One of the biggest challenges organizations face today is ensuring their workforce has the right skills to stay relevant and drive business outcomes. Many companies have invested heavily in Learning Management Systems (LMS) to support employee development.

However, our interviews with decision-makers and employees show a significant gap between investment and impact in terms of LMS utilization and workforce skill development.

The 3 core challenges are that companies struggle to identify what skills they currently have, what skills they need, and how to bridge the gap effectively. This is where data-driven workforce planning, strategic learning, and real-world application become critical.

This blog explains how to improve ROI and business impact by mapping skill gaps, building effective learning programs, and connecting employees to meaningful tasks.

1. Identifying Skill Gaps at the Individual, Team, and Organizational Levels

The first step to driving business outcomes through learning and development (L&D) investments is understanding your organization’s current skill landscape. By doing so, you will not only know where you are now but also what you need to advance in your strategic plans. The best approach is to examine skills at three levels: individual, team, and organizational, using the skills-based organizational model.

“When there is an understanding of expectations and things are organized so that people develop what is needed, nothing stops you from being the best.” – CEO, Tech Company

A key benefit of skills mapping is clarity in expectations. Employees perform best when they understand what is expected of them and are provided with the tools to develop accordingly.

Individual Level: Personal Skill Assessments

Skills-based roles work beautifully when setting expectations and mapping your organization’s current skills landscape and tools like Skilbit help make the work easier and faster with ready-made role templates (400+) with industry benchmarks. Employees are connected to the right role and through a personal skill assessment, they gain a clear visual map of their skills, strengths, and growth areas.

Example:

Sarah, a Marketing Specialist, transferring into a Data Analyst role, discovers through her assessment that she lacks proficiency in Data Collection, Data Interpretation, and Data Modeling.

Team Level: Strengthening Collaboration and Efficiency

Skill mapping isn’t just for individuals, it’s also enabling teams to identify their collective strengths and weaknesses, improving collaboration and overall performance. Once all team members have completed their self-assessment, Skilbit delivers a visual skills map also on the team level.

Example:

A People & Culture team facing challenges in executing strategic initiatives identifies a gap in Change Management skills among its members. In response, they implement targeted training and coaching programs to address these gaps, enhancing their ability to drive successful strategic outcomes.

Organizational Level: Aligning Talent with Business Strategy

Aggregated skills data across the organization provides a real-time view of workforce capabilities and skills. Companies can then compare this with strategic objectives to pinpoint skill gaps and underutilized strengths, driving smarter workforce planning.

Example:

A manufacturing company shifting towards automation identifies that 60% of its workforce lacks technical skills in operating AI-powered machinery. Instead of hiring externally, they launch a targeted reskilling initiative to upskill their employees.

2. Building and Delivering Effective Learning Content

Once skill gaps are identified, it's time to deliver learning experiences to close the gaps. Traditional L&D approaches, however, often fail to align learning content with business needs because of the missing skills data. Three common challenges we’ve seen are:

1. Generic learning content (e.g., compliance training) that offers little or no business impact.
2. A passive learning experience, where employees must search for content themselves, oftentimes activating many courses with little completion.
3. A misalignment between learning initiatives and practical application leads to reduced engagement and diminished return on investment (ROI).

How to Build Learning Content that Drives Business Outcomes

A strategic approach to learning focuses on building and curating content that directly addresses skill gaps and embedding them into the workflow. Instead of one-size-fits-all, companies should focus on addressing skill gaps on each level: individual, team, and organization, and connecting them to the actual work. This ensures learning is targeted, practical, and relevant to business objectives.

3. Connecting Learning to Real Work through Gigs, Tasks, and Projects

The ultimate goal of learning is not just knowledge acquisition, but business impact. When organizations fail to bridge the gap between learning and doing, there’s a risk that employees forget what they’ve learned before they can apply it. Research shows that people forget 70% of what they learn within 24 hours unless they apply it.

WhyWork-Integrated Learning is a Game-Changer

Embedding learning into real-world projects, gigs, and tasks significantly enhances retention and maximizes business impact.

Example:

Sarah, who wanted to improve the core skills she needed to become a Data Analyst, completed courses via the LMS. Instead of waiting for a future opportunity, she is immediately assigned a data project to analyze marketing campaign performance. As a result, she applies her learning, improves her skills, and helps the team boost both L&D and Marketing ROI.

How to Implement Work-Integrated Learning

Here, we offer a 3-step guide to improving your ROI and making learning and development more meaningful and engaging.

1.       Start by mapping learning to strategic projects

Identify and analyze essential skills and gaps, ensuring that learning content is regularly updated to address evolving needs.

2.       Build an Internal Marketplace for Gigs and Tasks

Evaluate your current work and project planning. Are tasks and projects being outsourced? Create an internal marketplace where employees can explore and engage with open opportunities aligned with their learning and career aspirations.

Leverage existing tools like Skilbit to streamline matching, enabling seamless translation of learning into action.

3.       Adopt agile learning sprints

Instead of annual reviews, break your performance management and talent development process into shorter sprints with structured talent development goals.

Platforms like Talbit offer structured growth plans and goal-setting, incorporating milestones for learning, application, and reflection. This approach helps bridge skill gaps while enhancing business impact.

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Conclusion: Learning for Business Growth, Not Just Development

Many companies still view L&D as a support function rather than a strategic enabler. The only way to maximize learning ROI and business impact is to shift from traditional, static training to skills-based, data-driven workforce planning.

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The Equation for Success

1.       Identify the right skills

2.       Deliver targeted learning

3.       Embed learning into real tasks, gigs, and projects.

The future belongs to organizations that continuously develop, apply, and adapt skills in real-time.

Now is the time to act. Is learning a driver of business success or just another HR initiative

?

Book a consultation to learn how your organization can connect learning to work in your organization.

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