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For decades, companies have approached learning and development (L&D) the same way: Assign courses by job title, hope for completion and check a box with a post-course quiz. This model may have scaled easily, but didn’t always deliver business impact, says one expert.
“Completion rates were abysmal,” says Kian Katanforoosh, CEO and founder of learning platform Workera, adjunct professor of deep learning at Stanford and author of his firm’s 2025 State of Skills Intelligence Report. “Even when courses were completed, the skills acquired didn’t move the needle on business priorities.”
A ‘skill-first, business-aligned’ L&D strategy
He explains that training content often didn’t match employees’ skill levels or daily job needs. According to Katanforoosh, some HR leaders are moving away from a course-first approach to a skill-first, business-aligned strategy. He believes that companies must stop guessing what skills employees have and start accurately measuring them.
“People don’t need more content,” says Katanforoosh. “They need clarity on what matters, where they stand and how to get better.”
He’s not the only one with this outlook. For years, HR advisors have advocated for more advanced learning frameworks. Deloitte researchers say organizations must recognize when manual L&D curation becomes unsustainable. At that point, they
