By Stelios Sergis
For years, L&D has carried the “skills” part of the talent equation. The mission was clear: Upskill the workforce, close capability gaps, and keep pace with change.
It was all about readiness. But in 2026, it’s no longer enough.
If employees don’t feel that their learning leads somewhere, motivation fades. If training is disconnected from the flow of work, its relevance and impact drop. People don’t just want to be better at their jobs. They want to grow with a clear path forward. When progress lacks momentum, it can start to look like busywork. When that happens, the link between training and career progression begins to break down.
The disconnect shows up clearly in the TalentLMS 2026 Annual L&D Benchmark Report: 84% of managers say their L&D programs are linked to career development. Yet, only 45% of employees agree that the training they engage with is clearly aligned with their personal career growth.
That’s a 39-point perception gap. It means that while L&D is working hard to create programs that support growth and career mobility, employees aren’t experiencing the results in their careers. L&D is building the engine, but hasn’t hooked it up to the wheels.
Internal Mobility: The Missing Link in the Growth Chain
Most L&D teams succeed in building learning programs, launching academies, and rolling out new skill-building activities. So why does progress stall when it comes to internal mobility?
This is reflected in the data:
- Only 56% of employees feel positive about internal mobility.
- 44% of HR managers say their company prioritizes external candidates over internal ones when filling open roles.
- Employees are increasingly clear about what’s missing. SurveyMonkey’s Workplace Culture & Trends research found that 43% of workers say they have few or no opportunities for growth in their current job.
There may be multiple reasons for this. Budget planning, a company’s need for external talent, lack of internal processes to accommodate mobility, strategic decisions to prioritize external hiring, and more.
Many of the reasons for this lie outside an L&D department’s area of influence. But what can L&D teams actually influence that could deliver real impact?
Addressing the topic requires focusing on three interconnected parameters:
- What skills are needed for each role?
- How do we create career development plans for each employee?
- How do we support them to develop the skills they are missing?
Focusing on just one of these areas in isolation can limit results. Career frameworks work best when employees are supported in building the skills they need to progress, while development plans are more effective when grounded in clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Learning, in turn, delivers more value when it’s embedded in day-to-day work.
Based on this reasoning, effectively promoting career growth and mobility (from an L&D perspective) requires a more holistic approach. One that builds upon a structured career framework (mapping roles to skills and responsibilities) and creates the conditions for employees to shape their own development journeys.
Indeed, in the Voxy 2025 Global L&D Benchmark Survey, building internal career pathways is ranked among the top five challenges L&D teams face worldwide.
So, where can L&D teams begin?
Career-Driven Learning: Turning Capability into Career Currency
Initially, a mindset shift may be needed. Learning should not be viewed as something that happens outside the flow of work or employees’ aspirations. It needs to be treated as a career currency. Something that has a recognized, visible value within the company for the individual.
Here are four practical ways to move the needle in that direction:
1. Create a Skills-Driven Career Framework
In its simplest form, a career framework outlines the various roles across an organization’s functions. Divided into job families (e.g., Engineering, Sales, Product, People), it presents the roles that exist within each function. To add further detail, each role is broken down into seniority levels, with each level linked to the expected skill sets (both hard and soft) and responsibilities.
These elements form the foundation of a holistic approach. They provide the clarity and transparency needed to inform all other actions and decisions.
2. Create Role-Aligned Career Journeys
An effective career journey is basically answering one question for the employee: “What can I become next?” This is a difficult question to answer, since it is quite specific to each person. Many employees approach this question through the lens of promotions—“how can I move up the career ladder in my current role?” However, this perspective can be limiting, both in terms of the skills required and how those skills are developed.
First, promotions represent mere moments in a career, while skill development is a continuous process. People learn every day, mostly through exposure, and every day they enhance their arsenal without even realizing it. Over time, such experiences might open new opportunities and career paths that were not previously considered. It is within the L&D function’s merit to drive this mindset shift.
Second, career development isn’t limited to upward progression. By using a career framework, L&D teams can help employees explore options that better align with their individual strengths and interests, and reframe their career journeys accordingly. This may include:
- Vertical moves: What does a senior version of this role actually do?
- Lateral moves: How can a customer success rep move into product marketing?
- Stretch projects: What skills are needed for that upcoming high-visibility initiative?
Finally, L&D teams can also use skill data to spot internal candidates who have shown interest, competence, or initiative toward a potential next step. When this happens, L&D becomes an internal talent engine.
3. Supporting Employees Along Their Journey
True career mobility occurs when a series of conditions is met. Companies that actively support career mobility invest in employees, allocate resources to their growth, follow structured processes, and ensure their talent pool continues to improve. At the heart of this effort, however, is a manager who notices progress, opens doors, and helps create a structured plan for each team member.
In fact, 66% of employees had a career-growth conversation with their manager in 2025, according to TalentLMS’s report.
That’s a solid place to start. However, these conversations lead to mobility only when managers know how to do more than just “check the box.”
L&D should give managers a repeatable system for growth coaching to help them identify potential beyond current performance, recommend learning tied to a real next move, and advocate for internal opportunities without “losing” a strong team member.
To achieve this, L&D must equip managers with:
- Career conversations toolkits: Simple prompts and templates that move the talk from “How are your tasks going?” to “Where are you going next?”
- Skills to define learning paths for their teams
- Role-readiness guides: A clear look at what “good” looks like at the next level so they can offer objective feedback
- Advocacy training: Support for managers to champion their team’s growth across the organization
- Skills to build trust and psychological safety: So teams feel safe discussing aspirations and see their manager as a co-pilot in their journey
4. Integrate learning into performance reviews
Learning should live inside the performance system. It should become part of how progress is measured and discussed.
This means including learning goals in quarterly check-ins and treating skill acquisition as a measurable contribution.
When you track internal movement alongside training metrics, you start to see the real ROI of L&D. As noted in research from LinkedIn Learning, organizations that prioritize internal over external hiring see significantly higher retention and engagement rates.
Build Skills, Then Build Movement
Skills are only half the story. The other half is whether companies provide a transparent way for employees to use those skills and advance within the business.
Most HR leaders believe L&D supports progression, but many employees still don’t feel the connection. The good news is that this gap is fixable.
Not with more training, more content, or bigger libraries. But with a more holistic design and ownership from the L&D departments.
With clearly defined roles and skills, multi-faceted learning experiences that prepare employees for the roles they personally aspire to, managers who can guide growth consistently, clear links between skill-building and advancement, and performance systems that treat learning as real progress.
When you get those pieces working together, L&D becomes more than a support function. It becomes a growth engine that people and leadership can actually feel.
Image credit: arkira
