Your training budget is working. Your employees aren’t

Companies spent billions on corporate learning last year, ultimately teaching employees one thing: how to click ‘Next’.

 

Training budgets are being deployed as intended: courses are being delivered, and completion rates look great, but the investment isn’t paying off.

 

That’s because most corporate learning platforms were designed for distribution rather than engagement.

 

We’ve all suffered through dull training at one point or another, and I’m sure many of you would agree that workplace learning is designed to be endured, rather than absorbed.

 

A Google engineer once told me he would pay to avoid completing his mandatory training. That stayed with me because even in one of the companies with the best resources in the world, corporate training has still made learning feel like a chore.

 

The corporate learning industry is outdated and broken.

 

Statistics show that employees forget 90% of the information they receive within just one week, while 70% of training programs fail to achieve their goals.

 

This is because learning modules are often designed with auditors in mind, not the learners. The result is employees who have learned to click through training as quickly as possible, while remembering almost none of it.

 

Boredom also threatens employee retention. Two-thirds of employees considering changing jobs cite a lack of learning opportunities, and only 46% agree that their employer provides adequate opportunities to learn new skills. Curiosity is being systematically eradicated by modules that turn the desire to learn into a punishment.

 

The problem is a lack of imagination, rather than a lack of investment. We must adopt a fundamentally different approach to the relationship between employees and learning.

 

I grew up across three countries and attended many schools, and I realised at a young age that learning stuck best when it felt fun. I was constantly the new kid, expected to catch up in new languages without support. A word shouted across a football pitch was always easier to remember than one on a flashcard in a dull classroom.

 

This is basic neuroscience. Your brain sends more signals to the memory centre when you are having fun. Your employees aren’t deficient for not engaging with corporate learning. Unengaging training fails because cognitive processing drops, and enjoyment is the neurological precondition for learning.

 

Game-based learning is so effective because games adapt, pushing you when you are ready and supporting you when you are not. They give feedback in real time rather than a score at the end of a module, and they make you want to try again. Games rely on engagement to keep their players coming back. This is why game-based learning produces completion rates of up to 90%, compared to 25% for standard formats.

 

Corporate learning may receive a 100% completion rate, but a finished module is not evidence of learning. The metrics that matter are voluntary return rates, exploring non-compulsory content, and knowledge being applied on the job. Why waste budget on a system that is designed for compliance rather than knowledge retention? 

 

This matters more now than ever before. Reskilling ranked as the number one HR challenge in 2025, overtaking wellbeing and retention for the first time. The World Economic Forum projects that 59% of employees will need significant reskilling by 2030 due to the effects of AI on work.

 

This changing landscape is an opportunity to turn corporate learning on its head, and the technology exists to do so. AI can make every employee’s learning as individual as they are, at a scale no team of designers ever could.

 

Build engaging learning, and you’ll see results: learning integrated into the flow of work rather than it being a tick-box exercise completed once a year. You’ll see knowledge that sticks and people who choose to stay. The budget is already there; it is just time to redeploy it.

 

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Eric Francia is CEO of Uniplay

 

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