Oct 28 / Natalie Savery

Highway to skills

Why learning is the key to better performance

Picture your very first driving lesson. Your instructor hands you the keys, says "off you go", and steps out of the car. None of us would accept that. In fact, we'd look at them as if they were from another planet. We know that learning to drive takes instruction, practice, feedback and plenty of stalling on quiet roads before we're ready for the motorway.

Yet that's often how we're expected to learn at work. We're handed the keys to a new role, a new system or a new team, and trusted to work it out as we go.

Now, we're a learning and development provider, so of course we believe learning makes a difference. It's why we do what we do. But I also think it's important to look at the balanced picture, and to be honest about the kinds of learning that don't bring the benefits we're all looking for.

So, as we mark Get the Nation Learning Week, it feels like the right moment to ask two simple questions. 

• What does the evidence actually tell us about learning? 
• And what helps it stick, so that we can be better at work?

What the numbers tell us

Here's something for the data lovers among us.

Learning pays when it's done well, and goes to waste when it isn't

  • What good learning delivers
  • Where it falls short

£53bn

invested in training by UK employers every year
Employer Skills Survey 2024

5.5-10.8%

prductivity gains linked to deeper investment in training
Aston University 2025

23%

higher profitability in the most engaged teams
Gallup 2024

20-25%

more productivity when managers and staff develop together
Aston University 2025

12%

of employees apply the new skills they learn on development programmes
Harvard Business Review

82%

of managers have had no proper management or leadership training
Chartered Management Institute
The investment sounds big, but it's shrinking. UK employers spend around £53 billion a year on training. But fewer employers are training their staff than in 2017, and they're spending less on each person they train. Fewer of us are learning at work, too: just one in five working adults, down from more than one in four a year earlier. (Employer Skills Survey, 2024; Learning and Work Institute, 2025)

Done well, it pays. Organisations that invest properly in learning perform better. In one major UK study, deeper investment in training was linked to productivity gains of between 5.5% and 10.8%. People who feel they can learn and grow are also more likely to be engaged at work, and the most engaged teams are 23% more profitable, with more loyal customers and far less sickness absence. (Garavan et al., 2021; Schwarz et al., 2025; Gallup, 2024)

But not all training is equal. Giving lots of people a little bit of training, with no depth or follow-up, makes far less difference, and can even make things worse. And a lot of training simply doesn't get used: one estimate suggests only 12% of people put the new skills they learn into practice. (Schwarz et al., 2025; Harvard Business Review, 2019)
Think about that gym membership you signed up for in January. 

Paying for it doesn't make you any fitter. What makes the difference is turning up regularly, having a plan, pushing past your comfort zone when you can, and perhaps a trainer or a friend who expects to see you there. Stop going, and the fitness you've built slowly fades away. Learning works in much the same way.

Making learning stick

The good news is that we know what helps learning stick. Dr Ina Weinbauer-Heidel, founder of the Institute for Transfer Effectiveness, has identified 12 "levers" that make the difference. Her key point is that it isn't just down to the person in the room. It depends on what surrounds the learning:

  • Do people have time to apply what they've learned?
  • Is their manager interested in what they're trying?
  • Is it safe to experiment and get it wrong?

Weinbauer-Heidal’s work suggests that even 15 minutes of conversation with a manager before or after a course can improve how much of it is put into practice.

Organisations that get this right see the results. Those with strong learning cultures have been found to be more productive and more likely to lead their market, and the things that made the biggest difference were done by leaders and line managers, not the L&D team. More recent research says the same: learning works best when it's practical, includes feedback and builds over time, rather than happening as a one-off. (Bersin & Associates, 2010; Government Skills, 2025)

That's exactly what our Learning PLUS framework is designed to do. It's our model for putting learning into practice, and it treats learning as behaviour change rather than an event. It's built around four stages.

