Is L&D focusing where it matters most?

Robin Hoyle speaks with Egle Vinauskaite about how AI is reshaping work, learning and organisational priorities – and what L&D needs to do to keep pace.

Conversations about AI and L&D are focused on learning design, data analytics and AI to create content. How do you think that’s set to change?

L&D has largely been thinking about AI from its own perspective: “here are our most demanding tasks” and “how can AI make them easier”. The reality is that L&D doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Work itself is changing because of AI but L&D has been largely focused on solving its internal problems, its processes and it hasn’t questioned enough if it’s still solving the right problem.

For example: AI can help you create a good branching scenario, but do people still need to practise feedback using a branching scenario when AI can give you a simulated real-time conversation using your own voice? We have a similar situation with content and courses.

Do you still need that meticulously designed SCORM course where you can click things and read stuff when people are just going to ask AI?

That is the new habit, the new interface for knowledge work. Courses aren’t L&D’s core artefacts anymore – they’re data. And that changes the value that L&D can offer to the business.

Currently, there is the loud conversation – about how we use AI tools in L&D for our own purposes, and there is another conversation, more silent in comparison, which is about what L&D needs to become to keep adding value in a workplace that has AI in it.

Essentially, what happens to L&D when knowledge isn’t the bottleneck anymore?

What needs to happen for L&D to shift focus from their own processes towards the wider issues of individuals having AI tools at their fingertips?

It starts with an L&D leadership vision and that comes from a view on the future of work and L&D’s place in it. What can this technology do? How is it going to change your business beyond L&D?

Leaders need to move away from being directed by every single AI release each week, towards a vision – what will add value in the business two years from now?

For example, one leader said: “With the way AI is used in our business, our LMS is going to be irrelevant by next year. It’s a database now.” The new L&D storefront, and how it communicates with employees, and how employees see L&D, fundamentally changes.

Some of the other case studies in the AI in L&D Report 2025 (AI in L&D Report 2025 – Vinauskaitė, E and Taylor, DH) highlighted where learning leaders realise that people are now using AI to create their own learning programmes and performance support tools, completely circumventing L&D.

In response, they have reimagined L&D’s purpose as capturing that bubbling knowledge and initiatives, and making sure that these good practices spread. Again, a very different operating model for L&D, and it all starts with noticing what’s happening with the business, and considering: What does L&D need to become if it is to keep adding value?

How AI spreads across the organisation becomes the core feature of L&D’s role. Sometimes the natural instinct of the organisation will be to say “that’s an IT initiative” and L&D become sidelined. How does L&D maintain their involvement?

This is information work. This is technology work. So, of course, IT is very heavily involved in pretty much all the organisations that I’ve seen.

But I think it’s important to recognise that there is a difference between L&D’s span of control and span of influence. L&D probably will never be able to control IT implementation, but it can have influence.

In one case study (AI in L&D 2025 – Vinauskaitė, E and Taylor, DH), the L&D leader explicitly formed a collaboration with IT so that they had a hybrid team to start building that interface. The new storefront for L&D is integrated with everything else that the organisation is doing. It’s not about L&D’s control, but their ability to influence.

Speaking of the broader AI transformation, it includes people’s ability to work with the new tools, to do the jobs that have changed or will change due to AI. These, arguably, becoming more complex and intense once AI automates some simpler tasks. It is also about maintaining the talent pipeline and preventing de-skilling due to AI.

Wherever you look at the people side of AI transformation, L&D has levers to pull.

That whole change requires a workplace to have at least some sort of vision for two, three years’ time, and I think a lot of organisations, particularly when it comes to the use of AI, are reluctant to place a bet on where things are going.

We have to be realistic about what L&D leaders can’t control. I haven’t seen L&D being the one leading the organisation’s AI strategy.

If L&D doesn’t have a strategic directive from the business, it doesn’t get the budget for tools, if it doesn’t have governance figured out, if it doesn’t have the support in rolling out AI tools or workflow redesign, it’s a tricky place to be.

I don’t think that the L&D leader can be the hero in this context, realistically. But what they can do is make a business case for AI from the performance perspective.

