Five Ways HR Leaders Can Prove L&D Programs Deliver Real Results

A Korn Ferry senior partner urges L&D teams to drop vanity metrics and measure actual skill gaps.

HR Solution Journal News Desk

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According to Noah Rabinowitz, Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry, the $400 billion L&D industry excels at selling solutions but struggles to define the problems those solutions should address. Speaking at a SPARK TALENT keynote, Rabinowitz outlined five priorities for HR leaders: treat completion rates as activity, not progress; define every initiative around a measurable gap between current and target behavior; choose the simplest intervention that closes that gap rather than the most sophisticated tool; diagnose whether a performance issue is a learning problem or a process flaw before training; and include employee payroll time, not just vendor fees, in every ROI calculation.

Source: HR Daily Advisor. Original announcement: November 04, 2026.