What Is Learning and Development (L&D)?
Learning and development helps employees grow their skills. Learn how to build an L&D strategy that improves performance and drives retention.
Key Takeaways
- L&D is consistently one of the top factors in employee retention — people stay where they grow
- The 70-20-10 model: 70% of learning happens on the job, 20% from others, 10% from formal training
- Skills mapping identifies current capability gaps relative to future business needs
- L&D investment does not need to be expensive — mentoring, stretch assignments, and learning stipends are high-impact
What learning and development is
Learning and development (L&D) encompasses all activities that help employees build skills, knowledge, and capabilities — from formal training courses and certifications to on-the-job coaching, mentoring, and stretch assignments. A deliberate L&D strategy is both a performance improvement tool (building the capabilities your business needs) and a retention tool (people stay in organisations where they feel they are growing). In competitive talent markets, the quality of development opportunities is often a more powerful retention lever than compensation.
The 70-20-10 model
The 70-20-10 model, developed by researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership, describes how professionals actually learn. 70% of learning happens through challenging on-the-job experiences — new projects, stretch assignments, managing a team for the first time, presenting to senior stakeholders. 20% happens through relationships — coaching from a manager, mentoring from a senior colleague, learning from peer feedback. Only 10% happens through formal training — courses, workshops, and certifications. Effective L&D strategies maximise the 70 and 20, not just the 10.
Skills mapping
Skills mapping is the process of documenting the capabilities your business needs now and in the future, assessing the current capability of your team against those needs, and identifying the gaps that need to be addressed. It is the foundation of a targeted L&D strategy — without it, training spend is often undirected and fails to build the specific capabilities that drive business performance. Skills maps should be updated annually alongside your strategic plan.
High-impact L&D on a budget
Effective L&D does not require large budgets. High-impact, low-cost approaches include: a monthly learning allowance (£50-100 per person per month for books, online courses, or conferences) with a simple mechanism for sharing learnings with the team; a formal mentoring programme pairing junior employees with senior people; structured knowledge sharing — regular internal sessions where team members teach each other skills; and deliberate stretch assignments — giving people projects slightly above their current comfort zone with appropriate support.
Measuring L&D effectiveness
The Kirkpatrick model provides a framework for evaluating L&D effectiveness at four levels. Level 1 (Reaction): did participants find the training relevant and engaging? Level 2 (Learning): did they actually acquire the intended knowledge or skill? Level 3 (Behaviour): did they apply the learning in their work? Level 4 (Results): did it produce a measurable business outcome — improved performance, reduced errors, faster onboarding? Most organisations measure only Level 1 and fail to capture whether learning actually changed behaviour or produced results.