Do companies need L&D, or do they need better systems for growth?

There is a question people in workplace learning do not ask often enough.

Do companies actually need L&D?

Not learning. Not development. Not growth. Those things matter. Deeply.

But the function as we know it? The courses, platforms, pathways, mandatory modules, competency frameworks and beautifully branded programmes that too often sit one step away from the work itself?

That is where the question gets interesting.

In this week’s Freeformers Unplugged, Toby Kheng and Emilie Forrest took on the deliberately provocative question: do companies need L&D? Emilie’s answer was yes. Toby’s answer was, predictably, more complicated.

And somewhere between those two positions is a truth the profession needs to sit with.

Companies need people to grow. They need consistency, curiosity, confidence and capability. They need people who can adapt as the world changes around them.

But they may not need L&D as a captive market for learning products.

They need learning designed as part of work.

The problem with the captive market

Too much workplace learning is designed from the wrong starting point.

The business has a problem. Someone decides it is a learning problem. A course is commissioned. A platform is populated. A workshop is rolled out. Attendance is tracked. Completion rates are celebrated.

And everyone moves on.

Except the work often does not change.

That is the captive market problem. Employees become a guaranteed audience for content they may not need, may not want, and may not have time to use. The function is measured by whether people consumed the learning, not whether anything meaningful shifted afterwards.

This is where L&D can become transactional.

The organisation says: we need you to learn this.

The employee hears: we need you to perform differently for us.

The missing question is: what value does this create for the person, not just the business?

That distinction matters. Because if learning is only ever framed around organisational performance, it starts to feel like extraction. Another demand. Another thing to complete. Another tab open in an already overloaded working day.

Real development feels different. It creates mutual value. It helps the business perform and helps the individual become more capable, more confident, more employable, more in control of their future.

That is where learning becomes relational.

Development is part of the employee value proposition

Emilie made a point that too many organisations forget.

As companies grow, the relationship between employer and employee changes. In a tiny founder-led business, everyone may feel close to the mission. The work is immediate. The stakes are visible. People learn because they have to.

But as the organisation scales, that closeness fades. People need more than passion and proximity. They need a clearer value proposition.

Development becomes part of that proposition.

Not just training. Not just “opportunities to learn” buried somewhere on a careers page. Real development: progression, clarity, support, challenge, stretch and the chance to build something useful for the next version of their career.

But that creates a responsibility.

If you promise development, you need to mean it. You need to design it. You need to make it visible, usable and fair.

A £750 learning budget is not a development strategy. A library of digital content is not a career pathway. A manager saying “go and find something useful” is not a system.

Development needs structure. But structure does not have to mean bureaucracy.

It can mean clearer onboarding. Better manager conversations. Access to the right tools. Stretch projects. Communities of practice. Feedback loops. Space to practise. Time to reflect. Moments where people are put in the right situation, at the right time, with the right support.

That is development.

And it is much bigger than L&D.

Learning happens in the work, not next to it

One of the sharpest points in the conversation was also one of the simplest.

Most of the best learning happens when people are doing the thing.

Toby talked about stand-up comedy training and wrestling. The value was not in a dense body of content. It was in being placed in situations where he had to practise, respond, adapt and improve.

That is true for most workplace skills.

You do not become a better presenter by watching hours of content about presenting. You become better by presenting, receiving feedback, trying again and noticing what changes.

You do not become more confident with AI by completing a generic module once a year. You become more confident by using it on real tasks, with real constraints, in the actual rhythm of your job.

You do not become better at onboarding by reading a policy. You become better when the system helps you understand what you need to know, who to speak to, what good looks like and where to go when you get stuck.

That does not mean workshops are useless. Far from it.

A good workshop can be powerful. But only when it helps people do real work differently. The best sessions are not abstract. They give people a concept, then ask them to apply it to something live, practical and relevant.

Less learning theatre. More working differently.

Personalisation is not the point. Motivation is.

L&D often talks about personalisation as if it is the holy grail.

Personalised pathways. Personalised content. Personalised recommendations.

Useful, perhaps. But not enough.

The deeper question is motivation.

Some people are driven by ambition. They want to be the best. They want stretch, challenge and progression.

Some people are driven by confidence. They want to avoid feeling exposed, underprepared or out of their depth.

Some people are simply trying to get through the week, pay the bills and keep life together.

All three are valid.

The mistake is designing one learning experience and pretending it serves everyone equally.

A relational learning system recognises that people engage for different reasons. It does not judge those reasons. It works with them.

That means asking better questions before designing anything.

What is at stake for this person?

What are they trying to protect, improve or achieve?

What is getting in their way?

What would make this easier, faster or more meaningful?

What does the business need, and where does that overlap with what the person needs?

That overlap is where Mutual Lifetime Value starts to show up. The organisation gets capability. The individual gets value they can feel and use. The customer gets a better experience because the system works better around them.

Everyone grows because the design is balanced.

The answer may not be learning

This is where L&D needs courage.

Sometimes the answer is not a course.

Sometimes it is a checklist.

Sometimes it is a better laptop.

Sometimes it is turning off the old system so people actually use the new one.

Sometimes it is better guidance for managers.

Sometimes it is making knowledge easier to find.

Sometimes it is redesigning onboarding so people are not thrown into projects before they understand the basics.

Sometimes it is putting an AI interface over existing knowledge so people can ask the questions they actually have, rather than search through folders they do not understand.

None of these sound especially glamorous.

But they may solve the problem.

That is why the future of L&D cannot be limited to learning design alone. It needs product thinking. Service design. Human-centred design. User research. Systems thinking.

Not because these terms sound modern. Because they force us to stop assuming the answer before we have understood the problem.

The question is not: what learning should we build?

The question is: what is stopping people from doing the thing well?

Only then should we decide whether learning is the right intervention.

From learning function to growth system

So, do companies need L&D?

Yes, if L&D means someone is responsible for helping people grow, adapt and perform in ways that create value for both the organisation and the individual.

No, if L&D means a narrow function that responds to every problem with content, courses and completion data.

The future is not L&D as a content factory.

It is L&D as a growth system.

A system that understands people as users, not just learners. A system that treats development as part of the employee value proposition, not a perk. A system that connects people, performance and culture instead of separating them into different departments.

That is the shift.

Less captive market. More mutual value.

Less “we need you to complete this”. More “we have designed the conditions for you to grow”.

Less learning as an event. More learning as part of how work works.

Because real growth does not happen at the end of a workshop. It lives in the way people work, decide, collaborate, practise and improve every day.

And when organisations design for that, L&D stops needing to justify its existence.

It becomes part of the operating system for work.