Quick answer: Learning and development, often shortened to L&D, is the business function that helps employees build the skills, knowledge, behaviors, and confidence they need to do their jobs well and grow into future roles. In 2026, L&D supports workforce upskilling, AI fluency, human judgment, leadership development, internal mobility, performance improvement, and long-term business resilience. A strong L&D strategy connects learning to business goals, identifies skill gaps, gives employees practical ways to learn in the flow of work, and measures whether learning changes behavior. The goal is not simply to deliver training, but to build the capabilities an organization needs to perform and adapt.
What is L&D (Learning & Development)
Learning and development includes every structured effort a company uses to help employees learn, practice, and grow. That can include onboarding, compliance training, manager training, sales enablement, product education, technical upskilling, leadership development, mentoring, coaching, peer learning, video training, e-learning, and on-the-job practice.
The best L&D programs do not treat learning as something employees squeeze in after their “real work.” They combine formal learning with performance support available at the moment of need. A new hire might watch a short video before trying a task, a support rep might review a screen-recorded workflow before answering a ticket, or a manager might use a coaching guide before a difficult conversation.
Good L&D gives employees clearer growth paths and stronger skills while helping organizations improve onboarding, performance, knowledge retention, and adaptability.
Learning and development vs. training and development
Training and development focuses on helping employees acquire or improve skills and knowledge, often for current performance or future responsibilities. L&D is broader. It includes training, but also career growth, leadership development, coaching, mentoring, internal mobility, knowledge sharing, and long-term workforce capability.
A company might train a new sales rep on product messaging, CRM workflows, and objection handling. That is training. If it also builds a career path, offers coaching, and helps that rep prepare for a senior role, that is learning and development.
Why learning and development matters in 2026
L&D matters because skill gaps create direct business risk. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030. SHRM’s July 2026 research shows how immediate that pressure already feels: 72% of HR professionals said their L&D strategy is primarily driven by skills employees will need within the next one to two years.
AI makes the challenge more complicated. Employees need practical AI fluency, but fluency alone is not enough. SHRM’s 2026 benchmarking data put critical thinking and judgment and decision-making at the top of skills organizations expect to prioritize over the next five years. Employees increasingly need to evaluate AI outputs, catch errors, apply context, and know when human judgment matters.
L&D also affects engagement. SHRM reports that 78% of workers with access to learning and development say participation positively affects their engagement. It also preserves knowledge by turning important processes into reusable, searchable resources.
What changed in L&D in 2026?
L&D has become more strategic and more closely tied to workforce planning. Teams still create courses, but they also identify capabilities the business needs, support AI adoption, build learning into workflows, and prove business impact
| 2026 shift | What it means for L&D |
|---|---|
| AI is changing work | Employees need AI fluency plus critical thinking, judgment, and real-world practice. |
| Skills needs change quickly | L&D must identify capability gaps continuously, not rely only on static job descriptions. |
| Budgets face scrutiny | SHRM found median L&D spending per FTE fell 28% from 2025 while median learning hours stayed at eight. |
| AI upskilling is spreading | Nearly one-third of organizations in SHRM’s benchmarking offered AI upskilling beyond basic compliance in 2026. |
| Learning is moving into work | Courses still matter, but teams also need job aids, embedded guidance, short videos, prompts, and other performance support. |
| Business impact matters more | L&D needs to connect learning to productivity, retention, quality, revenue, safety, or other outcomes. |
The budget, AI upskilling, and future-skills findings come from SHRM’s 2026 L&D benchmarking research.
This also pushes L&D toward a skills-based model. Instead of asking only what training belongs to a job title, organizations can ask which capabilities the business needs, who already has them, and where the biggest gaps are. SHRM found organizations with more strategic L&D practices were 2.3 times more likely to report better financial outcomes.
Examples of learning and development programs
| L&D program | Business goal | Example |
|---|---|---|
| New hire onboarding | Reduce time to productivity | A role-specific video path for a new employee’s first 30 days |
| AI fluency training | Improve safe and useful AI adoption | Prompting, fact-checking, privacy, experimentation, and judgment |
| Manager training | Improve team performance | Coaching, feedback, delegation, and conflict resolution practice |
| Sales enablement | Improve revenue performance | Product demos, objection handling, and customer story reviews |
| Compliance training | Reduce risk | Policy refreshers, scenario-based videos, and short assessments |
| Technical upskilling | Close skill gaps | Training for software, data tools, cybersecurity, or automation |
| Customer support training | Improve customer experience | Screen-recorded troubleshooting guides and workflow SOPs |
| Leadership development | Build future leaders | Mentoring, cohort learning, and real business projects |
Strong programs combine explanation, demonstration, practice, feedback, and reinforcement. Harvard Business Publishing has found that experimentation and real-world application are important to building AI fluency.
How to create a learning and development strategy
A learning and development strategy is a plan for building the skills your organization needs now and in the future. Here’s a practical way to build one.