Learning PLUS: turning learning into lasting change

Four stages that treat learning as a behaviour change, not a one-off event

Prime

Create readiness 
& intent

Goals, relevance, manager involvment

Learn

Build understanding & capability

Active practice, discussion, feedback

Use

Put learning into real work, quickly

Real tasks, support, accountability

Sustain

Embed & normalise new habits

Reflection, coaching, peer support

Underpinned by the environment around the learner
Manager support  |  Time to apply  |  Safe to experiment  |  Accountability

Together, the four stages provide a blueprint for embedding learning so that it makes a real difference. But a blueprint is only as good as the conditions it’s built in. Learning PLUS relies on a working ecosystem around the learner: support to apply new skills, processes that make room for development, and a culture where learning is valued as part of the job rather than an extra. In that ecosystem, the organisation and the manager are just as important as the learner, and as the facilitator, when there is one.


As we’ve already seen, of all of those, it’s often the manager who makes the biggest difference. Managers help people see why the learning matters before they start, make the time and space to try it out back at work, and keep the conversation going long after the session has ended.

The ripple effect

When I first became a manager, I didn't have any training before I stepped into the role, or within the first few months. Initially, I genuinely thought I was doing fine.

It was a few months in before the penny dropped when a team member needed something from me that I didn't know how to give. I hadn't suddenly become worse at my job. I'd been handed the keys without the lessons, and I was only just realising how much I had to learn.

My story isn't unusual. It's a well-known statistic that an estimated 82% of UK managers have had no proper management or leadership training, and one in three workers say they've left a job because of a poor manager. (Chartered Management Institute, 2023)

That matters because of the ripple effect. When I was learning on the job, my team felt it too. Managers account for at least 70% of the difference in how engaged one team is compared with another. One manager can shape how well a whole team works. A chief executive can shape a whole organisation. (Gallup) 

The good news is that developing managers can make a difference. It improves how they lead, how well they do their jobs and the results their organisations get. It works best alongside developing their teams: investing in both together boosts productivity by 20 to 25% more than investing in either one alone. Skilled managers achieve more with skilled teams, and skilled teams thrive under capable managers. So if you're deciding where to start, the people who lead others are where the ripples spread furthest. (Lacerenza et al., 2017; Schwarz et al., 2025)

Learning isn't always training

If we think about how we learn in other areas of our lives, it rarely starts with a training course. A YouTube video will teach me how to fix a leaky tap, a recipe on a website will walk me through cooking a new dish, and I look at the picture on the front on the jigsaw puzzle to work out what the end result is meant to look like. 

There are so many ways to learn, we don't have to stop at just one. In fact, when we stack learning activities, it can help to drive home the learning, and can support us to put it into practice. 

Learning a language is a good example. Trying to speak it with no lessons at all rarely gets us far, but classes alone won't make us fluent either. Fluency comes from the mix: lessons, yes, but also conversations, listening, a friend who gently corrects us, and the courage to have a go and get it wrong.

When we get learning right, people feel the benefits too. Almost all adult learners (94%) say they've gained something from their learning - most often more self-confidence. 8 in 10 people say learning gives their work more purpose, and 7 in 10 say it makes them feel more connected to their organisation. Coaching has been shown to improve people's wellbeing, their performance and how well they cope. All of this helps keep good people: nearly three-quarters of employees say better development opportunities would make them stay in a role for longer. (Learning and Work Institute, 2025; Theeboom et al., 2014; LinkedIn, 2024; TalentLMS, 2026)

Your next lesson

The evidence is clear that learning improves performance, productivity and outcomes for individuals, teams and organisations. It's equally clear that it only does so when we design for it, make room for it and keep it going. And it doesn't have to start big.

So this Get the Nation Learning Week, I'd invite you to take a moment and ask yourself three questions:
  • What could you learn to do, or do better, that would make you 5% better in your role?
  • What's the simplest way you could learn it?
  • How could you put it into practice in a way that helps it stick and makes it most effective?
Because nobody is ready for the motorway after one lesson. But with the right support beside us, and some practice on the quiet roads, we usually get there. 

Sources

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