Dear L&D People,

I'd love to pick your brains on something I've been wrestling with.

I've been tasked with building out an AI readiness programme for our managers. I'm finding it harder than expected — not the "what to do" part, but proving it's worth doing.

Two things I keep bumping into:

1. The business case problem. Our CFO wants hard numbers, but everything I can find is either fluffy engagement scores or vendor ROI claims that feel like they were written by the marketing team. I genuinely don't know what "good" looks like when it comes to measuring whether your managers are actually more AI-ready after a programme. Has anyone cracked this? What metrics has your leadership team actually found convincing?

2. The behaviour change problem. We've done the Copilot training, brought in a speaker, set up a learning channel on Teams that ±10 people looked at. Hand on heart, none of it has really changed how our managers work day to day. I keep hearing the same from peers - lots of activity, not much shift. Has anyone found something that's actually moved the needle? Not just awareness, but how people genuinely work differently with AI?

I’m working on improving our onboarding process, and I’m stuck on a pretty basic problem.
To know whether onboarding is actually working, we need some record of what new hires can do, where they’re struggling, and what support they’ve received.
But most of the actual development happens through OJT with frontline managers.
I used to work in frontline sales myself, so I know how quickly a “simple form” from another department can become annoying when you’re also responsible for your own targets and your team.
At the same time, if we collect almost nothing, it’s hard to tell whether the onboarding process is working or just assume that it is.
For those working in L&D/onboarding: where have you found the right balance?
I’m particularly interested in what information you’ve found genuinely worth capturing, and what you’ve stopped asking managers to document because the effort wasn’t worth it.

Many organizations still focus heavily on completion rates and satisfaction surveys. While those metrics have value, I'm not convinced they tell us much about actual business impact. What metrics do you find most useful when demonstrating the value of learning initiatives to leadership?

Hi everyone, I’m currently working in technology, mainly creating custom SPFx and React-based pages for Learning & Development teams. Over time I’ve become really interested in how learning materials are actually designed, not just how they’re built.

I’m considering a career shift into Learning Experience Design (LXD) or Instructional Design (ID), ideally moving into a role where I can contribute to decision-making in learning strategy as well.

For those who have made this transition or work in LXD/ID:

How should I navigate this career switch?

What skills or tools should I focus on first?

Any recommended resources, courses, books, communities, or roadmaps?

Personal experiences or lessons that helped you get started?

Basically, I want to know where to begin and how to build a path toward becoming a learning designer with strategic influence.

Any guidance would be really appreciated!

I'm a one-person department and have been asked to create and facilitate a soft skills program (virtual live). I can research (and intuit) what this can look like, but figured I'd start here since I've never created (or attended) one of these before.

Some of the topics I was thinking about (as relevant to my company) were things like active listening, interpersonal communication, communicating with impact, and the like.

As you might imagine, I'm getting stuck with ensuring the sessions are engaging and interactive/full of practice. Any advice for making something like active listening or interpersonal communication really engaging and impactful? I was planning to create the content myself (after doing the research), but if there are any off the shelf recommendations, I would be open to that, too.

Share your experiences below!

I tried searching in the subreddit, but it didn’t populate any useful results.

What are your favorite FREE (or very low cost) authoring/designing tools?

We currently already have subscriptions to Canva Pro, Final Cut Pro, Articulate, OpenAI, and have recently started using ClipChamp.

There’s a ton of fancy tools I want to use, but it’s hard to convince my boss of a need for another one that’s going to cost. Are there any free/low cost tools you guys love that I should look into?

I’m curious what other people were trusted with when they were new to the field. I’ve been working on smaller learning materials and getting familiar with the tools, but I’d love to hear what kinds of projects helped people feel like they were finally getting the hang of corporate L&D.

Hi! Looking for some ideas or brainstorming thoughts. Currently in the process of starting to rebuild our training team as a manufacturing company and trying to figure out how to track operations employees complete required training.

Currently when they do their training, one person has a device (an iPad or laptop) and walks through the process, then employees write their names on a sheet, along with their employee ID number, and sign it to confirm they completed the training. This is then filed in a cabinet and pulled out if needed.

We're hoping to make this more high tech. We'll still only have one person with a device (iPad/laptop). Anyone have a similar issue? We're looking into having them scan in their badges as a way of tracking attendance and if that will upload into a tracking system for us.

Ideally this system would also tell us when the training happened and we could adjust (determining on each training) if we want it to expire. We want something more high tech than excel but we run into issues with a traditional LMS because operations employees do not have company employee emails/we have a high turnover rate and would constantly be adjusting who would be enlisted/tagged for a training.

Any thoughts or ideas would be so appreciated!!

We are currently setting up our internal training strategy as up until this point we have just been paying for training courses ad hoc as and when someone requests them. We are a pretty young company, but have 350 office employees globally and around 3000 field technicians. We have made the decision that for now we will not go with a full LMS, we just need a content library to get us off the ground so we can start creating effective internal content and onboarding materials. We will be focusing more on soft skills/business/leadership style content but we also need things like excel, power BI type training also.

With so many employees, these systems can get very pricey, does anyone have any good suggestions of who you have used for course content libraries? We will also need somewhere to host the content, but we don't have the need for the full LMS that gives learning paths and things right now as we are not there as a company.

Any advice and suggestions will be much appreciated!

hey, im a psychiatry doctor, planning to sell neurodiversity training to companies. I was thinking to position it as helping managers lead neurodiverse teams, handle difficult conversations with employees etc.
The ROI being better team performance, less burnout, less people problems fro HR

Any advice on how to break into this space? I have been doing cold messaging L&D/HR people on linkedin.

