Strategies for employees. Frameworks for managers. Templates for HR. There’s no shortage of productivity hacks designed to help employees make time for training.
Block your calendar.
Schedule learning for Fridays.
Protect development hours.
Set personal goals.
Reduce meeting time.
Use microlearning.
These tactics aren’t without merit. They create short-term breathing room. They satisfy the immediate pressure to “do something.” And tick a few L&D boxes when the pressure for accountability is real.
But long-term? They don’t solve the problem. They just manage the optics.
The problem isn’t effort. Employees aren’t resisting learning. They’re overloaded.
When learning depends on spare time, it’s already designed to fail. And in today’s workplace, that failure isn’t neutral. It affects real performance, business outcomes, and employee training ROI.
The advice sounds logical. The data says otherwise
TalentLMS’s 2026 L&D Benchmark Report revealed a hard truth: lack of time is the biggest threat to learning.
The numbers are clear. Half of HR managers and 54% of employees say workloads leave little room for training. While 46% of employees and 49% of HR managers say training is seen as “time away from real work.”
Against this backdrop, there are other contributing factors at play. Performance expectations increased for 65% of employees in 2025, while multitasking during training hit 70%.
This isn’t a motivation problem. It’s a capacity problem. Learning is competing with the calendar. And losing. Here’s the reality: if employees don’t have time, telling them to “make time” won’t solve it. It shifts responsibility onto the individual while ignoring the real issue.
Time isn’t the problem. Training design is.
“Make time” assumes training is separate from work
Whether it’s deadlines, customer demands, onboarding pressure, compliance requirements, or performance targets, the message is the same: work comes first. Training comes after.
And when training is positioned as “after,” it will always feel optional.
This isn’t just a scheduling issue. It’s a belief system.
When learning is something people squeeze in between meetings, it becomes background noise. Something viewed—and experienced—as separate from “real work.”
The advice to make time for workplace training sounds helpful. But it rests on a flawed premise.
It assumes work and learning are two different things. But in reality, learning happens all the time.
The stated belief vs. the operating reality
On paper, it looks like this:
Work is productive.
Training is developmental.
Work drives results.
Training supports results.
But in practice, the equation often looks more like this:
Work = productive.
Training = interruption.
Learning = budget line.
When learning is reduced to a budget line, it gets managed like one. And success becomes a series of line items:
How many people completed the training session
How many online courses were assigned
How many hours were logged
These numbers are easy to report. And anything easy to report feels easier to defend.
Completion isn’t the same as learning impact
Here’s where the “make time for training” advice quietly reinforces the problem.
If training is separate from work, it has to justify its time. And the easiest way to justify time is through checkbox training logic.
Checkbox training treats learning as something to finish—not something to improve. It measures attendance. Tracks completion. Reports hours logged.
But it rarely asks the only question that matters:
Did this change performance?
The hidden cost of siloed training
For learning to have real impact, it must show up in day-to-day performance. Otherwise, measuring learning effectiveness becomes a reporting exercise instead of a business conversation.
For HR managers accountable for compliance and readiness—and L&D leaders under pressure to prove learning impact—that distinction matters.
When training is treated as an interruption, it rarely holds up under pressure.
Completion rates may look strong. Satisfaction scores may look positive. But once the training session is archived, nothing changes.
The same skill gaps show up in performance reviews.
The same mistakes repeat.
The same compliance risks resurface.
This is learning debt.
And like any debt, it compounds.
The result?
- Decisions made without the right capabilities behind them
- Increased compliance exposure in regulated environments
- Longer ramp-up time for new hires
- Performance that plateaus despite hours of training
- Budget spent without measurable return
Moving beyond checkbox training means rejecting the separation between work and learning. And shifting from activity to strategic accountability.
So what does strategic learning actually look like?
From checkbox training to impact
If “making time” isn’t the solution, adding more training won’t fix it either.
The shift has to be structural and rooted in how learning is designed, delivered, and measured.
Performance-based learning strikes at the heart of this issue.
Instead of treating training as a calendar event where the goal is exposure to content, it treats it as a catalyst for measurable improvement.
