Employees expect learning to work like Netflix—personalized recommendations, easy discovery, and content they can consume when it fits their schedule. Instead, your corporate training sometimes feels like mandatory homework with rigid courses and clunky navigation that nobody wants to use unless forced. The disconnect between how people consume information everywhere else and how your organization delivers learning is why development programs fail to engage. You need a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) that delivers training the way employees want to consume it.
This guide shows Chief Learning Officers (CLO) and L&D leaders how to evaluate platforms that match modern learning expectations. We break down what these systems need to accomplish for engaging learning delivery, how consumer-grade experiences improve employee development, and what's developing in learner-focused technology over the recent years.
A Learning experience platform (LXP) refers to software that provides employees with personalized learning content via AI-powered recommendations and aggregated content. LXPs are for organizations that need to facilitate ongoing skill development across their workforce by pulling learning from multiple sources—internal content, third-party courses, user-generated content, and external libraries—into a single platform.
Learning experience platforms come with multiple functionalities, and you need to assess whether these capabilities align with your organization's actual learning requirements. Here, we've highlighted some of them:
Feature | Description |
Personalized Learning Recommendations | Employees with access to thousands of courses often learn nothing, as they have no way of determining what is relevant to their learning and development needs. Learning experience platforms, however, offer employees AI-powered recommendations based on their behavior and interests. That's how learners can receive skills-based suggestions to close competency gaps and role-based suggestions and recommendations for their job roles without having to search in several systems. These platforms can even provide peer learning showing what colleagues are learning and completion pattern analysis recommending next steps. |
Multi-Source Content Aggregation | Because organizational learning exists everywhere—formal courses, YouTube tutorials, internal documentation, and podcasts—learners are forced to search for multiple systems which consume time. Therefore, learning experience platforms provide content integration, pulling learning from multiple sources, and providing LMS content integration to access formal courses. They can even offer external library integration with platforms like LinkedIn Learning or Coursera. |
Social Learning And Collaboration | What's even more important is the peer learning functionality that these platforms provide. It's because learning usually happens through social interactions. For example, when employees discuss concepts with peers, they ask experts questions. And sometimes they want to learn from the mistakes or successes of others. Learning experience platforms could assist in this regard through discussion forums, learner communities around shared interests, and content ratings helping others evaluate quality. Numerous LXP solutions include social sharing, enabling resource recommendations, collaborative learning spaces for group projects, and peer-to-peer mentoring connections. |
Microlearning And Bite-Sized Content | Employees cannot find the time to finish an hour-long course due to competing obligations at work. Next thing they know, a meeting interrupts their training, and in their valiant effort to finish, it remains unfinished. For that, these platforms support short form learning through microlearning modules, breaking content into brief segments or short video snippets that deliver the same content and lessons in minutes. Some platforms even provide quick reference guides, flashcard-style content, daily learning nudges, and just-in-time learning, providing help at the moment of need. |
Gamification And Engagement Features | Engagement features help make learning attractive and compelling by offering game mechanics as part of the experience. Therefore, learning experience platforms have points and rewards capability, badges and achievements celebrating milestones, and leaderboards creating friendly competition. They even provide challenges and quests, progress visualization to show advancement, rewards for streaks and consistency, and social recognition of accomplishments. |
Organizations using the right learning experience platform gain competitive advantages in employee development and learning engagement. Based on our research, here are the most significant benefits you'll experience:
End The Frustration Of Never Finding Relevant Training
These solutions automatically surface relevant content without requiring manual searches through thousands of courses. When new managers require leadership training, these systems automatically deliver recommendations for them to review, not forcing them to browse through course catalogs. That saves employees hours of browsing time.
Make Learning Actually Engaging
These apps allow learners to build training much more meaningful with customized content, social networking features (which connect learning to community), and gamification (to make it fun). When the way employees learn is like simply browsing through Netflix, they are much more likely to participate in engaging interactions and experiences than simply completing mandatory compliance-based training.
Stop Building Training That Already Exists Elsewhere
This type of software eliminates redundant course creation by accessing existing external resources—LinkedIn Learning for business professionals, YouTube for training in how to use a specific software product, or Coursera for specific academic content. That allows your budget to stretch farther by accessing professional courses externally rather than building internally.
Turn Isolated Learning Into Social Experience
Instead of making employees learn independently, these platforms enable them to engage in collaborative learning. When marketing professionals discuss strategies in learning communities or technical experts to exchange their wisdom in forums, they gain a better understanding.