1. Start with business priorities
Identify the goals that matter most this year. These might include faster onboarding, better manager performance, higher sales productivity, improved customer support, safer AI adoption, or fewer compliance mistakes.
2. Map current and future skills
Look at the skills employees have today and the skills they’ll need next. Use manager input, employee surveys, performance data, role expectations, and workforce planning.
3. Prioritize the biggest gaps
Don’t try to train everyone on everything. Focus on the gaps that create the most risk or unlock the most business value.
4. Choose the right learning format
Use the format that fits the task. A policy update might need a short explainer video. A leadership skill might need coaching and practice. A software workflow might need a screen recording or step-by-step SOP.
5. Build learning into work
Make learning easy to access at the moment someone needs it. Use short videos, checklists, templates, searchable knowledge bases, manager prompts, and refreshers.
6. Create reusable learning assets
Turn repeatable tasks into training resources. Record workflows, document best practices, and update assets when processes change.
7. Measure outcomes
Track whether employees complete training, but don’t stop there. Measure behavior change, time to proficiency, productivity, error reduction, internal mobility, retention, customer satisfaction, or revenue impact.
8. Improve continuously
Review learning programs regularly. Retire outdated content, update old examples, ask learners what helped, and keep the strategy aligned with business goals.
How to measure L&D success and ROI
LL&D success should include learning metrics and business metrics. Completion rates tell you whether people finished a program, but not whether it changed performance.
That gap remains substantial. In the 2026 Organizational Learning and Development Report, 59% of respondents named proving business impact and ROI as a priority, while only 17% said their organization currently conducts ROI analysis. The survey included 197 respondents, so it is best read as an industry snapshot rather than a universal benchmark.
Useful metrics include assessment scores, time to productivity, skill growth, behavior change, error reduction, internal mobility, retention, and movement in relevant business KPIs.
To calculate ROI, compare a program’s cost with the value it creates. Faster sales ramp-up might create earlier pipeline. Better support training might reduce repeat tickets and agent time. Define the business outcome before building the program, or you risk measuring whatever is easiest instead of what matters.
How video supports learning and development
Video works well for L&D because it can show, explain, and preserve knowledge at the same time. It is especially useful for onboarding, software training, process documentation, product education, leadership messages, and repeatable internal updates.
Video also scales subject matter expertise. An L&D team can record a workflow once, turn it into a clear training asset, and update individual scenes as the process changes.
How Visla helps L&D teams create training videos
Visla gives L&D teams one workflow for recording, creating, editing, collaborating on, and sharing training videos.
Advanced Avatar is especially useful for presenter-led training. Teams can create an instructor for onboarding, lessons, policy explanations, and process training without scheduling a recording session for every update. Advanced Avatar improves lip sync, expressions, gestures, and body language, and presenter scenes can be combined with screenshots, demonstrations, and b-roll.
For software and process training, AI Screen Recording can capture a workflow, split it into scenes, clean up the presentation, and open the result in the Scene-Based Editor. Step Recorder takes a procedural approach: it captures screen actions and turns them into a step-by-step video with scenes, voiceover, on-screen text, graphics, and subtitles.
L&D teams can also use AI Video Agent to turn an idea, script, webpage, PDF, presentation, or existing media into a structured draft. AI Director Mode can plan more visually produced training videos scene by scene, while shared Workspaces give HR, managers, compliance teams, and subject matter experts one place to review and approve.
The result is a more scalable training workflow. Teams can turn expertise into useful learning assets faster and update content when policies, products, or processes change.
FAQ
L&D teams can set the strategy, create programs, and measure results, but managers play a major role in whether employees actually apply what they learn. CIPD notes that managers control much of the environment employees return to after training, including whether they have time, permission, and opportunities to practice new skills. A good model gives L&D responsibility for the learning system while managers reinforce development through coaching, feedback, stretch assignments, and career conversations.
Treat AI-generated training content as a draft, especially when it covers compliance, safety, policy, technical procedures, or other high-stakes topics. Subject-matter experts should verify factual accuracy, check sources, review examples for bias or misleading assumptions, and confirm that confidential information has not been exposed. NIST’s Generative AI Profile specifically recommends governance, pre-deployment testing, content provenance, and appropriate human review as part of managing generative AI risk.
No. An LMS is useful when an organization needs formal course delivery, enrollment management, completion records, assessments, or compliance reporting, and ATD found that 76% of organizations used one in its 2025 learning-technology research. But an LMS does not need to contain every learning experience. Modern L&D can combine formal courses with searchable videos, job aids, coaching, knowledge bases, and guidance delivered directly in employees’ workflows, choosing technology based on the learning and business problem rather than making the LMS the center of every program.
May Horiuchi
May is a Content Specialist and AI Expert for Visla. She is an in-house expert on anything Visla and loves testing out different AI tools to figure out which ones are actually helpful and useful for content creators, businesses, and organizations.