building an effective learning and development strategy to support career pathing.

Today, most large organisations have a learning and development (L&D) programme to boost employees’ skillsets and keep the workforce progressing. There are many reasons they consider it worthwhile to invest in upskilling employees — to help employees adapt to new technologies that affect their work, to improve productivity and efficiency in operations, or to stay compliant with new regulations. Our 2025 Workmonitor report recently highlighted that 42% of UK workers wouldn’t even accept a job if it didn’t offer L&D development opportunities. 

However, L&D also plays a key role in supporting your organisation’s career pathing efforts. For an employee to reach the goals laid out in their career path, they need to continually expand their skills and expertise, and a well-designed approach to L&D is an essential component.

In this article, we’ll focus closely on the relationship between employee learning and development and career pathing, explaining how they interconnect and giving some guidance on how to tweak your L&D practices to support your employees' career paths.

why employee learning and development is so important.

All organisations change over time, and the slow process of adapting to new market conditions and technological advancements is the product of learning and development among employees and leadership. This process can happen naturally, but what looks like a natural evolution often results from purposeful learning path initiatives. Sometimes, these initiatives are implemented across the business. Other times, they come from individual teams or even single employees. 

However, even though talent development is a natural process, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seriously try to actively guide it. There are many reasons why investing in L&D is a good use of resources:

• retention, engagement and satisfaction — No one likes to feel stuck in a rut at work. According to research in our 2025 Workmonitor UK report, developing new skills and expanding knowledge is a top priority for a third of workers in their current roles. These findings are backed up by LinkedIn’s 2024 Workplace Learning Report, where 7 out of 10 respondents said that learning at work helped boost their sense of connection to their workplace. However, many employers are letting their people down. Over a third of Workmonitor respondents disagree that their jobs offer the L&D opportunities they want. When employees can’t progress across their career map, there’s a significant risk that engagement will fall, job satisfaction will suffer, and employees will look for new opportunities elsewhere, increasing employee turnover and generating increased hiring costs
• skills shortages affect organisations worldwide — More and more employers struggle to find candidates with the necessary skills. Large organisations are increasingly competing in a smaller pool of top-qualified workers. According to figures from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics body, 75% of organisations could not find workers with the right skills in 2023, a significant increase from 42% in 2018. In this challenging talent environment, the solution is to work on upskilling the workers you already have, and that’s where an effective L&D programme is essential.
• changes in technology and business environment — The pace of change is constantly increasing in the modern world. Sometimes, things can change so quickly that even large organisations get taken by surprise. During the pandemic, for example, many organisations worldwide had to suddenly develop their management and digital skills to adapt to the rise of remote work. Today, many face similar pressure to adjust to the rapid development of AI tools.

Again, many employers are falling behind. Workmonitor 2025 showed that 36% of workers aren’t getting enough support to future-proof their skills. L&D efforts focused on building competency in emerging technologies are vital to stay in business and remain an attractive employer.

the relationship between learning and development and career pathing. 

The section above shows the main reasons why L&D benefits your organisation as a whole. But it also has some additional positives in supporting your career pathing efforts:

• L&D is essential for career progress — In many ways, L&D is the foundation of career pathing. As an employee progresses in their career journey upwards into a management role or sideways into a more specialised field, their knowledge and skills must develop. If L&D can’t keep up with their career ambitions, they’ll find it challenging to move into the next step of their career. When designed properly, an L&D programme should match the pace of the career journey, ensuring the employee has the right skills at the right time to move into their next role with confidence and competence. Without L&D, their career will stall, and engagement will suffer.
• career pathing keeps L&D on the right track — L&D initiatives implemented top-down to a large group of employees can sometimes work well to build specific skills that the whole team needs, such as workplace safety skills. However, for other skills, there’s a risk that employees will see the training initiative as irrelevant. As described by Forbes, relevancy is key — “If your training syllabus is only speaking to a small percentage of your workforce, you’ll probably find it difficult to instigate real cultural and behavioural change in your organisation.”

But when a career pathing is established, L&D can be tailored to fit the employee’s planned career journey. It then becomes easier for the employee to see the value of the training and to actually put their new skills to use on the job quickly. A career path doesn’t just provide the employee with a series of long-term goals to aim for — it also provides a template for the L&D initiatives that will be needed in the future.

supporting career pathing through learning and development.

The scope of learning and development can be extensive, depending on your business and priorities. Some L&D initiatives will only be relevant for specific teams, while others will affect the entire organisation. When it comes to tailoring your L&D efforts to support your career pathing, these areas are most important to focus on:

1. Leadership skills for succession planning — For some employees, their desired career trajectory will see them move up towards a leadership position. Making this transition effectively means developing a deep level of knowledge in their field, but make sure not to forget to support them in leadership and management. Succession planning is the process of preparing to pass leadership roles on to more junior employees as the workforce develops, and developing leadership skills is an important part of it.
2. Even if an employee is the most knowledgeable and skilled in their department, they won’t necessarily be a great leader. To ensure success as their career moves upwards, they should develop soft skills (also known as power skills) like leadership and people management instead of simply focusing on improving hard skills rooted in their everyday tasks.
3. Specialised skills requiring external support — Spreading existing knowledge to other employees through mentoring and coaching is an excellent approach to learning and development. But what if the skills employees need to progress on their career paths don’t exist in the organisation? In these cases, you may need to look outside the organisation. Training courses, professional qualifications and even placements at other employers can be required to develop the necessary skills. Be open to these opportunities, and allow employees to combine studies with work for the best effect.
4. Cross-functional learning — Take advantage of the diverse range of skills across the organisation to give employees the best chance of succeeding in their career paths. Employees need to build skills and knowledge during their career journey, but they can develop even more by learning from others. 

get the career path template.

Effective L&D and impactful career paths are interdependent, but by starting with assessing your employees’ career ambitions, you can get an indication of the direction your learning initiatives need to take. Our career development plan template, designed to be completed with employees, helps you get started. It prompts you to ask the right questions about employees’ current roles and plans for the future, and once completed, it works as a foundational career planning document that you can return to in future planning sessions. Download it as a slide template, adjust it to your unique requirements if needed, and start preparing your team for their future at your organisation.