Learning at Work Week 2026 gave HR and L&D leaders plenty to think about, but the real value comes from what happens next. Across our LAWW webinar series, one message came through clearly: learning only creates impact when it is tied to business priorities, inclusive leadership, stronger relationships, and practical action.
To help you implement the next steps, we’ve created a focused action plan for HRs, people leaders, and L&D teams, bringing together the key themes from Learning at Work Week 2026. Rather than simply recapping the sessions, we’ve highlighted what you should do next if you want to drive performance, growth, and culture change in your organisation.
- Move L&D from reactive delivery to strategic influence
- Use AI to improve decisions, not create an ocean of content
- Prioritise critical skills over bloated frameworks
- Build mentoring as a strategic, measurable programme
- Create a learning culture by building belonging first
- Recognise life stage, confidence and identity as learning issues
- Make neuroinclusive leadership a business priority, not a compliance task
Another way we’re helping you move forward is through the Let’s Talk Talent Mentoring Programme 2026 — a structured, high-quality programme designed for senior HRBPs and HR leads who are ready to strengthen their strategic impact and leadership confidence.
Places are limited and registration closes 5th June, so if you’re ready to invest in your development, register as a mentee today
1. Move L&D from reactive delivery to strategic influence
One of the clearest messages from the Future of Learning panel, hosted by our Managing Director and Founder, Jo Taylor, was that L&D teams need to stop acting as reactive content providers and start operating as strategic partners. Becoming a strategic L&D partner involves three things:
- Stepping back from requests for quick fixes
- Asking sharper questions about business performance, critical capability gaps
- Asking what success should look like for the organisation
For HR and L&D leaders, review where learning is being driven by stakeholder demand alone rather than business need. If your current approach is dominated by course requests, content production, and attendance reporting, it may be time to reset around strategic priorities, capability building, and performance outcomes.
If you’ve just had the chance to read up on Learning at Work Week 2026—don’t worry, you haven’t missed out on our webinar series. Catch up on The Future of Learning with Jo Taylor from Let’s Talk Talent and her expert panel: David James, Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning, and Shelley Hayward, Head of People Experience at Cumberland Building Society.
2. Use AI to improve decisions, not create an ocean of content
As you’d expect, AI alignment in L&D shone through as a major theme, but not in the way many teams expect. The strongest insight was that AI should help L&D make better decisions—for example by analysing business priorities, spotting skills gaps, and supporting reflection in the flow of work—rather than simply producing more learning content at speed.
For many HR teams, the opportunity is to use AI as an intelligent assistant that strengthens diagnosis and design, while keeping human-led facilitation, coaching, and mentoring at the heart of the learning experience.
3. Prioritise critical skills over bloated frameworks
Another practical takeaway from Learning at Work Week 2026 was the need to focus on building critical skills instead of creating overly complex frameworks that are difficult to use. Skills only become commercially useful when they help leaders make decisions about performance, development, succession, and workforce priorities.
In the next 6-12 months, you can build critical skills by:
- Identifying the few capabilities that matter most to your organisation
- Building learning, coaching, mentoring, and manager support specifically around those areas
If your framework is too complicated for leaders to apply in real conversations, it is probably too complicated to create change. Download our free competency framework whitepaper for a strategic blueprint to rebuild your approach.
4. Build mentoring as a strategic, measurable programme
The second mentoring panel, hosted by Yvette Jans van Rensburg, made a strong case for treating mentoring as a strategic capability rather than a nice-to-have initiative. The standout action for HR teams is to move from informal relationships to a structured programme with a clear purpose, defined expectations, senior sponsorship, and a plan for measuring impact.
Mentoring draws on lived experience, guidance, and exposure, while coaching is more focused on questions, reflection, and helping someone unlock their own thinking. That distinction matters because many organisations use the terms interchangeably and end up designing programmes that lack clarity.
Here’s a useful mentoring framework you can implement:
- Define the business reason for mentoring, such as leadership pipelines, inclusion, confidence, or retention
- Start with a pilot to test demand, boundaries, and measurement
- Train mentors so confidentiality, role clarity, and psychological safety are built in from the outset
- Track outcomes such as confidence, progression, participation, and qualitative impact stories
Learn more about how to make mentoring work with Yvette from Let’s Talk Talent and the fantastic panel. Join John Athanasiou, Chief People Officer at Hearst UK, Hayley Couldrey, Leadership Coach & Associate at The Flourishing Career, and Angie McKenna, Head of People & Development at Mackie’s of Scotland.
5. Create a learning culture by building belonging first
One of the most useful learning culture insights from the week was that culture improves when people feel safe to contribute, share expertise, ask questions, and learn in visible ways with each other.
