We spend thousands on training….But what if the learning isn't in the content?

Written By Claire Brown

In the last Department for Education (DfE) Employer Skills Survey in 2024 it identified that UK employers spent £53 billion on training. That’s about £1,700 per employee. It feels like a number we can applaud but let’s dig a little deeper. 36% of all UK vacancies are skills-shortage vacancies and the skills gap is costing our economy somewhere between £30-39 billion a year. So despite all that investment, in courses and platforms and carefully curated learning journeys, we're still struggling to find people with the skills we need.

The skills we’re hearing that are needed

It caught my attention that when employers talk about what they're looking for, 55% say teamwork and 52% say communication. Nearly twice as many as those prioritising technical or computer skills.

The biggest gaps in new team members? Communication. Resilience. Problem-solving.

For most of us using these in our work, it’s unlikely we‘ve learnt these from a slide deck, a video module or even a well-written workbook. We’ve improved by doing them - getting it wrong and sharing reactions and scenarios with the people we trust…and then trying again, and again.

The quiet (worrying) statistics

Only 12% of learners actually apply skills from training to their jobs. I keep coming back to this one. If only 12 people out of every 100 are actually using what they learned, what's happening in that training room or on that platform? There’s a good chance most of them have completed the end of course form giving positive feedback but the training isn’t sticking.

Plus only 9% of UK companies even measure whether their training is working, although I can imagine it’s not a easy task to do. However, it does speak to the fact that we are investing billions in something we're not checking. And most people aren't using.

Maybe it's not about more

Training days per trainee have dropped to 5.7 days, the lowest ever recorded, down from 6.8 days in 2015….and budgets are still shrinking.

I wonder, however, if the question isn't "should we cut training?" but "are we creating the right kind of learning experience in order for your employees to thrive?"

Where does learning live?

The skills employers are looking for - communication, teamwork, resilience, problem-solving, more likely emerge through experiences (read our thoughts on Reflect, Connect, Apply here) rather than in formal content-driven training.

- We notice it in the moment someone tries to explain their thinking and realises halfway through that they haven't quite figured it out yet.

- In the conversation after the activity, when someone says "oh, I didn't realise I was doing that."

- In the bit where it feels a bit messy and uncertain, and then something clicks.

- in the opportunity to be curious, to observe…and just have play with an idea

Perhaps the time dedicated to learning might be the starting point but if we rush through this, the brain doesn’t absorb it into a changed behaviour.

A Question to Sit With

What if instead of asking "what content should we deliver?", we asked "what experience do people want to have?"

Not to learn about something but to actually experience it. To be able to do it when it matters, when there's pressure and when the stakes are real.

Perhaps it’s in the training design with less time perfecting the slides and more time creating the conditions where people can discover things for themselves:

- One were the environment feels safe to express ourselves authentically

- Where the debrief matters as much as the input.

- Where we trust that if we create the right experience, the learning will emerge.


What's one thing your team needs to learn that you can't quite imagine teaching through a course? Want to explore that with one of our team? Book a play date!

Claire Brown
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Our January Play Date: Starting as we mean to go on