When it comes to developing people, even top organizations are facing significant challenges. Executives tell us people are their greatest asset. Budget reviews tell a different story. When pressure mounts to do more with less, training programs and development opportunities often land on the chopping block first.
I've spent over a decade in organizational development, including leading Enterprise Leadership & Culture initiatives at Accenture and co-founding VEL Institute, a nonprofit focused on leadership development for veterans, entrepreneurs, and leaders. I've seen what happens when organizations invest wisely in their people, and what happens when they don't. The difference shows up in retention, engagement, and ultimately, the bottom line.
Now, as I join Perceptyx to focus on learning and development, I want to share a perspective grounded in both experience and evidence: Investing in people’s growth (i.e., L&D) improves the human experience at work, and that improvement drives measurable business outcomes.
L&D budgets are under sustained pressure. According to Fosway’s Digital Learning Realities Research, 61% of L&D teams saw their budget decrease or stay the same in 2024, with little movement over the past three years. Meanwhile, per that same research, HR teams face a 53% increase in workload, and when organizations cut training staff and resources, overburdened leaders and employees lack both the time and the support to develop. The implicit message: development doesn't matter enough to protect.
Our own data tells a story that’s clear as crystal. Perceptyx research across 3,000+ employees has shown that the learning methods employees value most often aren't the ones organizations provide. Employees rank 1-on-1 coaching and on-the-job mentoring as the most impactful development experiences, yet these personalized approaches remain the exception rather than the rule.
The disconnect carries real consequences. When employees feel development opportunities exist but aren't accessible to them, disengagement follows. Our research has shown that poor management alone costs U.S. businesses $408 billion annually in turnover, with another $211 billion lost to reduced productivity. Much of this traces back to underdeveloped leaders who never received the support they needed to succeed.
The problem compounds during economic uncertainty. Organizations facing pressure to optimize costs often reduce training budgets, expecting minimal short-term impact. But our data says otherwise: employees who receive the right training are 3x more likely to feel they belong at their organization and 3.8x more likely to believe career opportunities exist for them.
Cutting L&D doesn't save money. Most of the time, it accelerates the turnover and productivity losses that training was designed to prevent. Of course, these turnover costs and productivity losses are hard to quantify and buried across balance sheet line items, while L&D budget sits exposed in the crosshairs of every cost-cutting exercise. Organizations eliminate visible spend while invisible losses multiply.
All that content sitting in your SharePoint folders or your LMS does absolutely nothing if no one ever accesses it. You're essentially lighting your money on fire. Generic training fails because it ignores the context where learning happens. A one-size-fits-all approach assumes every manager faces the same challenges and every employee learns the same way. Neither assumption holds.
Effective L&D shares three characteristics, regardless of industry or role:
It meets people where they are. Development works when it addresses the specific challenges someone faces right now. Perceptyx data shows that organizations using targeted behavioral nudges based on employee feedback see 8-12 point improvements in manager effectiveness scores within six months. Traditional self-service training programs often see participation rates below 15%, and research indicates that utilization below 50% signals a fundamental problem with relevance or delivery. When only a fraction of employees engage with available content, the return on that content investment approaches zero.
It creates visible pathways. Employees need to see how learning connects to advancement. Our research shows desk workers are 2x more likely than frontline workers to say they've been promoted due to learning opportunities. The development isn't necessarily better at corporate headquarters; it's more visible. When promotion pathways are clear, training participation and engagement increase across all roles.
It scales without losing personalization. The challenge for L&D has always been reaching every employee with relevant content. AI-powered approaches now allow organizations to deliver personalized coaching at scale, with 66% of leaders engaging consistently with intelligent nudges compared to industry averages of 5-15% for traditional L&D content.
The connection between learning opportunities and retention is direct. Our analysis of employee survey data reveals that employees who see a future for themselves at their organization are far more likely to stay. That sense of future depends heavily on whether development feels accessible and relevant.
Consider what the evidence shows:
The pattern holds across industries: when employees believe the organization is investing in their growth, they invest their commitment in return.
Budget pressures aren't going away. AI is changing how work gets done. The expectation to deliver more with less continues to intensify. Organizations face a choice: treat L&D as a cost to minimize, or recognize it as one of the few levers that simultaneously improves retention, engagement, and performance.
For leaders ready to move from intention to action, our research points to three priorities:
Make growth visible across all roles. Development opportunities often get communicated in ways that don't reach frontline or deskless employees. Evaluate how and where training information gets shared. Push nudges and learning prompts through the channels deskless workers actually use: text messages, mobile apps, Workday notifications, shift management systems, or whatever platforms they routinely access. Email-only communication will leave entire populations in the dark.
Connect development to performance data. 75% of HR leaders plan to increase learning personalization over the next 12 months. The organizations leading this shift use engagement and 360 feedback data to customize learning paths, ensuring managers with vastly different skill levels receive targeted support rather than identical generic training.
Measure what matters. Traditional L&D programs struggle to prove impact. By connecting development activities to employee experience data, organizations can link coaching participation directly to improvements in team sentiment, retention, productivity, and ultimately business outcomes.
The case for learning and development has never been stronger. Employees are telling us, through surveys and exit interviews, that growth opportunities drive their decisions about where to work and how long to stay. The organizations that listen, and then act on what they hear, will attract and retain the talent they need to compete.
I'm energized to join Perceptyx and work with organizations ready to take “their most important asset” seriously. The technology now exists to deliver personalized development at scale. The behavioral science behind our effective nudges has been validated across thousands of deployments. The data connecting employee experience to business outcomes that our researchers have pioneered grows more compelling every quarter.
What's needed is the commitment to treat development as central to business strategy, not peripheral to it. Affordable, effective, scalable solutions exist–Perceptyx can do all of this, today. The question is whether leaders will invest in them.
I believe they will, because the alternative is utterly broken and people know it.
Schedule a meeting with our team to learn how your organization can turn employee feedback into targeted development that drives retention, engagement, and performance. For ongoing insights on L&D and employee experience, subscribe to our blog for weekly research and best practices.