Most organizations know they need to keep developing their people.

Actually doing it well is another story.

SHRM found that upskilling or reskilling was a top priority for 53% of organizations, yet only 21% said they had been very or extremely effective at it the previous year. HR executives gave their training and development programs an average grade of B-, and workers gave those same programs a C.

That is a pretty significant gap between recognizing the need for training and feeling confident that it is working.

It is also understandable.

Training Is Hard

Most organizations are not training companies.

They are hospitals, manufacturers, nonprofits, universities, retailers, technology companies, and thousands of other things. Training is something they need to do alongside whatever their organization actually exists to accomplish.

That creates an unusual challenge.

You are trying to teach people while they are also doing their jobs. You need to decide what they should learn, find time for them to learn it, give them useful opportunities to practice, and somehow determine whether any of it actually stuck.

Even when everyone agrees training is important, there are plenty of places for that process to break down.

Everyone Is Short on Time

One of the biggest problems is simply finding room for learning.

Gallup found that one of the biggest barriers getting in the way of training was time. Eighty-nine percent of CHROs cited time away from job responsibilities as an obstacle, while 41% of employees said the demands of their jobs were their biggest barrier to learning and development.

That puts training in an awkward position.

If you make it too demanding, people may not have time to participate. If you shrink it down to something they can easily fit into the workday, you still need to make sure they are actually learning something useful.

There is no magic number of hours that solves that problem.

Knowing Something Is Not the Same as Doing It

Training also gets harder when the goal goes beyond transferring information.

It is relatively straightforward to tell someone what your harassment policy says or walk them through a new procedure. It is much harder to teach someone how to handle an angry customer, give difficult feedback, manage conflict, or navigate an uncomfortable conversation.

Those skills have to be used.

That means good training may require instruction, practice, feedback, repetition, and another chance to try. Suddenly, what looked like a course becomes a much larger learning process.

Being Bad at Training Is a Starting Point

None of this means organizations should accept ineffective training.

It does mean struggling with upskilling is not evidence that your organization is uniquely bad at it.

SHRM found that organizations were planning to put more money into training even while relatively few felt they were already doing it particularly well. Gallup found much the same thing a year later. Development remains a priority, but organizations are still trying to figure out how to make it work within the realities of the workplace.

That is a useful place to start.

You do not need to pretend your current training is perfect.

You need to identify what is getting in the way and make the next version better.