The personalization problem: Why personalized learning is so hard to pull off

TOGETHER WITH

This is what learning should feel like. Go1 delivers curated, expert-vetted learning content into the systems your team already uses, making personalized learning easier to deliver and manage. That’s how you get workplace learning without the chaos.

Over the past decade, HR and L&D teams have been expected to adapt to the changing skills landscape, with the bar getting higher every single year. These days, your to-do list probably looks a little like: Map changing skills needs, drive continuous learning, and build reskilling programs in real time.

That’s why corporate learning is such a game changer, with personalized learning setting a very high bar.

There’s just one problem. Delivering a high-quality learning experience built into employees’ workflows is way easier said than done. It all boils down to tool fragmentation, cross-functional decision-making, and AI-driven risk.

Go1 picked the brains of top leaders and asked them what it takes to make personalized learning happen at the enterprise level. Go1 conducted three surveys, one for each group of executives: IT and revenue operations leaders, finance and procurement leaders, and legal and compliance leaders.

Here’s what they found.

All sprawled out

The learning tool ecosystem these days is…well, messy doesn’t even begin to cover it. In fact, the ecosystem is so big and *so* sprawled out, no one has full visibility anymore. And somehow, these tool stacks just keep getting bigger and bigger.

Here’s the kicker: All this tool sprawl isn’t making stakeholders more resistant to new tools. Nope, it’s actually making them more receptive to them. Go1 discovered that ecosystem complexity leads 63% of IT leaders, 57% of finance/procurement leaders, and 48% of legal/compliance leaders to actively seek tools that consolidate rather than add.

Yep, leaders are open to more tools, as long as these tools can help consolidate or simplify their existing stack—anything to help clean up the mess.

This changes the entire buying conversation. For L&D leaders, the winning angle to take with new learning tools is less “please approve this new tool” and more “we’re all dealing with a lot of tech-stack chaos—here’s a tool that will help us clean things up a little.”

Decisions, decisions, decisions

It used to be just L&D leaders and their friends from HR who would make decisions on new learning solutions. But those days are behind us.

In today’s corporate learning environment, tons of teams are getting involved in the decision-making process for new learning tools. In fact, Go1 found that the majority of their survey respondents (88% of IT leaders, 83% of legal/compliance leaders, and 82% of finance/procurement leaders) report being significantly or somewhat more involved in learning-tool decisions compared to two to three years ago.

That’s not exactly how these leaders would like it, though. A notable share say they’re more involved than they’d prefer: 30% of legal/compliance respondents, 29% of IT respondents, and 23% of finance respondents.

So, why are they playing such a big role in learning-tool decisions? Well, because in the past you only needed to consider things like content quality, instructional design, and adoption. Today, there are way more organizational risk filters to evaluate.

Legal and compliance leaders are managing regulatory exposure, data privacy, and more. IT leaders are managing data security, integration architecture, and AI model transparency. Finance is managing total cost of ownership, integration cost, and ROI accountability. Basically, buying a new learning tool today is a whole company affair.

In the shadows

We can’t talk about organizational risks without talking about the one thing making the biggest splash when it comes to risk: AI.

Yep, AI is really complicating enterprise software, learning tools, and the entire way we make decisions at an organizational level. And we’re taking AI risks in learning tools very, very seriously. Go1 found that 65% of IT, 56% of finance, and 52% of legal respondents say AI-powered features inside learning tools now go through the same formal governance process as any other enterprise AI tool.

That means organizations are treating learning just like any other AI surface area. Learning tools now face the same scrutiny as other tools and systems that use AI, making sure they meet standards for security, privacy, integration, governance, cost, and risk.

Of course, a policy is only as good as the follow-through on that policy. And the follow-through with AI in learning tools is, well, not so great. Go1 discovered a significant gap between policy and practice: 70% of legal respondents and 65% of finance respondents have encountered AI tools, including learning AI tools, deployed inside the organization without their function’s review in the past 12 months.

That’s why having a solid partner for personalized learning is so important. Partners like Go1 are building the content—and the tech—that helps make personalized learning easier to buy, deploy, and get tons of support for. Go1’s got perks like:

• a content library that easily plugs into your existing LMS, LXP, content tools, and AI-driven learning experiences
• the security posture, integration architecture, and compliance documentation that your IT, legal, and finance teams expect AI tools to have
• data and analytics to help you understand what’s actually working and what’s not (This also happens to be the exact evidence your buying committees are looking for.)

The survey says…

The survey results don’t lie. Personalized learning is hard to do no matter who you ask—and it’s all because of our messy tool ecosystems, the many layers of approvals needed when introducing new tools, and the AI of it all (read: how AI has changed the entire landscape of learning tools).

With a partner like Go1, personalized learning at your organization gets a lot more doable. Trusted content, intelligent automation, and the right governance posture for the new buying committee—that’s how learning that’s actually personalized, contextual, and in the flow of work stops being aspirational and starts being something your team can deliver.