How to Build a Culture of Continuous Learning & Development

Most organisations confuse learning with development, and that confusion is costing us talent, innovation, and competitive advantage.

You can throw all the training budgets, LMS platforms, and development programmes you want at your people. But if there’s a fundamental misalignment between what your business needs people to learn and what actually motivates them to engage, you’re shouting into the void.

Here’s the biggest misconception in L&D: you believe your people are chomping at the bit to dive into your learning content. Unfortunately, that’s simply not true. Why? People don’t have time. And even when they do, they’re not interested in generic courses that feel disconnected from their reality.

More importantly, the learning landscape has fundamentally changed. We’ve moved from Google to ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI tools that give people instant, personalised answers at their fingertips. Your employees can now ask an AI assistant to explain a complex concept, draft a strategy, or solve a problem in real-time. So why would they sit through a two-hour training module when they can get what they need in two minutes?

What your people really want to know is: How will this specific piece of learning help me with the specific challenges I’m facing in my specific day-to-day role and environment? That’s learning personalisation. But it’s also the difference between learning (consuming content) and development (building capability that drives performance).

The real challenge isn’t getting people to complete training. It’s cultivating learning agility, the ability and willingness to learn from experience, adapt to change, and apply new knowledge to solve problems. It’s developing curiosity as a core competency. And it’s strategically aligning what your organisation needs with what genuinely motivates your people to grow.

In 2026 and beyond, learning agility is the difference between organisations that adapt and those that get left behind. The companies thriving right now aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest training catalogues. They’re the ones where curiosity is rewarded, mistakes are mined for insight, and growth happens in the everyday moments between the formal programmes.

In this article

• The 70:20:10 Reality Check
• Why Continuous Learning & Development Matters
• What a True Learning & Development Culture Looks Like
• Leadership’s Role in Enabling Learning & Development
• What Great Leaders Actually Do
• The Middle Manager Advantage
• Practical Steps to Build a Learning & Development Culture
• Measuring Impact and Embedding Change
• LTT’s Approach to Continuous Learning & Development – Client Case Study
• Building a culture of continuous learning & development isn’t a project

The 70:20:10 Reality Check

If you really want to build a culture where people learn, experiment, and continuously improve, you need to rethink how you approach 70:20:10. The model tells us that 70% of learning happens on the job, 20% through networks and relationships, and only 10% through formal training. Yet where do most organisations pour their energy and budget? That 10%.

We obsess over course catalogues, completion rates, and learning platforms while ignoring the 70% – the daily challenges, stretch assignments, feedback conversations, and real-world problem-solving where actual development happens. If formal learning is only a small piece of the puzzle, why are we treating it like the whole picture? Of course, sometimes sitting in a classroom with your peers talking about a very specific topic is the right thing to do, but it’s not the only way to do it!

So how do you build that? Not with another training event. With a fundamental shift in how your organisation thinks about, talks about, and enables learning every single day.

Why Continuous Learning & Development Matters

Let’s start with the data, because it’s compelling.

According to research from the British Council, organisations with strong learning cultures are 46% more likely to be first to market and 52% more productive than their competitors. That’s not marginal gains. That’s market dominance.

But here’s what the statistics don’t capture: the human cost of stagnation. We’ve seen from our work that when people stop learning, there’s a significant trend of decreasing engagement. They become more risk-averse. They start looking elsewhere for growth.

The link between continuous learning and retention isn’t just theoretical, it’s one of several critical factors that determine whether people stay and thrive. People don’t just leave bad managers or poorly run companies; they also leave environments where they can’t see a path to evolve.

Innovation doesn’t just come from strategy offsites alone; though they have their place in aligning teams and generating breakthrough thinking. It comes from teams who take those insights and constantly question, experiment, and learn from what works (and what doesn’t) in their daily work. When learning becomes systemic, you don’t just improve performance. You fundamentally change what your organisation is capable of.

What a True Learning & Development Culture Looks Like

A true learning culture doesn’t announce itself with posters in the breakroom. You feel it in the questions people ask, the feedback they seek, and the way they treat failure.

According to insights from Strengthify, the hallmarks of a genuine learning culture include:

• Curiosity as a core competency: The best questions get as much airtime as the best answers
• Psychological safety: People share half-formed ideas without fear of judgement
• Open feedback loops: Learning from mistakes is celebrated, not hidden
• Shared learning: Knowledge isn’t hoarded, it’s distributed through peer networks and collaboration

But here’s the crucial bit, learning can’t live in a separate box labelled ‘L&D’. It has to be embedded in daily workflow, team rituals, and leadership practices. It’s in the retrospective after a project. The coaching conversation in the moment, whether with a direct report or a peer. The Slack channel where people share what they’re reading. The meeting where someone says, ‘I don’t know, but let’s figure it out together’.

When learning is everywhere, it stops being a thing you do and becomes a way you are.

Leadership’s Role in Enabling Learning & Development

If you’re a senior leader reading this, here’s your wake-up call: your team’s learning culture is a mirror of your behaviour.

Research from DevelopmentCo confirms what we see in our client work every day, accountability for learning starts at the top. Leaders don’t just say learning matters. They model curiosity. They admit what they don’t know. They ask for feedback. They visibly invest time in their own development.

What Great Leaders Actually Do

And they do something even more important – they reward learning, not just results.

This means building learning behaviours into performance metrics. Recognising the manager who coaches their team through a challenge rather than solving it for them.

Celebrating the team that ran an experiment (even if it failed) because they increased collective knowledge. Creating space for peer-to-peer learning and cross-functional collaboration, not as a luxury, but as a strategic priority.

