L&D in 2026 – Be a Strategist, Not Just Operational

“Be a strategist they said. Like it’s the simplest thing one can be, especially when it comes to L&D.”

I can almost hear the snickers and the snorts coming out from the L&D practitioners, just by reading this title. And yup, my first attempt to write a blog for my organisation, is a controversial one.

I remember when I was involved in talent management solutions for HR back in 2010s, I saw the same reluctance and quite a few eye rolls, like we were speaking in alien language. It was hard to penetrate the idea of being a strategic partner to their organisation when HR has always been seen as the operational department who only ran salary, time attendance, and leave application. It was baffling if HR can be any more than that. The idea of a HR managing recruitment process, managing the performance, KPIs, goals, managing the skills and competency, managing the career and succession planning, and be transparent about all of it, was blasphemous. HR cannot be transparent. HR must be secretive!

And yet, look at us now. Salary, time attendance, leave application are all outsourced. When we talk about HR these days, it’s all about managing the end-to-end of an employee life cycle. From the day they were interviewed, to the day they get the promotion or even retirement. That, ladies and gentlemen, is being the strategist to the company. HR is strategizing what are the best solutions in balancing the employees’ needs, and the organisation’s well-being.

Now, let’s see if I can try to convince you that L&D can also be transformed the same

L&D is the backbone of employees’ development. They are the ones responsible in ensuring their employees get the courses they needed to bridge the skill gap. They are the ones responsible in ensuring the employees meets the learning KPIs. Their day-to-day operations involved:

• Organising the learning KPIs for the year – completion of learning hours that covers compliance courses and skill-based courses.

• Understanding the skills required through the individual & managers skills assessment.

• Developing relevant compliance courses and courses that bridge the skill gap.

• Managing annual training budget (and the chasing of departments to utilise the budget).

• Getting a structured approval process when an employee applying for external courses.

• Managing layers of approvers (let’s not even talk about one approver is on extended leave, the headache of realigning!).

• Developing and curating learning plans.

• And of course, generating reports after reports.

I honestly believe, I did not cover even half of what the actual tasks of an L&D but even writing the above has made me ran out of breath!

It’s not easy to move a department from being and seen as operational to a strategic department, I understand. I’ve seen the amount of work needed when you had to completely changed your training policies after COVID happened. The sweat, the tears, the headaches when communicating the changes to the entire organisation. It’s exhausting!

But we can start slow, by asking ourselves these questions:

1. How did learning hours really provide the strategic advantage, not just to my employees but to my organisation?

2. Are our employees appropriately skilled to help our company meets its annual objective?

3. Do the courses give any positive impact? Or did we just spend hundreds and thousands of $$$ to wasted courses?

4. Did our employees apply what they learned to their job after 6 months completing the course?

5. How does the digital learning improved L&D operations? And more importantly, how does it improve my employees’ learning needs?

6. Can I just depend on the content library for all our learning needs?

7. Can my employees still do their on-the-job training, coaching & mentoring with digital learning?

8. How about courses that require physical intervention, like the IT department, or engineering? How do we manage those courses in digital learning?

9. Is social learning important to my employees’ growth? How does it strategically help L&D?

10. Can AI really help L&D be a strategist?

I will leave you to ponder these questions, and I will come back with more avenues to assist with your journey to become a strategist.

Till we meet again in the next episode!

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