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Let’s be honest — if you’re leading Learning & Development in a large organisation right now, you’re probably tired. Tired of grappling with stakeholder requests. Tired of trying to prove your value. Tired of creating course after course and wondering why none of it gets the engagement you want.

You’re not alone.

In a world where AI can spit out a week’s worth of eLearning in minutes, the traditional approach to L&D just isn’t cutting it anymore. If there wasn’t a burning platform before, there is now.

So, what’s the answer? How do you make learning actually matter — to your people and your business?

The answer is it’s time to do something different, to reframe the purpose of L&D by introducing a human-centred design approach.

Most corporate learning is about ticking boxes — and let’s not pretend otherwise. It’s often boring, disconnected from reality and built around a knowledge-first mindset. Stakeholders ask for training based on what they think is needed, not based on data or measurable insights. 

This means that, for many L&D leaders, you’re often under pressure and unable to stand your ground. 

What ends up happening is this: you create content (maybe a video, maybe a digital course), the relevant stakeholder(s) sign it off, and everyone moves on. But nothing changes. No behaviour shift. No tangible results or mindset change. And then? The same stakeholders come back in three months wondering why their problem hasn’t been solved — and they’re questioning what L&D is even for.

The real kicker? This cycle not only wastes time but it also puts your team at risk. If you can’t demonstrate the real-world impact of your work, chances are you’ll become a prime target in the next cost-cutting conversations.

This poses a very important question:

The answer is fairly simple: content without context is just noise. 

People are busy, under pressure, and not going to take two days out of their week for training that doesn’t directly help them solve a problem they’re facing today. Every day they don't deliver is potentially a day behind on their targets.

Nobody is going to engage with L&D unless it’s designed to help humans solve their immediate problems, hence, the topic of this article…

Human-centred design flips the script. Instead of starting with content or activity, it starts with people — real people, in real jobs, dealing with real challenges.

It’s not just about learning for the sake of it. It’s about creating interventions and experiences that make a measurable impact in the messy, unpredictable reality of work; that shift mindsets and deliver lasting behavioural change.

That means asking different questions. Not “What training do you need?”, but “What do you find difficult in your job?”, or “What’s getting in your way?” That’s where you’ll find the nuggets of gold — not in assumptions, but in lived experience.

It’s about finding the real problems, then solving them with as little friction as possible; we want to find the path of least resistance.

 People hate wasting time. Design for what people do, not what you think they should do.

Human-centred design invites L&D teams to act more like internal consultants than content factories. It helps you become a mirror to the business, uncovering what’s really going on and designing experiences that support behaviour change — not just box ticking.

Not only this, but it helps you to deliver demonstrable results and tangible change, whether that’s localised to individual teams, or organisation wide, the results that human-centred design deliver will get C-suite’s attention. They will help to justify the value of L&D, and they will ensure that you have the investment required to truly meet your goals. 

Humans, by nature, are imperfect. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to getting the best out of your employees. 

This is why human-centred design is so important – it is moulded by your people and business strategy, not by theory. Here are the 6 key benefits of human-centred design for L&D:

6 Benefits of human-centred design

1. It boosts engagement – because learning is finally relevant and useful.
2. It solves real problems – reducing friction in people’s day-to-day roles.
3. It delivers impact – aligned with business goals and strategic outcomes.
4. It positions L&D as a partner – not an order-taker, but a strategic driver.
5. It reduces waste – no more creating content no one uses.
6. It builds credibility – L&D becomes known for delivering outcomes, not outputs.

It’s about designing with empathy, grounded in the reality of how humans actually think, behave and learn — not how we, or our stakeholders, wish they did.

This isn’t an overnight switch. It’s a mindset shift — and it’s difficult. That’s why many of the most successful L&D teams we work with (like Sainsbury’s, BT, Novo Nordisk and Booking.com) started by partnering with human-centred design specialists to guide the transition.

Here’s how to start:

• Stop seeing yourself as a content factory. Start acting like an internal consultancy. Your time costs the business money — so how are you adding value?
• Learn to say no. Not every request deserves a ‘yes’. You need leadership that backs you to prioritise based on strategic impact, not urgency.
• Educate your stakeholders. Ironically, this is one of the biggest learning gaps. Share your new process, explain timelines and make the case for quality and impact over speed and completion.
• Reframe your role. You’re not here to deliver training; you’re here to deliver results. What does your business need to achieve — and how can you help get it there?

And yes, sometimes that means challenging the status quo, even pissing people off. But if you want to protect your function and prove your value, you need to challenge the way things have always been done.

“Innovation is pain” and change is actively resisted by people and organisations that see new approaches as time-consuming.

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What should you, as an L&D leader, do next?

First, rethink what success looks like. You can keep doing what you’ve always done — but don’t expect different results. Or, you can take the braver path. The harder path. The one that leads to real change.

Innovation is uncomfortable. But if you want to elevate L&D from content creation to business-critical impact, this is what needs to be done.

If you’re ready to make the shift to human-centred design — and you want a partner who can help you do it — we’d love to talk. 

At Solvd Together, we help global brands redesign learning and development from the ground up, bringing deep listening, behavioural insight and design thinking into the heart of their strategy.

We deliver new ways to engage your people, new ways to tackle problems, and new ways to accelerate change. When you’re ready to create a learning and development strategy that truly delivers results, then it’s time to talk to us. 

Let’s talk

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