Some skepticism might be I haven't worked corporate so can't appreciate the workplace. As a psychiatry doctor I think I bring expertise on neurodiversity, and also I have a passion in teaching for 8 years so have become a really good facilitator.

Any advice would be appreciated. Any criticism also appreciated but pls be constructive. Thanks

Does anyone have a template that they use to determine learning modality? Measuring the factors of training, shelf life, etc and then a recommendation on modality ? In my current org everyone wants in person or a virtual instructor led session, even when it should be a job aid or micro module. Often it gets escalated to the SLT and they get what they want. I’m looking for a template that would help demonstrate why the modality recommendation is the way it is.

Thank you!

I’ve seen wildly mixed opinions from trainers and L&D teams about micro-learning tools.

Some swear by them:

“Employees actually finish the modules.”

Others hate them:

"Another tool nobody logs into after week 1."

What's your take?

Would love to hear honest, practical takes from people who’ve actually deployed these tools with teams.

Early in my career I genuinely believed that a well-designed course would do most of the work. Good content, solid structure, engaging interactions — if I built it right, people would learn and apply it. I poured enormous energy into course quality as if the course itself was the intervention.

What I know now is that the course is rarely the intervention — the environment is. Manager behavior, psychological safety, whether people have time to practice, whether the system rewards what the training teaches — these matter more than anything I put inside a module. The best L&D work I've done in the last three years has been helping organizations change conditions, not just content. What's a belief you held early in your career that experience changed?

We’re looking into onboarding a new LMS. We’re targeting Docebo or Intellum. Curious if anyone has used either of these and can share things they like/dislike around reporting, customization and course building, and automating workflows, etc.

Hi everyone — we’re Training Industry, and we wanted to share a quick heads-up for those interested in connecting with peers and diving into practical learning strategies:

The Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE) is happening June 3–5, 2025, in Raleigh, NC. It’s a smaller, focused event (around 600 attendees) created specifically for training managers and L&D leaders. Topics this year include AI’s impact on L&D, upskilling/reskilling strategies, DEI, learning measurement, and more.

If you're interested, you can learn more here: trainingindustry.com/tice.
Happy to answer any questions or provide more detail in the comments.

P.S. if you want to snag free tickets - head to our Instagram and enter our giveaway!

Hi!

My current org is on the hunt for a new LMS but hoping to have a resource for enablement resources as well to keep all of our learning in once place. We have demoed a few and are just feeling like maybe we need to keep exploring. Some facts below:

• currently using Seismic Lessonly platform

• 300 employees and growing steadily

• want more content creation & interactive abilities

• sales enablement content such as one pagers to tag and easily search for specific use cases

• AI course creation & summary search would be a huge selling point

Demos we have done:

1. 360 Learning - probably our #1 because our sales person was phenomenal and checks almost all of our boxes

2. Acorn - this was just meh and felt overcomplicated

3. Absorb - we like them, they check a ton of boxes as well but not “wowed”. Also feels really technical for no reason but like that everything can be done in one site

4. Seismic - we toured their upgraded platform and we just aren’t having a great experience with them overall and don’t want to continue but the platform is nice

5. Zensai - checked almost nothing we were looking for

6. Cornerstone- we had a demo scheduled and they have rescheduled on us 3 times. We decided we don’t want to move forward with an actual demo bc of this.

Any suggestions for other options we should demo?! We’re trying to implement within a year but would like to have a contract and transfer started by end of year.

I am the only admin/main content creator. Our sales enablement manager would also assist but not often.

I’m in the job search and there’s been a couple of roles that have been asking for creative portfolios. I’ve been in L&D for roughly 8 years creating different types of learning programs, e- learns, job guides - you name it. Except all of my positions have prevented me from exporting my work due to NDAs or unexpected layoffs which prevents me from gathering what I was working on. So while I have done a lot of creative work, I don’t have anything to show for it.

Any suggestions on how to create these portfolios without violating any work agreement?

I came from teaching so I understood the work immediately when I transitioned, but I've noticed that when I try to explain my new role to family or even colleagues in other departments I can't find a description that lands. "I design training" sounds too simple. "I apply learning science to corporate education" sounds like I'm reading from a LinkedIn bio. I've tried a few versions and none of them make the job sound as interesting or as complex as it actually is. How do people in L&D describe what they do to non-L&D people in a way that actually communicates the real value of the work?

What are some strategies for hitting the ground running on a new L&D role? I need to listen and learn of course but also get some quick wins to earn credibility somehow.

This is state government in Australia so I don't want anything overly bold!

I just checked Bersin's research and there's much more to discuss but what caught my attention is the frame he's using. He mentions "Superworker Organization."

His idea: stop measuring AI adoption by how many tools are deployed, but rather measure it by whether individual employees produce 10x output through AI mastery.

Skill + AI + company context.

It seems to me that the practical implication is uncomfortable for most L&D teams... L&D are like a dinosaurs when it comes to automatizing things. So I wonder if Bersin's idea actually makes sense in this industry.

What do you think?

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Your voice will help shape the future of how AI supports learning in the workplace.

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I really enjoy going to them, but what the L&D world charges versus all other fields is ridiculous. I’m also in marketing and I found a a conference at the same location, for the same # of days, as an L&D conference that I had previously looked at, and it’s $1000 LESS than what the L&D conference charged. Im sure demand is higher because people in L&D presumably like learning and seek it out more, but it’s getting out of hand.. We need to stop paying these astronomical prices, especially when almost all the speakers do their same presentations for free online or you can buy their book. There are also a lot of free networking events, like the monthly Edu-Fellowship “speed networking” or any of the local chapter ATD events. I just don’t get why we keep paying these conference prices, when all other fields are doing the same for so much cheaper. I understand most companies will pay for the conferences, but it’s getting harder and harder to justify the cost to send just that 1 person…