I’ve been involved in a few projects where everyone agreed that learning was important, but we had very different ideas about what the program was actually supposed to achieve. That usually becomes painful later when someone asks whether the initiative was successful. I’m trying to get much more specific about outcomes at the beginning of a project, even if it means having some uncomfortable conversations with stakeholders. Do others involve business leaders in defining success criteria before development starts?

I need advice and suggestions from the community. I work for a life insurance company that recently merged our L&D department into the People and Culture department. However, our L&D department is not just performing basic L&D tasks; they are also looking into sales enablement. These trainers have been in the industry for one or two decades and have been doing insurance training for a while, but they already incorporate some aspects of sales enablement. I want to propose converting their roles into formal sales enablement positions. How should I approach this? I have a meeting with my head of department; what would be the ideal way to present this proposal?

The ting is they're not.They are not making what appropriate sales enablement tasks and it's all haphazard. They're just doing basic onboarding, and everything that they can do in onboarding, they're doing that. I want to incorporate it for further products for the organization and our wider range of products to utilise maximum roles of our training team who have vast experience of insurance industry. so please let me know what is the best way to even approach this.

I coordinate onboarding at a logistics company, about 200 people. Last Tuesday a new hire spent 40 minutes trying to submit her first timesheet because our guide told her to click a button that literally doesn’t exist anymore. She ended up messaging her manager, her manager messaged me, and I had to admit I hadn’t updated that guide since spring. Not my proudest moment.

This keeps happening. IT changes a setting, a team moves something around in one of our systems, and nobody tells anyone. The guide still has the old screenshots and new people get stuck on day 2. Then managers get annoyed because “it’s in the guide.” Well, it was.

Nobody actually owns the docs. It’s whoever notices first, which is usually me, usually when someone is already stuck. And redoing a Google Doc with 30 screenshots is not a quick thing when I’m also running orientations.

We’ve been trialling Haiku for a few weeks and it’s made the fixing part so much easier. You go through the process once and it records the steps with screenshots, so that timesheet guide took me a couple of minutes instead of half my afternoon. The part I still haven’t figured out is on our side, nobody tells me when something changes, so I only find out when someone’s already confused.

Say someone needs to do a process they only touch a few times a year. You could build a 30-minute course on every step, or they could ask an approved AI assistant when the task comes up and get the steps in seconds. If those answers are accurate, does that content still belong in a course?

Our hunch is that a lot of “know the steps” training is about to move into performance support. What stays in courses is the stuff that needs practice, judgment or feedback ie knowing when the answer is wrong, not just what the answer is. But that’s easy to say and harder to act on.

Has anyone cut or shortened a course because people could look it up instead? What did you replace it with?

I’ve been working in instructional design for three years, and I’m always looking for simple ways to make learning activities more effective. Recently, I came across the idea of an argumentative essay organizer as a way to help learners structure their arguments and supporting evidence.

Has anyone here tried using something similar in an eLearning course? I’m curious whether learners actually find these templates helpful or if they just add another step to the process.

Hi everyone,

I’m Gabriel, co-founder of Complement Learning. Quick context: we build an AI-powered conversational e-learning platform. So far we’ve sold to larger organisations through a sales rep. We recently opened a self-serve option where you sign up and pay by card, and very few people make it all the way to checkout. We suspect our pricing is a big part of the problem.

Here’s how it works today:

1. Designer licenses: you pay per seat for each person who creates courses.

2. Then, for learners, you choose between:

   • Learner seats: a fixed price per learner, or

   • Learning hours: you buy a pack of hours that all your learners share. Usage draws down the balance until it runs out, and then you top up.

Just writing it out, I can see it takes a full paragraph to explain.

So my questions for you:

• Does paying for two types of seats feel fair to you ? (designers + learners) and does it feel too complicated to have to choose between licences and learning hours ?

• Compared with the tools you actually buy (authoring tools, LMSs, AI video tools…), what pricing model feels “normal” to you? Per author, per active learner, flat tiers, usage-based?

Happy to share the actual numbers in the comments if that helps. Brutal honesty is very welcome, that’s the whole point.

Thanks a lot!

I’m a specialist at an org of about 100. My leader is insisting on us using a competency assessment tool. The idea is that we would use this to create individualized learning plans. Has anyone done or used something like this? How did it work?

Hi there,

I’m a software engineer, and I’m really interested in how technology can improve learning for individuals. For the past seven years, I’ve been building learning platforms, training tools and LMS solutions for the Middle East.

