Key takeaways
- Start with business problems and skill gaps, not a course catalog.
- Required compliance training comes first, then onboarding and manager training.
- Most learning happens on the job, so design stretch work and coaching, not just courses.
- Measure behavior change and results, not just completions.
- An LMS helps with tracking and required training, but it doesn't create a learning culture.
Learning and development is the function that helps employees build the knowledge and skills they need to perform well now and grow into future roles. It includes required training, onboarding, skill building, leadership development, and career growth.
A company buys a large online course library and announces it with real excitement. Six months later, logins have dropped to almost nothing. The few completions are mostly the required harassment training. Managers say their teams don't have time to learn. Employees say nobody told them which courses mattered for their jobs.
Meanwhile, the company's real problem, newly promoted managers who don't know how to give feedback, goes unsolved.
A content library isn't a learning program. This guide covers how to build L&D around the problems your business actually needs to solve.
Start with a needs analysis
Before buying anything, ask what problems training should solve. Talk with leaders about business goals and the skills those goals require. Look at data: performance review themes, engagement survey comments, customer complaints, safety incidents, and turnover in roles where people struggle early. Ask managers what their teams can't do yet that they will need to do next year.
The output should be a short, ranked list of skill gaps tied to business results. "Customer escalations take too long because support agents can't troubleshoot the new product" is a learning need. "Improve communication skills" is too vague to act on.
Required and compliance training
Start with what the law and your industry require, because these are not optional. Several states require harassment prevention training, including California, New York, Illinois, and Connecticut, each with its own rules on who must be trained, how often, and what the training must cover. OSHA requires safety training for many workplaces and hazards. Industries such as healthcare, finance, transportation, and food service have their own requirements.
Track completion carefully and keep records long enough to prove compliance. This is the part of L&D where an LMS earns its keep. Our harassment prevention guide covers state training rules in more detail.
Onboarding and role training
New hire training has the clearest return of any learning investment, because it shortens the time to productivity. Build a role-specific onboarding curriculum: the systems they use, the processes they follow, the products they support, and the people they need to know. Pair formal training with a buddy and real tasks. Our onboarding guide covers the full first 90 days.
Manager training: the highest-return program
If you can fund only one development program, make it manager training. Managers shape engagement, retention, and performance more than any other single factor, and most were promoted because they were good at the work, not because they were trained to lead.
Cover the everyday skills: running one-on-ones, setting clear goals, giving specific feedback, handling underperformance, recognizing good work, managing remote team members, and knowing when to involve HR, for example when an employee mentions a medical condition, a complaint, or a pay concern. Spread training over several months in short sessions, with practice between sessions, rather than one long workshop that people forget by the following week.
Career development and internal mobility
People leave when they can't see a future. Career development gives them one. A simple career framework that shows levels and the skills needed to move up is the foundation. Add individual development plans, created by employees with their managers, that focus on one or two skills at a time. Open internal job postings and encourage managers to support moves to other teams, even when it is inconvenient. Mentoring programs pair people with experienced colleagues outside their reporting line.
Choosing learning formats
Most learning happens on the job. A widely used model, often called 70-20-10, suggests that most development comes from challenging work, some from relationships such as coaching and feedback, and a smaller share from formal courses. Treat it as a design principle, not a precise ratio.
In practice, that means combining formats. Stretch assignments and projects build skills fastest. Coaching and mentoring help people make sense of what they learn. Short online modules work for knowledge and compliance. Live workshops, in person or virtual, work for practice-heavy skills like feedback and negotiation. Frontline employees need mobile, short-format learning they can complete during a shift.
Measuring whether training worked
A common framework, the Kirkpatrick model, looks at four levels: reaction (did people find it useful), learning (did they gain knowledge or skills), behavior (do they do things differently on the job), and results (did business outcomes change). Most programs stop at the first level, satisfaction surveys, which tell you little about impact.