The Middle Manager Advantage

Middle managers are your secret weapon here. When they’re equipped and empowered to be learning champions – asking great questions, creating reflection time, connecting their people to development opportunities – learning cascades through the organisation. When they’re not, even the best L&D strategy withers on the vine.

Why? Because middle managers sit at the critical intersection of strategy and execution. They’re the ones who translate organisational priorities into team objectives. They’re in the daily conversations where learning happens – the project debriefs, the one-to-ones, the moments when someone gets stuck or tries something new. They’re the ones who can spot a development need in real-time and connect it to an opportunity. And crucially, they’re the role models their teams watch most closely.

Senior leaders can talk about learning all they want, but if someone’s direct manager doesn’t create space for it, reward it, or model it themselves, it simply won’t happen. Middle managers don’t just enable learning, they are the learning culture, made visible and tangible in everyday interactions. That’s why investing in their capability to coach, facilitate reflection, and champion development isn’t optional. It’s the fulcrum on which everything else pivots.

Practical Steps to Build a Learning & Development Culture

Enough theory. Here’s how you actually do this.

Step 1: Make learning accessible and development intentional

• According to Titus Learning, the future of workplace learning is self-directed, bite-sized, and embedded in the flow of work
• Invest in platforms that enable microlearning – content people can consume in minutes, not days
• Make resources searchable, relevant, and varied. Offer articles, videos, podcasts, and peer learning opportunities
• At Let’s Talk Talent we run WhatsApp courses as short, sharp daily nudges that embed learning
• Connect learning to development linked to real challenges, projects, and performance goals
• Remove barriers like approvals and business cases that delay access

Step 2: Celebrate growth, not perfection

• Shift your language from “What went wrong?” to “What did we learn?”
• Recognise people who stretch beyond their comfort zones
• Share stories of learning wins and adaptations
• Valuing growth encourages risk-taking and innovation

Step 3: Invest in digital platforms that enable collaboration

• The LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2025 highlights growing importance of collaborative learning tools
• Enable cohort-based learning, peer coaching, knowledge sharing, and social learning
• Provide infrastructure for people to learn from each other at scale

Step 4: Empower middle managers as learning champions

• Equip managers with coaching, questioning, and facilitation skills
• Train managers to integrate development conversations into daily work
• Recognise managers as capability-builders, not just task-allocators
• Embed people development strategies to build curiosity, reflection, and growth muscles

‘Learning without development is just consumption’

Learning alone, reading articles, watching videos, completing courses, doesn’t change anything. It’s just information consumption. Development is when you apply that learning to build capability that drives results.

A true learning and development culture creates conditions where people experiment, reflect, receive feedback, and grow through applying what they learn. That’s the difference between activity and impact.

Measuring Impact and Embedding Change

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. But don’t fall into the trap of measuring activity (training hours completed) rather than impact.

• Track engagement scores and retention rates, especially high-performers
• Monitor internal mobility and growth into new roles
• Benchmark performance metrics before and after learning initiatives
• Look for qualitative signals like questions, feedback, and stretch assignments
• Encourage storytelling to share learning wins and experiments
• Integrate learning into your team performance frameworks

LTT’s Approach to Continuous Learning & Development – Client Case Study

At Let’s Talk Talent, we don’t believe in off-the-shelf learning solutions. Because your culture isn’t off-the-shelf.

When you partner with us to develop your Learning & Development Strategy, the best place to start is with capability diagnostics – understanding learning gaps and blockers such as what stops curiosity or makes experimentation feel risky.

We then help embed learning in your organisation’s architecture through:

• Building coaching cultures with daily development conversations
• Designing performance systems that reward growth, not just outcomes
• Equipping leaders to model and enable learning
• Creating team rituals for reflection and experimentation

We recently helped a fast-growing bandwidth infrastructure company recalibrate their L&D approach for strategic alignment, impact measurement, spend tracking, and employee engagement. We shifted their mindset from courses to resources, delivering targeted, impactful learning aligned with business goals and individual challenges.

They rebranded their learning offering beyond short-form content to focus on practical, business-relevant skills delivered in the flow of work.

By adopting this strategic, data-driven approach, they unlocked lasting impact and employee engagement, answering the question: ‘How does this help me with the specific challenges I’m facing right now?’

Building a culture of continuous learning & development isn’t a project

It’s a commitment to reimagining how your organisation grows its people, not in workshops and training rooms, but in everyday moments where real work happens.

It starts with leaders who model curiosity. It’s sustained by systems that make learning accessible, safe, and rewarding. And it’s measured by questions asked, risks taken, and growth demonstrated.

Create a culture where your people never stop growing: partner with LTT.

If you’re ready to move beyond ad-hoc training and embed learning into your organisation’s DNA, let’s talk. Book an LTT Learning Culture Audit and discover what’s possible when curiosity becomes your competitive advantage.

For support building learning capability, explore our Coach on Demand for Teams service. If retention is a challenge, read our insights on why careers are the missing link in talent retention strategy.

FAQs

How do I sustain a learning culture long-term?

Sustainability comes from embedding learning into systems, not relying on individual enthusiasm. Make learning part of performance conversations, onboarding, team rituals, and leadership development. Build it into work processes, making it self-reinforcing.

What are effective incentives for continuous learning?

The best incentive isn’t financial, it’s opportunity. When people see learning leads to new challenges, autonomy, and career progression, they invest in it. Recognise learners publicly, give stretch projects, and promote from within based on growth, not tenure. Removing barriers like time, budget approvals, and access is also critical.

How do leaders measure learning effectiveness?

Look beyond completion rates. Measure behaviour changes such as increased coaching, collaboration, and taking new responsibilities. Track business outcomes linked to learning like innovation, time-to-market, retention, and mobility. Create feedback loops for continuous improvement. For more, explore our work on learning and development.