Confidence in learning and development teams is rising. In a recent Go1 survey of 950 senior IT, finance and legal leaders, 65% said AI has increased their confidence in L&D’s ability to evaluate and manage learning tools, but only 17% of those leaders think L&D or HR should lead investment decisions about AI-powered learning.
More trust hasn’t translated to more authority and that’s having a big impact on employee training.
The reason is a change in who makes the decision. Learning tool purchases used to sit mostly with L&D, sometimes with an HR partner and a procurement signature. They now routinely involve IT, legal, finance and compliance. Across those functions, 85% of leaders say they’re more involved in choosing learning tools than they were two to three years ago and 27% say they’re more involved than they’d prefer.
AI is the reason those functions got pulled in. Once a learning platform started generating content, adapting it and recommending what employees should take next, the purchase stopped being a question about course quality alone and raised questions about data security, system integration, regulatory exposure and cost. Those questions belong to more than L&D: They extend to IT, legal and finance.
These additional functions also have a specific reason to stay involved. AI tools have been entering organizations more quickly, which has put a strain on traditional review processes:
- 80% of IT leaders have found learning or AI tools adopted without IT’s knowledge or approval.
- 70% of legal and compliance leaders have seen AI learning tools deployed without their review.
- 66% of finance leaders have seen AI tools bought outside the standard procurement process.
Having watched tools bypass them once, these leaders aren’t inclined to step back from subsequent decisions.
As buying gets more complex, personalization is often the first thing lost
A bigger committee carries a cost. When several stakeholders have to sign off and each one screens for a different risk, the most conservative option usually wins:
- Almost half of organizations (48%) say training is being simplified to get employees to finish it, rather than to make it more effective.
- 45% say compliance training is standardized globally instead of adapted to local rules.
- 40% deliver training in a single language even when the workforce speaks several.
The people who build the programs know what’s at stake. One U.S.-based compliance leader interviewed for the research described what good personalization would look like in practice. They advocated for training that could “skip over what people show they already know and let them focus on the new information.” That’s a clear description of contextual, role-aware learning and it’s the kind of program that gets cut first when the buying process becomes more complex.
Frustration with tool sprawl works in L&D’s favor
The same leaders frustrated by governance friction are also tired of the number of learning tools they have to manage: 72% rate reducing that number as highly valuable and 56% say the current state of their tool ecosystem makes them more open to platforms that consolidate. A new tool meets resistance, but a platform that reduces it gets a more serious look.
The platform alternative gives HR and L&D leaders an opening. The most effective approach is to enter the wider committee prepared with a clear business case, an honest account of how a new tool affects complexity and to bring IT, finance and legal into the conversation early.
AI is the realistic path to delivering the personalized, localized learning that organizations say they want. Manual translation, localization and content adaptation can’t keep pace with a workforce spread across languages, regions and regulations. L&D leaders who can explain both sides of that trade-off, the risk AI introduces and the delivery problem it solves, will have an easier conversation with the rest of the committee.
For L&D leaders, the takeaway is to treat cross-functional buy-in as part of the job instead of a final hurdle. Understanding what IT, finance and legal each need and bringing them in early, keeps personalized, role-relevant learning moving. Without that work, employees end up with the simplest possible training and they can tell the difference.