticked, knowledge not retained, and learning opportunities quietly fading.
The organisations that decide to stop counting completions and start building training programmes that their employees want to engage with will shift their teams from enduring training to embracing learning. They will close the skills gaps that matter most for business performance, and they will retain top talent who thrive in a learning-first culture
Eric Francia is Co-Founder and CEO of Uniplay