Pick the result you set out to change in the needs analysis, such as time to productivity for new hires or turnover in teams with newly trained managers, and measure it before and after. Ask managers whether behavior changed. That evidence is what secures budget for next year.
Budget and tuition assistance
L&D budgets vary widely. Tie spending to priorities from the needs analysis, and start with high-impact programs: compliance, onboarding, and manager training. Tuition assistance is a popular benefit. Under Section 127 of the tax code, employers can provide educational assistance up to an annual limit, currently $5,250 per employee, tax-free to the employee, under a written plan. Check current IRS guidance for the limit and rules.
Learning for frontline and hourly teams
Frontline employees are often left out of development programs, even though they make up most of the workforce in retail, healthcare, hospitality, logistics, and manufacturing. They rarely have a desk or company email, and their time is scheduled tightly.
Design for that reality. Keep modules short, five to ten minutes, and mobile-friendly. Schedule learning as paid working time, which is required for non-exempt employees anyway when training is required by the employer or directly related to the job. Use peer trainers on the floor, because people learn practical skills best from colleagues who do the same work. And create visible paths from frontline roles into supervisor and specialist roles. In industries with high turnover, a clear path to the next role is one of the strongest retention tools available.
Leadership development beyond first-line managers
Once first-line manager training is in place, the next priority is usually developing future senior leaders. Identify people with potential through talent reviews, then give them stretch assignments, exposure to senior decisions, coaching, and cohort programs where they learn alongside peers from other departments. Tie the program to succession planning for critical roles, so development has a clear purpose. Our succession planning guide covers the tools.
Making time for learning
The most common reason learning programs stall is time. Employees say they are too busy, and managers quietly agree. Leaders can change that by protecting learning time on the calendar, asking about development in one-on-ones, recognizing people who learn new skills, and modeling it themselves. A program that leaders talk about and use gets used. One that lives only in the LMS doesn't.
Choosing a learning management system
An LMS assigns and tracks training, stores completion records, and delivers courses. Look for automatic assignment by role, location, and hire date, a good mobile experience, integration with your HRIS so users are added and removed automatically, reporting for compliance, and the ability to upload your own content. Remember that an LMS is infrastructure. It records learning, but it doesn't create the culture where managers make time for it. See our LMS buyer guide for more.
L&D program launch checklist
Work through this list with your team. The printable PDF version has space to tick each item off.
- Interview leaders about business goals and skill needs
- Review performance, engagement, and turnover data for skill gaps
- Write a ranked list of learning needs tied to business results
- List required training by state and industry
- Set up tracking and record retention for required training
- Build role-specific onboarding training
- Launch a multi-month manager training program
- Publish a simple career framework
- Introduce individual development plans
- Open internal job postings
- Mix stretch assignments, coaching, and courses
- Define success measures before each program starts
- Measure behavior change and business results, not just completions
- Document a written plan for any tuition assistance
Where to go from here
Wherever you are in the process, there is a next step that fits.
Keep reading
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Email templates for this topic
Ready-to-edit emails with subject lines, compliance notes, and a free PDF.
- Training enrollment email templateEnroll employees in required or optional training with dates, time, pay, and completion deadlines.
- Self-review request email templateAsk employees to complete a self-assessment with clear questions and a useful purpose.
- Onboarding buddy introduction email templateIntroduce a new hire to their peer buddy and explain what the buddy is for.
- Stay interview invitation email templateInvite a valued employee to a conversation about what keeps them here and what might make them leave.
Frequently asked questions
What is the first L&D program a company should build?
What is the 70-20-10 model?
How do you measure training effectiveness?
Is tuition assistance taxable?
Do we need an LMS?
Sources
We checked the facts in this guide against these primary sources. Laws and thresholds change, so confirm current rules before you act.
Written by the HRTally Research Team
Our guides are written and reviewed by people with hands-on US HR, payroll, and HR technology experience. Legal and tax facts are checked against primary sources, such as the Department of Labor, IRS, EEOC, and USCIS, and linked at the end of each guide. Vendors never review or pay for our editorial content.