Nearly a third of employees say their training is too theoretical, according to TalentLMS's 2026 L&D Report. Not too boring, not too long. Too theoretical. The content exists. The connection to real work doesn't.
And the research backs this up. Decades of studies on what academics call "the transfer problem" show that the vast majority of skills learned in training don't make it back to the workplace. Meanwhile, the investment keeps growing. The World Economic Forum estimates that 59% of the global workforce will need retraining by 2030. Training expenditures in the US alone reached $102.8 billion in 2025, according to Training Magazine's Industry Report.
The investment is there. The content is there. What's missing is the infrastructure for follow-through.
Why follow-through keeps breaking down
Two structural issues keep showing up.
First, managers aren't equipped to reinforce learning. LinkedIn's 2025 Workplace Learning Report found that 50% of organisations say managers lack proper support to facilitate career development. Managers are the natural bridge between a training session and daily work. When they're unsupported, learning stays in the workshop and never reaches the job.
Second, there's simply no time built in. TalentLMS reports that for the third year running, time remains the number one barrier to learning. Employees have on average less than 1% of their working week available for formal learning. That's roughly 24 minutes in a 40 hour week. When organisations front-load everything into a workshop and leave no space for practice, reinforcement, or reflection, the forgetting curve takes over.
The result: great sessions that produce strong feedback scores but little lasting change.
Three design gaps we keep hearing about
1. Too many priorities, not enough depth. Organisations try to cover too much at once. As Amber Vanderburg of The Pathwayz Group shared in our recent Engage Better webinar, it's like walking into a gym and trying to become a runner, a weightlifter, and a yoga expert all on the same day. You don't get stronger. You just get tired.
2. Content overload without activation. AI has made content creation faster and easier than ever. But as McKinsey noted in their March 2026 article "Reimagine Learning and Development for the AI Age," L&D is becoming part of the engine of organisational performance, not just a support function. The challenge is no longer producing content. It's activating it. When a learner logs in and faces hundreds of resources without knowing which ones are relevant, that abundance becomes noise. The practitioners getting this right flip the approach: ask a few focused questions first, then surface only the resources that match.
3. No structured follow-through. Most learning journeys front-load the experience: a workshop, some online modules. The missing piece isn't more content. It's structured follow-through: internal coaching networks, simple accountability conversations that take 5 to 10 minutes, and regular touchpoints that keep learning alive between sessions.
Where AI helps and where it doesn't
AI is genuinely transforming what's possible in learning design. It can personalise learning paths, surface the right content at the right time, and track progress at scale. That's a real leap forward.
But AI solves the supply side. More content, faster, more tailored. What it doesn't solve is the demand side. Does the person in the room believe this is worth their time? Are they willing to change how they work because of it?
As the EF Corporate Learning 2026 trends report put it, in a world becoming more saturated with AI generated content, human touch is craved and valued more than ever. Trust, empathy, and authentic connection cannot be automated.
The most effective learning journeys we're seeing use AI for efficiency and human design for connection. AI handles the curation and personalisation. But the moments that actually change behaviour, the live discussion where someone shares a real challenge, the poll that reveals the room isn't aligned, the coaching conversation that holds someone accountable, those are still deeply human.
Interactive tools like AhaSlides sit at that intersection. A word cloud that surfaces what a room is actually thinking. A live poll that tells you whether a section landed. An open-ended question that captures honest input instead of groupthink. These aren't replacements for AI. They're the human layer that makes AI curated content come alive in the room.
What the best learning journeys have in common
From the practitioners we work with, the programmes that close the follow-through gap tend to share a few things:
They start with community. Bringing people together to align on direction and build buy-in before anyone touches self-guided content.
They make it personal. Not by offering endless choice, but by narrowing content to what's actually relevant to each learner's situation.
They build in interaction. Not as decoration, but as a tool for honest input, real-time feedback, and group thinking.
They measure actions, not completions. Tracking whether people actually did the thing they said they'd do, not just whether they clicked through a module.
And they celebrate. Because momentum needs fuel, and recognising progress is how you get buy-in for the next cycle.
The real redesign
The organisations getting this right aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or the most sophisticated AI. They're the ones that slowed down long enough to ask: what are we actually trying to change? And then designed a journey with follow-through built in from the start, not bolted on as an afterthought.
The learning journey doesn't need more content. It needs better bones.
References
- TalentLMS, "The 2026 L&D Report: The State of Workplace Learning" — talentlms.com/research/learning-development-report-2026
- Baldwin, T.T. & Ford, J.K. (1988), "Transfer of Training: A Review and Directions for Future Research," Personnel Psychology, 41(1), 63-105. Validated in: European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology (2025) — tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1359432X.2025.2463799
- World Economic Forum, "Future of Jobs Report 2025" — weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025
- Training Magazine, "2025 Training Industry Report" — trainingmag.com/2025-training-industry-report
- LinkedIn, "2025 Workplace Learning Report" — learning.linkedin.com/resources/workplace-learning-report
- McKinsey & Company, "Reimagine Learning and Development for the AI Age" (March 2026) — mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-organization-blog/reimagine-learning-and-development-for-the-ai-age
- EF Corporate Learning, "Five Learning Trends HR and L&D Leaders Should Be Prepared for in 2026" — corporatelearning.ef.com/en/resources/articles/learning-trends-2026