For employers, that means learning culture should be built through belonging, peer-led moments, informal knowledge sharing, and leadership behaviours that make development feel normal rather than remedial.
In practice, creating a learning culture involves:
- Creating regular knowledge-sharing sessions, spotlighting internal expertise
- Giving managers better tools to support development and team performance in day-to-day work
Create a culture of psychological safety and find your “Performance Development Sweet Spot”. Download our free ‘Performance Development for Modern HR’ whitepaper to rethink how your organisation can support people to perform and grow.
6. Recognise life stage, confidence and identity as learning issues
In the session on What Midlife Teaches Us About How We Grow, the panel reflected on how midlife shifts one’s perspective away from seeking external validation. It showed that growth at work is not only about courses, frameworks, or promotion pathways; it is also about identity, confidence, transitions, and the ability to unlearn patterns that no longer serve us.
This webinar encouraged employers to review whether their people development offer reflects real career stages and lived experience. Midlife transitions, menopause, confidence, reinvention, and ageism all shape how people engage with growth, and ignoring them risks excluding experienced talent from development conversations.
Hear what learning looks like when it’s shaped by life. Recap on What Midlife Teaches Us About How We Grow with Remi Baker, Founder of The Third Chapter, and her expert panel including Brenda Emmanus OBE, broadcaster and journalist, Helen Matthews, Global People Transformation Director, and Noreen Connolly, Managing Director at Extreme Reach.
7. Make neuroinclusive leadership a business priority, not a compliance task
Debbie Venables and Steve Ratcliffe made a clear business case for moving beyond policy-level inclusion when it comes to neurodiversity. If leadership development is designed around one communication style, one pace, and one model of confidence, many neurodivergent leaders will spend more energy masking than growing.
To make your organisation more inclusive, HR and L&D teams should audit where programmes are unintentionally exclusive:
- Observe how feedback is delivered
- Assess how group participation is expected by managers and leaders
- Review how team and individual goals are framed
Then ask: does your management and leadership teams have the capability to create a psychologically safe environment where different leadership styles can thrive?
If Let’s Talk Talent’s Learning at Work Week 2026 webinar series has truly inspired you to make change in your organisation, sign up for our three-week WhatsApp course on organisational design — starting June 22nd 2026.
What should HR and L&D teams do next?
If there’s anything HRDs, CPOs, and HR teams can implement following Learning at Work Week 2026, it’s focusing on these seven actionable next steps:
- Reposition L&D around business priorities, not reactive requests
- Use AI to improve analysis, skills insight, and reflection, not just content output
- Simplify capability planning around critical skills
- Build mentoring as a structured and measurable programme
- Strengthen learning culture by investing in belonging and psychological safety
- Recognise life stage and confidence as valid development factors
- Redesign leadership development to be genuinely neuroinclusive
LAWW 2026: Keep the conversation going
Don’t let your learning stop here just because Learning at Work Week has wrapped up. If you want to keep the conversation going in a more informal, real-time way, you can join Let’s Talk Talent’s WhatsApp group to share ideas, ask our HR consultants questions, and be the first to hear about our new webinar sessions and courses.
If you’re ready to turn these insights into action, keep building momentum after Learning at Work Week 2026 and register to join Let’s Talk Talent’s upcoming HR courses and webinars. Whether you’re focusing on L&D strategy, mentoring, midlife growth, or neuroinclusive leadership, there’s a session designed to help you make the shift from inspiration to impact.
FAQs about Learning at Work Week 2026 actions
1. What is the main takeaway from Learning at Work Week 2026?
The main takeaway from Learning at Work Week 2026 is that learning should be tied to business priorities, inclusive leadership, and practical performance outcomes, not treated as a one-off campaign.
2. How should AI be used in L&D after Learning at Work Week 2026?
AI should be used in L&D to analyse priorities, identify skills gaps, support reflection, and improve decision-making, rather than simply generating more content.
3. What should organisations prioritise after Learning at Work Week 2026?
Following Learning at Work Week 2026, organisations should prioritise strategic L&D, critical skills, structured mentoring, creating a psychologically safe environment, and inclusive leadership development.
4. Why does mentoring matter in modern learning strategies?
Mentoring matters in modern learning strategies as it encourages confidence, inclusion, visibility, and development through human connection. It works best when it is structured, intentional, and measurable.
5. How can HR make leadership development more inclusive?
HR can make leadership development more inclusive by removing one-size-fits-all assumptions, improving psychological safety, and designing programmes that support neurodivergent and differently experienced leaders.
