It’s January.
Your inbox is full of goals, roadmaps, and kick-off invites. The team has returned from their year-end break with a mix of optimism and overwhelm. Everyone is hopeful. Everyone wants to make this year different.
But if you’re in HR or L&D, you’ve probably seen this movie before.
You launch a bold capability-building program. A leadership offsite is planned. A new onboarding flow is in the works. There’s even talk of refreshing the culture values.
And then:
• Attendance drops.
• Managers deprioritize learning.
• Team bandwidth becomes the reason for postponement.
• Budget gets redirected.
By March, the energy has faded.
So the real question is not: What are our learning goals this year?
But rather:
• How do we ensure this year’s L&D initiatives don’t fade by March?
• How do we balance new goals with limited bandwidth and people already stretched thin?
• How do we get real buy-in from managers for capability-building this year?
• What should we prioritize: onboarding, leadership development, culture, DEI?
• How can we create learning rhythms, not one-time programs?
• How do we re-energize the learning culture after a quiet December?
Let’s dive in.
Related Reading: Your Goal Is Your Motivation
The Problem with January: Resolutions Aren’t Strategies
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January feels like a fresh start. It’s when most companies make announcements, set targets, and reframe their priorities.
But let’s be honest: resolutions are emotionally satisfying but structurally fragile. They lean on hope and momentum rather than behavior and design.
In our experience working with HR and L&D teams across industries, here’s what typically goes wrong:
1. There’s urgency, but no prioritization. Everything feels important. Nothing gets the attention it needs.
2. There’s excitement, but no rhythm. Kickoffs happen, but there’s no sustained follow-through.
3. There’s leadership approval, but no involvement. Leaders sign off but rarely stay involved in the learning journey.
4. There’s participation, but not engagement. People show up, but they’re distracted. The real learning never happens.
The result? Programs that start strong but don’t sustain. Investments made, but impact diluted.
What Gets in the Way: The January-to-March Drop-off
Let’s unpack the six critical questions L&D teams need to face head-on.
1. How do I ensure this year’s L&D initiatives don’t fade by March?
Start with the truth: People won’t sustain what they don’t value. And they won’t value what they don’t see as relevant.
Strategies that help: – Co-create programs with the learners and their managers. Let them tell you what matters most. – Anchor initiatives to live pain points. Is the sales team struggling with objection handling? Is a new manager layer floundering in role transitions? Build from real needs. – Use storytelling and internal champions to keep energy alive after the initial buzz. A program without internal advocacy is like a product without marketing.
2. How do I balance new goals with limited bandwidth and people already stretched thin?
This is perhaps the biggest reason L&D programs get dropped mid-way. People feel learning is a luxury they can’t afford.
So how do you fix that?
• Design learning in micro-formats. Use bite-sized, modular content. Think 15-minute nudges, not 3-hour webinars.
• Blend learning with work. Learning labs linked to current projects, job shadowing, peer coaching, or even on-the-job experiments.
• Time your interventions. Don’t crowd Q1 with everything. Some learning flows are better placed in Q2 or Q3 when rhythms stabilize.
• Give teams permission to learn. Make it clear that learning isn’t an extra. It’s part of how the business wins.
3. How do I get real buy-in from managers for capability-building this year?
Mandates rarely work. If a manager doesn’t believe in the value of a program, they won’t prioritize it.
Instead:
• Bring them into the design process. Ask: “What would make this program genuinely valuable for your team?”
• Use language that matters to them. Replace “learning outcomes” with “team performance,” “attrition risk,” or “readiness for promotion.”
• Make them co-owners. Involve them in facilitation, storytelling, and feedback. Recognition goes a long way.
• Showcase results. When one team benefits from a program, tell that story internally. Peer validation matters more than top-down instruction.
4. What should I prioritize: onboarding, leadership development, culture, DEI?
You can’t do it all at once. But you can layer your priorities.
Here’s a simple prioritization map:
• Onboarding: If you’re hiring at scale or seeing early attrition, start here. Great onboarding reduces time-to-productivity and attrition risk.
• Leadership Development: Prioritize this if you’re seeing gaps in execution, team morale, or manager effectiveness.
• Culture & DEI: Focus here if you’re undergoing transformation, have low engagement scores, or facing inclusion gaps.
Tip: Use a 2×2 matrix. Urgency vs. Impact. Plot all your planned initiatives and pick 2–3 for Q1/Q2. Defer or redesign the rest.
5. How can I create learning rhythms, not one-time programs?
Rhythms create cultural pull. They signal that learning is not an event but a way of working.
Some ideas:
Monthly Learning Circles: Peer-led sessions on real-world challenges.
Quarterly Learning Sprints: Time-boxed capability pushes focused on one skill or value.
Habitual Nudges: Weekly emails or Slack posts with a single idea, prompt, or reflection.
Manager-Led Reviews: Regular team huddles with one takeaway from the last learning module.
Consistency beats intensity. Better to have a 20-minute monthly ritual than a 3-day intensive no one remembers.
6. How do I re-energize the learning culture after a quiet December?
The end of the year often brings silence. People are in wind-down mode. But that doesn’t mean the learning culture has to restart from zero.
Try this:
• Start January with inspiration, not information. Share a story of someone who learned something in 2025 that changed their work.
• Run a “learning lookback” session. What worked last year? What didn’t? What do people want more of?
• Set a collective goal. Let teams pick a capability they want to improve on together.
• Celebrate learning heroes. Give visibility to those who consistently leaned in during 2025.
Culture shifts when stories shift. When people see that learning is valued, celebrated, and made visible, they’ll start showing up again.
Related Reading: How Not To Give Up On Your Goals?
A January Checklist for L&D Teams
Before launching your 2026 plans, pause and ask:
• Have we involved real users (learners and managers) in the design?
• Is the timing of this initiative right?
• Does every stakeholder know what’s in it for them?
• Are we launching with storytelling, not just scheduling?
• Is there a rhythm of reinforcement baked in?
• Do we know how we’ll measure and share impact?
Final Thoughts: This Year, Don’t Just Launch Programs. Build Momentum.
If there’s one mindset shift worth carrying into 2026, it’s this:
People don’t resist learning. They resist irrelevance.
When learning is tied to real goals, when managers model the behavior, when teams feel seen and involved, engagement follows.
So skip the resolutions this year. Build systems. Build rhythms. Build trust.
Because the real win isn’t in January participation. It’s in March engagement. And in the silent signals that show learning is not just an HR agenda – it’s how your organization grows..
