72% of organizations say they lack the resources to build a culture of learning. The finding comes from ATD’s latest report, Creating a Culture of Learning: Strategies to Nurture a Thriving Workforce, sponsored by Zensai.
Most organizations already provide dedicated development time, with a median of 40 hours a year. That’s a full workweek per employee. 75% reward employees for completing learning. Yet 46% of TD professionals still say time is a major challenge, and 67% of employees want more opportunities. The resources exist. So why does the gap persist?
Where the evidence gets lost
The effort is real, and so is the impact. A TD professional can see when a course lands, and a manager can see when someone improves. But those signals stay inside learning systems, invisible to the people setting budgets and priorities. When costs need cutting, learning looks like the safest place to start.
82% of organizations say they consider learning in performance reviews. For most, that means pulling completion data into a review template once a year. A course someone finished in March shows up as a line item in December, stripped of the goal it supported or the conversation that prompted it. The manager who recommended it may not even remember why. For the other 11 months, that development work shapes nothing.
The resources are there. So is the effort. What matters is what happens to the evidence once those hours are spent, and whether it reaches the people making decisions about where to invest next. That’s where the real gap opens up.
What changes when development becomes visible
Imagine learning built natively inside the same environment where goals are set and performance conversations happen. When someone completes a course, it ties directly to a skill gap surfaced in their last check-in. A development goal set in January shows visible progress through June. In a culture of learning, the manager doesn’t go looking for evidence. It’s already there, alongside feedback and goal progress.
Think about what that means for an L&D leader preparing a quarterly review. Today, they’re pulling data from multiple places, trying to build a picture of how development is contributing to the business. When learning and performance share the same environment, that picture already exists. A CHRO can walk into a board meeting and draw a clear line from training investment to business outcomes, tied to specific skill gaps and development goals. The return on development becomes something leaders can point to with confidence, backed by months of connected data.
When learning lives inside Microsoft 365, people develop without leaving their workflow. A new hire works through onboarding content in Teams between meetings. A mid-career employee picks up a compliance module in the same window where they’re tracking project goals. Development becomes part of the working day, built into the same flow where goals and conversations already happen.
That consistency matters across teams too. When progress is visible to managers and leaders alike, development doesn’t depend on one manager’s initiative or one team’s culture. It becomes part of how the organization operates, which makes it easier to sustain and scale.
The ATD report backs this up. Organizations that connect learning goals to weekly check-ins see development become part of the rhythm of work. Those that give employees role-based learning time, rather than pointing them at a generic content library, make each hour count toward something specific. That clarity changes how learning is prioritized. Teams can plan development with a clear purpose and see how it contributes to what they’re trying to achieve.
Multiply your gains with informal learning
Informal learning already accounts for a significant share of development. The ATD report shows that 68% of organizations run mentoring programs and 50% use lunch and learns. Yet only 33% use communities of practice, which suggests there’s room to scale informal learning well beyond a few familiar formats.
A manager coaching someone through a challenge, or a peer sharing expertise in the middle of a project, can have a meaningful impact. These moments happen across every team, every week. When they show up alongside goals and feedback, they start to count. Managers can reinforce what’s working, and leaders can spot which teams are developing new strengths and where to invest next.
Take a senior developer who regularly coaches junior colleagues through code reviews. That mentoring builds real capability. When it connects to the development goals those junior colleagues are working toward, the senior developer’s contribution gets recognized and the juniors’ progress feeds into their next performance conversation. The L&D leader, meanwhile, can see that mentoring is driving skill development in that team without having to run a formal program to prove it.
Over time, those patterns build a clearer picture of how the organization is growing its people, making it easier to see where to invest next and where existing approaches are already working.
Build a culture of learning people can see
Organizations are already investing in development and giving employees dedicated time to grow. The 72% figure is about visibility, and closing that gap is well within reach. The ATD data shows that organizations connecting learning to goals and check-ins are already seeing development become part of how work gets done.
In a culture of learning, an L&D leader walks into a budget conversation with evidence already in front of them, built over months of connected goals and learning progress. They can point to specific skills their teams developed and show how those contributed to the quarter’s priorities. A manager tracks how their team is growing week to week, with each completed course tied to the development goals they set together.
When a team member is ready for a stretch assignment, the manager sees it in the data and acts on it. That clarity builds confidence across the organization and makes continued investment in development easier to sustain. Each quarter, the evidence base grows and the case for learning strengthens on its own.
You’ll find all of the data discussed here in the full ATD report. Download Creating a Culture of Learning: Strategies to Nurture a Thriving Workforce to see the complete findings and learn how to apply them to your organization.
