Kim Ellis On How To Drive Positive Impact Through L&D Communities

It'd be good to first talk about how you started off in L&D and where it's led you to with L&D Free Spirits now. 

It started 20 years ago when I was working in a call centre and the training was done by team leaders because we didn’t have specialised trainers back then. There was a training manager who put out applications for what were called line trainers, where you're half on the phones and half doing induction training and updates. 

I applied for that, got it, and then a permanent role became available. After several years, I moved to Sky Betting and Gaming to join my former boss who was over there too for a pay increase and to head up the company’s digital learning side. Eventually, I was made redundant and I decided to be a freelancer from 2017. 

When the pandemic hit, I remember being on a networking call with The Learning Network and I said “Why don't we do coffee mornings?” Everyone was feeling isolated at the time so it seemed like a good idea. We started doing Tea and Talks and this led me getting asked to edit The Learning Network newsletter and going on to be director and member of the board. Plus, 1 year as Vice-Chair.

Through all that time from 2017 to the pandemic, I wished there was more support for people like me when I first started. Support that was L&D business focused rather than generic. That’s where the idea of L&D Free Spirits came from and I launched it in September 2024. 

A big question I always like to ask people in your space is why do you think it’s so hard for learning to translate into behaviour change?

The majority of stakeholders don't care. They just want the tick box. They want the compliance, “Yes, we've done it.” Or some people use training as the bat or a stick.

You'll put somebody through a two-hour session on handling difficult customers. That's not going to change their behaviour. You need to add in coaching for that. You need to make it more of an experience, not just a two-hour workshop. And to then have some people be like, “Well, you've done the training, why aren't you better?” It's the wrong attitude to have. People need to stop thinking of training as a one-and-done experience.

Indeed. That’s a pattern I’ve noticed across several L&D professionals I’ve spoken to. Building from that, how do you think people could best communicate that L&D is its own discipline and not just an extension of HR?

I think it's difficult because I come at it from two different perspectives. I can come at it from an employed perspective, but also as a contractor's perspective.

L&D does get shoehorned in an organisation. When I was working at LV= and doing contact centre training, the business merged with Britannia Rescue and we became a part of the wider L&D team. A similar thing happened when I was at Sky Betting and Gaming. So from an employment perspective, it's hard to have a voice when you're part of a wider team. I had much more vocal power and power over the stakeholders when we were siloed into “We're call centre, that's it.” Because I had that direct line. There wasn't a business partner or anybody between me and the stakeholders.

As a freelancer or contractor, you've got that direct line anyway. Usually freelancers are a lot more assertive with their messaging, and it can be, “Well, this is the best way to do it.” And they're not afraid to say, “If you don't do it my way, it'll be shit.” I've said that to clients before. “If you don't do it the way that I'm saying, it's not going to have an impact.” When you're employed, sometimes politics gets in the way.

When an L&D professional is starting out freelance, do you think they should be a generalist or a specialist?

Depends where the passion is. Because if one person loves building e-learning then crack on. But I'm somebody that likes to jump around a million things. I like to bounce around different disciplines, but if I was just stuck doing e-learning or in a classroom delivering, I’d get to a point of saying “Ugh, just let me do something else for a little while to freshen it up.” 

So my advice to people starting out is do whatever you're passionate about. I'm passionate about being an end-to-end problem solver for a client and fixing their problem. 

What are your thoughts around learning styles and learning preferences?

The science behind learning styles may be rubbish but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. To this day, if I was running a train the trainer, I’d put in the Honey-Mumford learning styles. Not to say that there's all this backing to it, not to say that people only fit into one box, but to illustrate that nobody's just one thing. To illustrate that there are different ways that people prefer to take in content.

But the thing is, people will say, “Oh, I'm a reflective learner. I like to read things.” You’re not going to learn how to drive a car by reading the freaking manual. You can turn everything into a benefit. But the problem lies when people put too much weight behind something that isn't substantiated. And that's not just out here with learning theories, it could be for any theory or framework. 

How do you think people should balance quantitative and qualitative data when showing learning impact?

It depends what the course is and what the purpose of it is. If it’s purely to show a compliance organisation that everybody has passed a course, then you need to have your completion rates. If it's a course about handling complaints, difficult conversations, anything behavioural, then you need to have more of your qualitative storytelling. 

But as a freelancer, getting a client to continue to pay you to do the analysis and to build them this story of the impact that it's had can be a challenge. I've had it before where I've been in situations like that and told businesses “I've built you this entire suite. We've had a global rollout. If you want, I'll come back in six months, we'll go through the data, we'll find out what impact it has and find out if there's been any breaches.” They don’t want to pay for that. 

So I know some freelancers who purely work on the evaluation side and that is their entry point. That's what people are bringing you in for, and then they're getting the solution off the back of that. People come to me for the solution to their problem. I might do an assessment at the beginning to find the data story for what's been happening, but getting them to pay beyond that is easier said than done. 

What are some of your best practices for gathering feedback necessary for proving genuine impact?

I like focus groups. But one of the key things to remember if you're running a focus group is to never take anything personally. Don’t be afraid to rip everything to pieces to find out what's working, what isn't working, where change has already happened and where it’s lacking.

You can run a focus group on a Miro board if you're doing virtual, but what should be the case for in-person and online is that the focus group should be a real discovery session and have an event style environment. It needs to be an experience for the people involved as you need to keep them engaged. 

