Every year organisations invest heavily in developing their people. In the UK alone, employers spent more than £50 billion on training and development in 2024, averaging £1,700 per employee. Most organisations recognise that developing skills is critical to performance, productivity and retention, and it’s broadly accepted that upskilling existing employees is often cheaper than recruiting new ones.
And yet the picture is shifting.
Department for Education data from 2024 shows a steady decline in both training spend and the number of training days provided to employees. Investment per employee has fallen by almost 30% in real terms since 2011.
It’s not entirely surprising. Economic uncertainty persists, costs continue to rise, and many learning initiatives still struggle to demonstrate clear improvements in behaviour, capability or strategic outcomes. But if organisations could consistently show that learning interventions changed behaviour and supported strategic business objectives, would leaders invest differently? Would programmes still be squeezed into shorter sessions? Would follow-up and embedding elements quietly disappear from proposals in the name of cost reduction?
It starts to feel like a classic chicken-and-egg problem. If there were a clearer link between training investment and the bottom line, organisations might be more willing to invest in learning that actually works. Yet the reality is that we often design training for compromise rather than for success and that makes gaining and proving impact much harder.
The inconvenient truth is this: effective training requires investment, and behaviour change takes time. When either of those things gets cut short, the impact is rarely transformational.
And in an economy where organisations need to make the most of the people they already have, that’s the paradox the training market needs to confront.
Why Some Learning Sticks, and Some Fades Fast
So let’s unpack the idea that effective training requires investment and behaviour change takes time. A quick reminder for anyone designing or buying learning programmes of what actually makes them work.
Research is remarkably consistent on this point: impactful learning rarely comes from a single workshop or knowledge-heavy session. People retain and apply more when it’s active rather than passive, when ideas are revisited over time rather than crammed into one session, and when there’s space to practice new behaviours in real situations.
In practice, this means designing learning as a process. Starting with a clear understanding of the behaviour or capability that needs to change, followed by thoughtful design, real-world application and reinforcement over time.
The challenge is that these conditions don’t always make programmes the cheapest, quickest or easiest to deliver. But they are what make learning stick.
Check out the: The Learning that Lasts Loop infographic for what that journey should look like in practice.
Five Conversations That Quietly Derail Learning Impact
1. “We don’t need discovery time, we already know the problem.”
We hear this a lot. Well-intentioned HR teams or line managers saying, “they just need a course on…”. But when training is designed around what we think the problem is – rather than what’s actually happening – impact falls short.
Before designing a learning solution, we need the full picture: knowledge gaps, skill gaps, confidence levels and any systemic barriers getting in the way of success.
And then there’s the perception gap: the difference between how issues are seen by leadership or HR and the reality experienced by colleagues in different roles, departments or demographics across the organisation.
In a nutshell: skipping discovery feels like saving time, but it usually wastes it.
Hack: Sure, focus groups facilitated with psychological safety front of mind can really deepen insight. But with today’s technology, a well-designed survey can surface valuable signals quickly, and AI tools can help identify patterns in the data (just make sure responses are anonymous or anonymised). Get the problem right at the start and the training time you invest will be focused exactly where it makes the biggest difference.
2. “Take the pre-work out. No one will do it anyway.”
Whoa, let’s pause there. As we’ve already explored, layering learning improves retention, and those small touchpoints around a workshop make a big difference.
When you work with a training provider, you’re essentially buying their time so any pre-learning they offer – short videos, reflection prompts or reading – not only helps participants arrive prepared, it allows workshop time to focus on behaviour change rather than basic knowledge transfer. And that’s where the real magic tends to happen.
In a nutshell: keeping pre-work in place means you get a much bigger bang for your buck in the training room.
Hack: Reflect on your learning culture. Clear internal communication about the why, what and how of a programme helps people understand why the pre-work matters and how it fits into the bigger picture. Make sure managers are on board too; when they advocate the time to engage with each step, participation usually follows.
3. “Can we just do it in an hour?”
We’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve been sent a long list of learning objectives alongside a request for a 60-minute ‘masterclass’. In the words of our founder, “maybe they think we’re ting-fairies?” (Yep, picture a fairy with a magic wand that goes ting and suddenly everything is fixed.)
Of course, it’s possible to deliver high-impact masterclasses. And when there’s a single nugget of insight to introduce, they can work well. But if the goal is behaviour change, squeezing everything into a short session rarely ends well. Real change requires time to explore ideas, discuss real situations and practise new approaches.
In a nutshell: meaningful learning rarely happens at the speed of a ting.
Hack: Reflect on what’s driving the one-hour request. If the constraint is time away from the job, design a series of shorter sessions supported by strong pre- and post-learning touchpoints, reflection tasks, peer discussion and manager follow-up. If it’s about budget, ask the bigger question: what’s the value to the business if the learning works? And what’s the cost if only a fraction of it sticks?
4. “How much cheaper is it if we remove the follow-up session?”
We get it. You’ve got the main workshop. The follow-up session feels like an upsell, right?
But the reality is that multiple touchpoints are one of the biggest drivers of learning impact. A follow-up session gives people the chance to revisit ideas, ask the questions that only emerge once they’ve tried applying the learning, and explore what has – and hasn’t – worked in practice.
It’s also where learning can shift from understanding to application. Once the core workshop is done, follow-ups can focus entirely on real-life scenarios, problem-solving and sharing experiences. We love getting creative here using actor-led interactive scenarios, time-bound hackathons or group coaching circles.
Remove this step and the learning often fades before it has a chance to stick.
In a nutshell: behaviour change rarely happens after a single learning event.
Hack: Follow-ups don’t always need to be delivered by the training provider. We often equip managers or in-house facilitators (even enthusiastic amateurs!) with simple structures to run reflection sessions and peer-learning conversations. With a little guidance, organisations can reinforce learning themselves, keeping the momentum going without adding significant cost.
5. “Let’s just launch it. We’ll know if it worked.”
It’s an easy trap to fall into. The budget is signed off, the supplier is selected and the training rooms are booked. Measuring impact can feel like something to figure out later.
But without clarity on what success actually looks like, it’s almost impossible to know whether the investment made a meaningful difference. Did behaviours shift? Did performance improve? Did the programme deliver the outcome the organisation needed?
Without this clarity, we risk getting stuck in a cycle of cutting development corners because its value is never consistently proven.
In a nutshell: if we don’t define success upfront, we rarely prove impact afterwards.
Hack: Keep it simple. Track a few existing metrics linked to the behaviours you want to shift. Ask line managers to share regular observations as the learning is applied. And repeat the original TNA survey at the click of a button to compare results – just make sure internal communication is clear so colleagues don’t dismiss it as “I already did this one.”
The Inconvenient Truth About Training
The inconvenient truth about training isn’t that it doesn’t work, it’s that behaviour change takes time, focus and reinforcement, and those are often the very things that get squeezed when budgets tighten or diaries fill up.
The encouraging part is that the ingredients for impactful learning aren’t mysterious. We know from research and experience that when learning is designed with clear outcomes, grounded in real workplace challenges and supported over time, it can deliver meaningful change for individuals, teams and organisations.
The challenge for the L&D profession is simple: start with impact rather than adding it on later and design learning in a way that makes its value impossible to ignore.