In a session I was running last week one of the participants, Amy Clayton, said something really insightful. We were working through the issues with ATS, ERP, LMS, and LXP systems (alphabet soup? – Ed.) in digital HR and the conversation turned to personalisation. How vendors sell it, how organisations buy it, and how it shows up in practice.

She said: “Branding isn’t personalisation.”

A named learning journey is not a personalised one.

A branded portal is not a responsive system.

Putting someone’s name on a pathway is not the same as designing it around their needs, their role, or their performance context.

I mentioned this last week with my take on the latest Fosway reports. Organisations, and the L&D teams in them, need to recognise that buying demonstrable, scalable, and easy to procure branded content isn’t personalisation. Organisations accept it because it produces artefacts: completion data, communications, and screenshots for the annual report.

The learner gets a logo.

The question worth asking when you next evaluate an LMS or LXP: where exactly does the personalisation happen, and for whom?