What are your thoughts around AI in learning and development?

I use it all the time. Unless a client specifically says don’t use AI, I’ll use Claude and GPT like an extra brain and co-worker. The problems with AI are when people aren't using it right and when they assume putting any prompt will produce something great. 

Personally, I’m a micro-prompter. I’ll give GPT some information, see what it gives back and then tweak it while I’m mapping content or other assets out. I think that helps me be quicker at my job and I disagree when people say AI makes people dumber. 

I do agree that efficiency is a great benefit of AI when using it for the right kind of tasks. I also like that you call out the mistaken perspective of AI making people stupider.

Perhaps a better framing is that we should use AI with the acknowledgement of protecting our critical thinking and not taking it at face value. How would you recommend people protect their critical thinking when using AI?

Never take the first draft as gospel. People have to really think about why they're using rapid authoring tools. If they're using something because they can't figure it out, then spend the time learning how to do it right. 

I remember being at Learning Tech 2025 and there was a guy speaking who said that with rapid authoring tools, instructional designers don't need to be the gatekeepers of content anymore. His view was that you can upload a PDF and it’s going to give you a course. 

I felt he should have read the room that he was at an expo full of designers. While it is possible that AI can do that, you still need to know the fundamentals of how to build a course and how to get the best out of it to meet the needs of a business or meet your learners where they are. AI isn’t going to fix that gap compared to a human instructional designer with 20 years of hands-on experience. 

Are there any other trends or tools in L&D that you're excited or concerned about?

I think traditional e-learning is on its way out like Storyline and Captivate. Those kinds of e-learnings are gradually being phased out because a lot of people now want things to be mobile responsive. Companies are becoming more agile and trying to go where the learner is, rather than expecting the learner to come to them and sit down at a computer.

And does mobile-first learning look as good? It’s debatable. Can you do as much with it? No. You lose some of the depth and flexibility that you get with more traditional e-learning builds. But even so, I think rapid authoring tools are probably going to take over the traditional methods of e-learning development in the future. 

You can already get Claude to create you a SCORM package. Does it look great? Not really. Does it do what it needs to do? Possibly. And for a lot of businesses, that’s enough. They want speed, accessibility, and point-of-need learning more than they want something beautifully crafted. People have wanted point-of-need training for years, so I think there’ll be even more of that happening and the growth of TikTok-style training videos, short-form learning.

At the same time, though, I’ve noticed people becoming more open to face-to-face facilitation again as well. So while digital and AI-driven tools are growing fast, there’s also still a real appetite for in-person experiences and human connection in learning.

I feel learning management systems (LMSs) may still have a strong place in the future of training and L&D. How would you recommend choosing an LMS?

It’s case by case. I’ve built one client a MoodleCloud before, and I installed Litmos into another client, so I’ve worked with very different systems depending on what the business actually needed.

One thing my L&D Free Spirits business partner Andy Candler says is that you shouldn’t start with the tech. You start with the people and the problem, and then the tech comes last. There are so many LMS platforms out there now, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses, so you’ve really got to ask yourself what the actual purpose is.

If it’s just to collect completions, then something like a MoodleCloud is absolutely fine. It’s dirt cheap, has basic customisation, there’s an app, boom, done. But if you need something that’s going to create a more immersive experience, host live webinars, integrate different learning formats, or do something more sophisticated, then you need something different. And if what you want is a platform packed with off-the-shelf compliance content, there are systems built specifically for that too.

The mistake people make is choosing a platform based on price or what’s popular on something like the Fosway Grid. Really, the question should simply be: does it do the job you actually need it to do?

When I was at Sky Betting and Gaming, they already had Workday as the HR system, so they decided they’d use the LMS as well, even though the LMS side was still  underdeveloped at that point. I was part of the implementation team, and every time I asked, “Will it do this?” The answer was “no.” “Okay, but will it do this?” “No.” 

One of the biggest frustrations for me from an LMS admin perspective was reporting. I was like, “Fine, tell me who has completed the training, but what’s actually more important is telling me who hasn’t completed it, because then I know who I need to chase.”

When you’re rolling training out to thousands of people, you don’t need the yes list. You need the no list, and you need to know who their managers are so you can chase things properly. But that functionality just wasn’t there. So I ended up cross-referencing completion data against HR spreadsheets manually just to figure out who hadn’t done the training yet. Basic functionality like that matters far more in practice than flashy features or who’s got the biggest stand at Learning Tech. Ultimately, functionality and usability will always matter more than hype.

Those are some great recommendations. To finish, if there was one or two things you could change about the L&D industry, what would it be and why?

Give more work to freelancers and open our community to more people. When I was employed, I didn't realise how big the community is. It was only when I was at Sky Betting and Gaming that I went to World of Learning for the first time, and I was like, “This is amazing. All of these people are like me.” 

When you are siloed working in one company, you're not developing with what other people are thinking or doing. You're always going to do the same thing and get the same results. You can't broaden your horizons if you're stuck in one place.

I remember one of my buddies was doing some face-to-face training and she asked her group how many of them were on LinkedIn. Only half the group put their hand up.

It’s the same attitude in L&D. When you're employed, you don't go on LinkedIn and you're not doing the networking as much as when you're freelance because you have to do that for a job.

But when you're employed and you don't do those things, you're always going to have the same mindset. That’s why we need to push people out of their comfort zones and get more people connecting and collaborating with each other.