I’ve seen a few cases where L&D leaders have that influence and access, and where business leadership is open to being nudged a little bit. What often works, is to show leaders the value that AI can add. Integrating AI in a leadership exchange, for example, where leaders could compare and get feedback on decisions in real time. I’ve seen that recently and that made a huge difference for the leadership team.

What do you think is the best thing that AI can do for L&D?

I like to think about it as five distinct opportunities that AI offers L&D.

1. Being more efficient, improving L&D workflows.

If used a bit more strategically, you can see that it improves L&D’s agility. It’s not just about creating content faster, it is about being able to react to the signals from the business that we’re getting faster, which is qualitatively a different use of fast content creation with AI.

2. Using AI for practise,

which is about simulations, coaching, dynamic feedback that help people build real skill and learn on the job.

One of the big shifts has been that a lot more L&D teams are now in this practice territory.

These – content and practice – are the two AI uses that play within the existing paradigm of L&D.

The next three are AI uses that transform the system:

3. AI-powered intelligence,

real time signals about skills, needs and behaviour. This gives L&D the insights to manage skills as a strategic business resource.

Essentially, here’s where you are as an individual, as an employee, this is where you need to go to succeed. And that enables people to start what I call “bubbling”.

AI understands what people are trying to do and provides the support that they need in their workflow.

AI captures knowledge from conversations from documents, and turns it into organisational memory that is discoverable and usable.

When you look at the most high-performing organisations with AI, they have flavours of each of these.

If you can imagine, if you have some kind of intelligence, you can give people visibility and directionality. Essentially, here’s where you are as an individual, as an employee, this is where you need to go to succeed. And that enables people to start – what I call – “bubbling”.

If you have the right culture in place, once people know where they are, and they have the direction, you create the motivation to pursue performance improvements to reach those goals.

Once you have that, you can use AI for memory, which helps capture the bubbling up, the tacit knowledge. It might be what people share in meetings or in online spaces. It might be something that actually happens in training. There are some pretty cool tools, where as a facilitator, you can see in real time what is emerging from the conversations across, say, 10 breakout rooms, and make that part of organisational memory. Intelligence unlocks it, then you have memory, which captures it. And if you play your cards right, then you can have this context where people feel empowered to innovate, to do their jobs better.

Are there other skill sets L&D will need to develop to enable them to fulfil the sorts of roles that you’ve talked about within those different contexts?

L&D professionals need three deep verticals of expertise.

The first one is learning: How learning works at a fundamental level, the processes and context that enable learning to happen, because only then will you be able to understand what AI uses in L&D are actually value-add and, in fact, where humans are uniquely needed.

The second vertical is technical, because there is, of course, a massive part of L&D that absolutely loves everything to do with AI. They love tinkering. But on the other hand, I keep finding myself in situations and places where people are still at a quite basic level of technical understanding. They don’t know what they don’t know.

And some feel that technology isn’t something that they are particularly comfortable with because they got into this profession to do people work. It’s essential to accept that the nature of L&D work has shifted.

The last one is commercial. Most of the highest-value L&D work with AI is joined at the hip with the business.

We have always talked about putting learning in the flow of work. Well, now it’s literally in the workflow and we didn’t even have to do anything about it. People just put it in the workflow by themselves. L&D can meet people there and anticipate how their work will change. They can anticipate the support that people will need and execute on it, or L&D’s value proposition is untenable.

Understand the work that people do. Know how functions are planning to use AI so you can support those workflows and future skills. And build the relationships and influence in the business to make this all happen.

About the speakers:

Egle Vinauskaite is Director of learning innovation studio Nodes and an advisor on AI and learning transformation. Egle works with global organisations on skills and organisational change, and co-authors the AI in L&D report with Donald Taylor.

Robin Hoyle is a L&D expert, author and Chair of the World of Learning Conference. He is also Head of Learning Innovation at Huthwaite International.

Listen to the full interview here.

This interview was first published in Learning Magazine, Special Edition 2026. Click here to read the full edition.