I’ve recently seen an uptick in questions about Learning & Development roles, ranging from basic questions about what L&D departments do to specific questions about what skills one needs to qualify. Today I’m going to provide an overview of corporate L&D roles alongside some examples of educators who have transitioned to L&D over the last decade or so. I’m included educators who are in their first edskip outside the classroom as well as ones who have been promoted into Director level roles at major edtech and edjacent organizations.

I have more L&D content planned for future newsletters, in particular diving into skills and competencies. Feel free to reach out with questions you want me to dig into for future newsletters.

Table of Contents:

• What is L&D?
• What is the Current Landscape for L&D Departments?
• What Does a Career Path Look Like? 
  • Trainers/Facilitators/Coaches
  • eLearning Specialists & Instructional Designers
  • L&D Managers
  • L&D Director Roles
• Resources for Learning & Development

What is L&D? 

Learning & Development (L&D) is a corporate department that focuses on internal professional development for companies in order to give employees the skills to better accomplish the business’s objectives or it’s a job function within HR that focuses on building employee skills. L&D is responsible for onboarding new hires, upskilling (teaching new skills in the same job) or reskilling (teaching new skills for a different job) current employees, as well as coaching individual employees. Within the department, you’ll have trainers and instructional designers or learning specialists as well as senior level managers/directors who create strategic plans for company PD and do more executive coaching. You’ll also have project managers who coordinate content and implement programming, often supervising a team of trainers or IDs. 

Learning & Development is a term that references two types of employee professional development: learning usually refers to the instructional content that helps employees do their jobs correctly while development refers to individual coaching or training that aligns with the employee’s long-term goals and the business’s objectives. 

Because L&D work often involves onboarding new employees (“learning”), for example training them on compliance or workplace policies or providing performance review or improvement coaching (“development”), you will see L&D roles show up in Human Resources departments. (This is especially true in smaller organizations.) One example is the Talent Management Specialist role at Public Consulting Group I recently posted — even though it was an HR role, it was explicitly looking for candidates with L&D backgrounds. Som times, L&D roles in HR departments will ask for HR degrees/certifications or experience but more frequently they ask for experience working with adult learning and have an education degree. 

Companies value L&D because it helps them retain internal talent, which is especially important in competitive job markets; not only does this save time integrating new employees into company culture, but it ensures that employees see a clear career trajectory at their existing company. Many millennials evaluate whether a company provides internal career mobility before they accept a job offer. These reasons are part of why L&D has become one of the current “It” departments — Deloitte and LinkedIn have both named L&D a top business trend in the last few years.

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