Two experts explain why learning and development is shifting from an admin task to a strategic growth lever
Learning and development (L&D) is being pulled out of the back office and onto the executive agenda, as organisations grapple with how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the way work gets done.
That is the shared view of two people leaders at very different ends of the corporate spectrum: Chris Eigeland, co-founder and chief executive of Go1, and Vesna Garnett, group chief people officer at SunRice Group.
In discussion with HRD, both said the AI transition is forcing L&D functions to move well beyond course catalogues and compliance modules, and into the centre of enterprise strategy.
From administrative task to strategic seat
Eigeland said Go1's own research had identified what looks, on the surface, like a contradiction: rising confidence in L&D teams alongside growing demand from other departments to be part of L&D's decision-making.
"You have an increase in confidence in L&D, and you have increasing complexity combined with a longer buying cycle for upskilling and capability-enhancing tools," said Eigeland.
The two trends work together. Two years ago, he said, L&D was still largely administrative – functional leaders would tell L&D what to train staff on, and L&D would source and run the sessions. But that has changed.
"There's been a broader recognition that L&D is not just that – it is actually workforce capability improvement," he said, adding that this shift has let L&D "elevate more to the strategic level, where they've been stuck a bit at the administrative level."
Culture, not just tools, drives adoption
At SunRice, Garnett said the company is still in the early stages of its AI journey but has deliberately anchored it in culture rather than technology. The business has rolled out a tiered AI literacy program, starting with one-to-one coaching for the executive team through learning partner Quantium, before cascading to senior leaders and, from August, the broader workforce via a program built with a Microsoft learning partner.
"It's a cultural play," Garnett said. "It's not the tool, it's not the tech – if you don't build this into your DNA and your culture and your mindset, you're on the wrong track."
She said the pace of change in required skills – from prompting a year ago to agentic building today – means L&D's job is less about teaching a fixed set of tools and more about building adaptability. "You've got to build more of the ability to be adaptable, because what they do now won't be the same as what they're doing in three months' time," she said.
Garnett also pointed to a gap between where employees expect to learn and where organisations currently provide it. She noted there is a disconnect between formal learning platforms and how people actually want to learn – in the flow of work, inside the tools such as Teams or a CRM that they already use daily, rather than in a separate system.
Cross-functional buy-in is non-negotiable
Both leaders stressed that AI-driven L&D cannot sit solely within HR. At SunRice, the AI strategy was built jointly by the chief executive, the transformation lead, legal counsel, the chief financial officer, the IT leader and Garnett herself.
"Do not lead this with just one [function] and do not lead this just with HR," Garnett said, describing the advice SunRice received from external partners early in its journey.
Eigeland linked the same trend to a shift in risk profile. "Eighty-eight per cent of IT leaders say that they want to be involved in learning technology decisions. Same for 82 per cent of finance leaders," he said.
"There is a genuine risk profile here … it's moved from L&D helping me learn this skill, to actually help me rethink how the role is performed and how the organisation functions."
For HR leaders navigating the same questions, the message from both interviews is consistent: treating AI literacy as a stand-alone training problem misses the point.
The organisations pulling ahead, according to Eigeland and Garnett, are the ones using the AI transition to rebuild how – and by whom – decisions about workforce capability get made.
That aligns with broader survey data showing workers are still largely using AI at a beginner level despite widespread adoption across the workforce, and with recent findings that AI proficiency is now being tied directly to promotion and performance outcomes at work.
