About this study
At its core, managed learning involves an external partner taking on the contracted management and/or responsibility for one or more activities of the L&D function. The scope is wide: it can range from helping to craft learning strategies or programmes, to being a trusted advisor, or managing vendors and training delivery.
Increasingly client demand for this type of learning outsourcing is centred around partnership, innovation, flexibility and dynamism, despite variance in how businesses engage with providers. This is driven by fast-evolving organisational needs.
Delivery expectations are also a critical part of this outsourcing. Here, universal provision (from consultation and strategy formulation to management of learning and vendors, as well as operations and delivery), flexibility, and next-generation thinking are all valued. A provider’s ability to understand and personalise service delivery for a client is also sought after, as is their ability to align and integrate with the client organisation.
To reach this level of market understanding, our qualitative research study involved 10 organisations, ranging from UK-based companies to those with an international presence, and included those with deep learning market expertise.
We are very grateful to those who shared their experiences in confidence. The participants, their organisations and the learning providers we used will remain anonymous.
When engaging with those who outsourced learning, the overarching aim of the study was to examine the range of services provided by managed learning providers. As such, we looked at:
- Where in the learning cycle managed learning services are used and what that looks like (as well as, where, geographically, managed learning occurs);
- How business disruption, of the 2020s especially, has changed patterns of learning outsourcing;
- The drivers for use of managed learning services;
- The challenges managed learning creates and how to mitigate or control these;
- The benefits managed learning delivers, and what a makes for a good managed learning provider
This report summarises our key findings. A similar study was conducted in 2018 so we also track what has evolved since then and assess what the future holds for managed learning.