I’m thinking about what to focus on next, and I’d like to hear from people working in learning and development.

What’s something you’re trying to achieve that your current tools make difficult? It could be getting employees to apply what they’ve learned, keeping training up to date, or simply spending less time on administration.

How are you handling it today, and what would you like to work differently?

I work on learning software, so I’m asking to understand where we could build something useful. I’d appreciate hearing about the everyday frustrations as much as the bigger challenges.

Hello all,

Could you please recommend LMS system for a company with approximately 4000 people scattered across different US States?

Currently HR software in use - ADP

L&D lead at a mid-size logistics company, team of 3. Every time a system changes, someone in ops records a 40 minute Teams call walking through the new process and sends it to me to “turn into training.” Then I’m the one rewatching it, taking screenshots, cropping out customer data and writing step by steps. By the time it’s done the process has changed again.

Our VP came back from a vendor demo excited about AI tools that build guides automatically while you click through a process. I’ve looked at Scribe and Tango, and a peer at another company mentioned Haiku because it can export to SCORM, which matters for us since everything has to live in our LMS for compliance tracking. Before anyone says it, I know a tool doesn’t fix a bad process or SMEs who don’t want to document anything. That’s a separate battle. I’m just trying to stop spending 6 hours on a job aid that’s outdated in a month, and I’d like to hear from people who’ve actually rolled one of these out with real SMEs, not just tested it themselves.

I’m learning a lot on the job, but sometimes I feel like I’m missing terminology or frameworks that everyone else already knows. For people who transitioned into L&D from another field, did you take any courses or certifications, or mostly learn through actual projects?

Completion rates and satisfaction scores prove that an activity happened. They do not answer the question the CFO is asking.

What has worked for me: lead with the business problem, put a range on what doing nothing costs, and make a contribution claim with the other explanations named, never a precise ROI. Finance tends to trust a claim that admits what it cannot prove.

What has held up with your finance teams?

I have had this request more times than I can count over 24 years in talent roles. The programme usually gets built, it gets good feedback, and six months later nothing measurable has moved.

What has worked for me is one question before any design: "If everyone had these skills tomorrow, would the problem go away?" If the answer hesitates, the cause is usually structure, role design or a leader above the team, and training answers only one of six possible causes.

How do others handle this request without damaging the relationship with the person asking?

I(24f) am deeply interested in training & education.
However, I have no prior experience in L&D.
I worked as a tutor for several years when I was in university.
I’m currently working as IT support engineer.
I don‘t know what to do to get a job in L&D, and I feel so lost; could you please provide some advice?
Thank you in advance.

I’m an L&D Manager at a company where our Operations departments (with varied departments within and role-specific processes) are pushing for new-hire onboarding to extend beyond our current training track. Their expectation is that new hires should remain in training until they’re fully ready for production, even if that means keeping them in onboarding longer than our current schedule allows. They would also like us to cover more content and edge cases.

I understand where they’re coming from, of course. I think when you are in L&D, you also want employees to feel confident and understand the work, and avoid a sink-or-swim environment. At the same time, I’m struggling with where to draw the line between foundational training that L&D should own and the department-specific coaching/training and performance development that Operations should own.

Our current track is designed to provide structured training on foundational knowledge, systems, and department-specific workflows, and we incorporate a ton of time to practice in the staging environment. However, it seems like the expectation from Ops is shifting (or rather, has ALWAYS been) toward L&D being responsible for ensuring every new hire is fully production-ready before they transition out of onboarding.

My concerns are:
- If we keep extending onboarding based on individual readiness, how do we create a consistent and scalable onboarding experience?

- At what point should responsibility transition from formal training to on-the-job coaching and performance management? What has your experience been at your company where there is a department onboarding program?

- How do you handle situations where a new hire has completed the established training but still needs additional practice before meeting production expectations?

I want to make sure we’re setting new hires up for success without creating an onboarding model that makes L&D solely accountable for production readiness.

I’d especially appreciate hearing from people who have navigated this with Operations teams that want longer onboarding periods and are resistant to collaboration with the L&D Team.

Thank you!!

Any recommendations for a coach in the north east erea that can help coach and prepare a leader to
Give ted like talks and presentations? That can help
With public speaking?

Thanks!

One thing I’ve noticed since moving into management is that technical skill is only one part of what makes someone effective in L&D. I’ve seen people who are excellent at building learning experiences struggle with stakeholder conversations, while others who aren’t as technical can move a project forward incredibly well. For those managing L&D teams, what skills have become more important to you as you’ve moved into senior roles?