Build Learning Habits That Stick
Through Learning Experience Platforms (LEPs), employees develop daily learning practices instead of relying on periodic training workshops and sitting through a single annual workshop that they may forget afterwards, employees establish regular 10-minute daily learning routines that accumulate over time.
The capabilities we discussed earlier in this guide are important and should definitely be considered along with user experience and pricing when evaluating potential learning experience platforms. Beyond these, there are additional factors that you, as an L&D professional or training manager, should not overlook.
Determine Whether You're Replacing Or Complementing Your LMS
Organizations are either looking to replace their current LMS with a new LXP or add some type of discovery functionality to their existing LMS. If you are replacing your LMS, then you need a platform that is capable of providing compliance tracking, as well as, tracking any mandatory assignments.
If you are augmenting your LMS, then your focus will be on content discovery, and your LMS will continue to manage formal training. Therefore, it is important to clearly verify if you are looking for a full replacement or an enhancement, because complementary systems do not contain the required compliance functionality.
Assess Social Learning Features Against Your Cultural Norms
If your organization does not have a strong culture of social learning and shared knowledge among peers, then social features like discussion boards and peer recommendations will not be effective. Organizations that have active Slack communities or a culture of knowledge sharing among colleagues will take full advantage of social learning.
It is therefore important that the employees are already engaged in peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and are comfortable with their profile visibility and activity feeds.
Verify Integration Depth With Your Learning Management System
Many companies keep their LMS and add an LXP for discovery. Integration quality determines whether this works or creates confusion. Ineffective integration creates confusion for an employee as to which system to use, while the employer has to manage the results of the completed work through two different systems.
Therefore, you have to determine if their specific LMS vendor has an associated integration with the LXP or if the LMS courses are accessible through the LXP. Plus, you have to check whether completion syncs automatically between systems. Without a suitable integration, there will not be LMS course recommendations presented within the LXP.
Check Content Curation Requirements And Ongoing Effort
Someone needs to tag content, organize learning paths, and remove outdated materials. Companies often underestimate the effort required to perform this function and discover they need dedicated staff just for curation. That's why it is essential to understand how much of the content curation within the LXP platform can be automated and what ongoing maintenance will be needed.
This is important because, without appropriate staffing, LXP platforms that require excessive manual content curation will become cluttered and bogged down with old, outdated content.
In 2024, according to Global Growth Insight, more than 60% of Fortune 500 Companies implemented Learning Experience Platforms (LXPs) to upskill employees and maximize engagement. Today, organizations recognize that skill demands are developing faster than can be addressed through traditional training.
As per PWC:
"Upskilling at scale is imperative to keeping businesses competitive, keeping societies stable, and providing a good livelihood for millions of people. And it starts with learning how to learn."
Continuous learning, or continuous Upskilling, is precisely why the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) features is becoming a very important part of LXPs.
In 2025, Degreed LMS launched Degreed Maestro, which uses AI technology to provide a 24/7 intelligent tutor/learning assistant, as well as an Open Library of AI Agents to find and aggregate open-source material on over 500 common business topics.
AI helps solve the problem PWC describes—when employees need to constantly learn new skills, AI tutors guide them, and intelligent agents automatically find relevant content. This technology adoption is spreading rapidly across vendors. Around 29% of vendors now offer voice-enabled content delivery and accessibility features. That shows how platforms are using technology to make learning more accessible and personalized.
When evaluating potential platforms, look for vendors that offer authentic AI capabilities focused on automating the discovery of content and customizing experience through the delivery of content. These are the key features that enable organizations to successfully support the ongoing upskilling process that PWC believes is necessary to maintain a competitive advantage.
Many platforms in this industry receive positive feedback for their user experience, particularly those that offer AI-powered skill development and personalized learning capabilities. It is important to look for platforms that have personalized learning paths because one-size-fits-all training usually leads to lower engagement and completion rates.
This guide has given you a better understanding of how the right learning experience platforms should work. They provide AI-powered personalization that surfaces relevant content automatically. They integrate with your existing LMS, so discovery and formal training work together seamlessly. They offer social features that match your actual culture.
As you explore your options, leverage these distinctions to test the various platforms. Have your team tested actual content discovery during demos, verify whether LMS courses appear in recommendations, and check whether employees can genuinely learn on mobile devices during their commute. That testing work demonstrates if the platform delivers the engaging learning experience you require for your organization's unique development needs.