While sometimes viewed as an optional investment, Learning and Development (L&D) plays a critical role not only in enhancing employee performance, retention, and organisational growth, but also in mitigating legal risk. Effective training reduces the likelihood of costly legal claims arising from bullying, harassment, sexual harassment or discrimination.
The 2024 CEDA report, Learning Curve: Why Australia Needs a Training Boost, highlighted that training participants are more productive, less likely to move jobs, and report higher job satisfaction. The same report found that individuals who participated in work-related training earned, on average, a 20% pay increase the following year compared to similar individuals who didn’t. Yet, training participation has declined in Australia, making now a critical time for organisations to re-prioritise investment in learning.
Further, the 2023 LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report (the LinkedIn report) found that three of the top five factors people consider when evaluating new roles relate to learning and development opportunities. Organisations that offer career development, skill-building, and leadership pathways are more likely to attract and retain talent. In fact, 93% of companies surveyed cited “providing learning opportunities” as their primary strategy to improve employee retention.
Development of People Leaders: Shaping Culture at the Top
People leaders have a profound influence on the employee experience. Their behaviour, decision-making, and communication style directly shape team culture, performance, engagement, and retention. Despite this, most people leaders in today’s organisations are promoted based on their technical expertise, not because they’ve been equipped with the skills to lead others. Often, they transition into leadership roles without any formal training or development.
This gap in leadership capability can impact team morale, psychological safety, and organisational performance. That’s why investing in leadership development is essential.
A critical component of this investment is self-awareness. People leaders need to understand how their leadership style influences others, both positively and negatively. Psychometric tools like the Saville Wave Assessment provide deep insight into a leader’s strengths, risks, and behavioural tendencies. These insights serve as the foundation for tailored coaching, team diagnostics, and structured leadership programs that support intentional, values-aligned leadership.
Leadership development also helps address the skills most needed in today’s workplace according to the LinkedIn report, being management, communication, leadership. More than that however, it ensures leaders are not only technically proficient, but also emotionally intelligent and equipped to bring out the best in others.
Compliance Training: A Legal Safeguard
Compliance training is no longer a tick-box exercise; it is a legal expectation. Organisations must proactively address their obligations around sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination. This involves more than just putting in place a policy and procedure but includes delivering meaningful training and equipping both employees and leaders with the tools to respond appropriately.
Training Contact Officers as internal champions for safe and respectful behaviour is also a best-practice, proactive strategy to support early intervention to resolve issues involving inappropriate workplace behaviour. Further to this, online modules can serve well as a quick learning solution for onboarding and refresher training, however face-to-face sessions tend to be more effective in shifting attitudes and embedding lasting behavioural change.
A Legal Reminder: The Cost of Inadequate Training
A 2023 decision by the Fair Work Commission in Thompson & Pelly v Ventia highlights the risks of relying on superficial compliance measures. In this case, two firefighters were dismissed after sharing inappropriate material in a private Facebook group. One of the dismissals was ultimately overturned, not because the behaviour was acceptable, but because the employer’s “tick-box” style training was found to be insufficient.
The Commission noted that employees had not been given clear, structured education on expected conduct.
The absence of meaningful training undermined the fairness of the dismissal and resulted in the reinstatement of one of the employees. The message was clear: if employees aren’t properly trained, employers may lose the ability to enforce behavioural standards in a legally defensible way.
Inclusion and Respect: More Than a Message
Building a culture of belonging takes more than policies or slogans. It requires training that is deliberate, well-designed, and delivered with impact. Meaningful and engaging learning experiences can challenge unconscious bias, promote allyship, and build the capabilities of both inclusive leaders and employees.
Such training helps demonstrate that the organisation is taking active, preventative steps to address inappropriate workplace behaviours such as bullying, sexual harassment, and discrimination, while also cultivating a psychologically safe environment. When employees feel respected, valued, and empowered to bring their authentic selves to work, they are more likely to thrive.
Reinforcing Values through Learning
Beyond compliance and leadership, values workshops offer a powerful way to embed organisational culture in meaningful and practical ways. Involving the workforce in the process through workshops that explore what values mean in their day-to-day roles, helps to create stronger ownership and accountability.
When employees are part of shaping and applying the values, they become more than words on a page. Values take on practical significance and are more likely to influence decision-making, guide behaviour, and support a psychologically safe and respectful environment. This not only contributes to the prevention of inappropriate conduct, but also enhances team cohesion, engagement, and retention.
Once values are clearly defined and embraced, there is a valuable opportunity to contextualise workplace training by intentionally weaving those values into other learning initiatives. This includes embedding values into leadership development, compliance sessions, onboarding, and team-based training programs. By reinforcing values consistently across all learning touchpoints, organisations can strengthen cultural alignment, increase behavioural accountability, and further support a respectful, high-performing workplace.
Upskilling to Fill the Gaps: A Smarter Investment than Re-Hiring
Rather than absorbing the high costs and disruptions associated with turnover and onboarding new talent, organisations can focus on developing their current workforce to meet future needs. According to a recent Forbes article, upskilling and reskilling existing employees delivers a strong return on investment, helping businesses meet evolving demands while retaining valuable institutional knowledge and team cohesion.
To do this effectively, organisations need robust and contemporary performance development processes. These are not one-size-fits-all annual performance reviews, they are continuous, two-way conversations that identify aspirations, align performance expectations, and recognise development needs.
When done well, the outcome of these conversations should be a meaningful and inspirational development plan for every employee. These plans provide a roadmap to help individuals reach their potential, while also ensuring the organisation has the capabilities required to deliver on its strategy. Tailored learning pathways, mentoring, and stretch assignments can all be powerful, yet cost-effective tools in this process.
Embedding performance development processes reinforces a growth mindset and makes learning a shared responsibility between employee and employer. Ultimately, this strategic focus on internal development not only strengthens your workforce, it builds the foundation for long-term, sustainable business growth and succession planning while signalling a commitment to employee growth, which in turn promotes employee loyalty and engagement.
Strategic Investment That Delivers
Incorporating L&D into your 2025/2026 budget is not just about improving capability. It’s about investing in the resilience, culture, and future-readiness of your organisation.
Research shows that learning drives performance, prevents risk, and builds the type of environment where people want to stay and grow. When done well, L&D is a strategic enabler of long-term success.
If you’d like to explore how we can support your organisation’s leadership, compliance, or culture goals through tailored learning experiences, we’re here to partner with you.
Collette brings over 20 years of professional experience in business and human resources across Australia, with over 10 years served in strategic HR leadership positions. With experience in a diverse range of industries, including aged care, hospitality, health, and state & local government, Collette is a results-focused, pragmatic, creative and strategic thinker who thrives on finding effective solutions to problems and identifying areas for opportunity.
Collette is passionate about organisational development and has a track record of the successful implementation of a number of organisational development activities throughout her career thus far, including workforce design, culture & engagement strategies, leadership & mentoring programs and talent management frameworks and programs. She has developed, implemented and facilitated a number of training solutions and is a qualified trainer and assessor.
From leading her own teams, Collette has hands-on experience in understanding the challenges that come with leadership and greatly enjoys coaching leaders in how to get the most from their people.
As a champion for diversity and inclusion, Collette has experience in developing gender equity, diversity and inclusion strategy and initiatives and providing leadership to a reconciliation action plan.