And it centers around one critical question: What needs to change in how someone works?
Let’s look at what performance-based training looks like in practice.
Designed for the workday
Learning that works respects reality. It fits into the pressure of the workday instead of fighting against it. That means designing training with:
- Short, focused modules
- One behavior change per intervention
- Practice built into real assignments
- Stretch tasks embedded in ongoing projects
Structured, not dumped
However well-stocked and content-rich they are, learning libraries without direction don’t build capability. They create optionality.
Employees log in. They browse. They pick a course that sounds useful—or one that’s short enough to finish quickly. They complete it. Then they move on.
There’s activity. But there’s no progression. That’s content consumption, not capability development.
Instead of large content dumps, performance-based learning focuses on targeted skill reinforcement. It defines where someone is today, where they need to be, and what closes that gap.
Learning paths bring that structure. They map personal development intentionally. And underpin progress from baseline to proficiency step by step, with clear milestones, reinforcement, and increasing complexity.
The result? Development becomes continuous, not event-based. Progress is visible. And capability compounds.
Embedded in workflow
Real-world relevance is the biggest predictor of learning success, says learning and design consultant, Julie Dirksen.
That insight points directly to one of the core principles of performance-based learning: learning in the flow of work.
Popularized by Josh Bersin, learning in the flow of work is a model built around behavior change in context. It recognizes that development shouldn’t sit alongside the job. It should happen inside it. So, instead of pulling people away for a standalone training session, learning is woven into real tasks and digital workflows. New skills are practiced where they actually matter, not just understood in theory.
For example:
- During onboarding, when expectations are still forming.
- When someone steps into a new role and the stakes rise.
- When compliance recertification isn’t optional.
- When performance targets increase and capability needs to catch up.
When personal development happens at the point of performance, improvement isn’t theoretical. It’s observable. It stops feeling like an interruption. And instead becomes part of how work gets done.
Powered by AI
Once learning lives in the flow of work, the next challenge becomes clear: how do you scale that without creating friction?
If learning is how work gets better, it needs to move at the speed of work.
Which brings us to AI.
AI won’t solve time scarcity. But it can remove bottlenecks and accelerate application.
An AI course creator can turn existing materials into structured course content in minutes. With an AI coach learning becomes hyper-personalized, reinforcing behavior in context. AI tests validate understanding quickly. AI translations help scale training across teams without doubling workload. And AI-powered skills mapping functionality brings a broader layer of visibility by identifying capability gaps across individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole. Instead of guessing where development is needed, leaders can see it.
Combined, these capabilities create a practical toolkit for delivering performance-based learning at scale without adding administrative drag. And when application becomes faster and friction drops, learning no longer depends on spare time. It fits into the flow of work—and improves it.
Measured by impact, not attendance
But improvement only matters if you can prove it. So what does success look like when learning is measured by performance, not participation?
When training is measured by attendance, it has to compete for time. It has to justify its interruption. It has to defend its place on the calendar.
But when employee training ROI is measured against real performance indicators, the conversation shifts. Training is no longer defending its time on the calendar. It’s demonstrating its value to the business.
Measuring training ROI means tracking what actually changes:
- Are new skills being applied?
- Are errors decreasing?
- Is onboarding faster?
- Are performance metrics improving?
- Are compliance incidents declining?
Those signals connect learning directly to business outcomes. And when learning improves performance, it earns executive attention. Not just calendar space.
What better training advice looks like
“Make time for training” sounds responsible. Supportive. Practical.
But it puts the burden in the wrong place.
It assumes the problem is time management. It assumes employees just need to try harder. It assumes learning is something extra, something to fit in after the real work is done.
But time isn’t the real constraint.
Relevance is.
Design is.
Application is.
That’s where strategy replaces scheduling. And where the advice shifts from “make time” to “design for impact.”
Because training that delivers results doesn’t compete with work. It improves it. It strengthens capability inside real workflows. It also produces measurable impact leaders can see and defend.
And in a high-pressure workplace, learning that works under pressure isn’t optional.
It’s the only model that survives.
