Reading a survey from Personio and HR Grapevine last week, this result confirms what many suspect:

Training and development effectiveness: most asked for by 13%, most challenging for 43%

This single line exposes the L&D profession’s measurement crisis. When leadership rarely asks about learning effectiveness, and HR finds it among the hardest metrics to report on, we’ve created a perfect storm of irrelevance.

Nobody’s asking because nobody expects a good answer. And People, HR and Learning functions can’t answer because they’re measuring inputs (courses delivered, completions logged) instead of outcomes (capability built, performance changed).

This is what happens when L&D is optimised for activity, not impact.

The data exists. It’s in the work itself. But we’ve built our measurement systems around the wrong thing: what we did TO people, not what changed IN the work.

Until we can answer “Did this intervention improve performance?” with the same speed and confidence with which we answer “How many people attended?”, we’ll remain in the 13%.

Strategic L&D starts with strategic measurement.