A training plan without an L&D department? Here is how to start as an SME

In many SMEs, training is handled by the managing director, an HR generalist or a team leader who does it on the side. A separate L&D department that maps what each employee can do and needs is usually not there. At the same time, tools change quickly, and AI only makes that question more urgent.

In this guide, you read how to still draw up a well-founded training plan, without having to free up a team for it yourself.

A training plan sets out which skills your organisation needs, which employees take which training and when. It starts from an analysis of learning needs: what can your people do today, what do they need for their job and how do they prefer to learn?

That analysis is exactly the work an L&D department does. Without such a department, it often gets left undone, and then you choose training on gut feeling.

Training goes to whoever asks for it the loudest, or everyone gets the same course, regardless of what they already know. You do not know who already works with AI and who has never written a prompt. And planning a conversation with every employee about their learning needs does not fit next to the day-to-day work.

With Xylos Insights, our digital baseline assessment, you do not have to organise those conversations yourself. An AI agent has a short conversation with each employee, in plain language and at a moment that suits their schedule. You send the invitation, the rest runs by itself.

From those conversations, you get a report with a DigiScore per employee and a heatmap per team. You see where the learning needs are, which learning formats your people prefer, who is ready to start and who needs extra support. You also get an overview of the AI applications already in use on the work floor and of the processes that could work better with AI.

So Xylos Insights is more than a skills assessment. It also measures how your people feel about AI, what they need and where your company can save time.

Think about what you want to achieve with your training budget. Do you want everyone to work smoothly with Microsoft 365, your people to use AI responsibly, or a particular team to work faster? A clear goal makes the report more useful straight away.

Invite your employees to the conversation with the AI agent. It only takes a few minutes and requires no preparation. The more people take part, the sharper the picture per team.

The report shows where the biggest gains are. Perhaps a whole team needs a foundation in Microsoft 365, while a few colleagues are already ready to get started with Copilot. Start with what delivers most for your business.

The insights are linked to our offering, and that gives you a personalised learning path. You decide yourself how far you take it, up to a path tailored to each employee. That can be a Microsoft 365 training, short videos in OASE your people follow when it suits them, a game on PlayForward or the AI literacy programme.

After the path, you run the baseline assessment again. That way you see in black and white what progress your people have made, and where to focus next.

Targeted training is also possible without your own L&D department. You get the insight a training manager would gather, without the time that comes with it. And your training budget goes to the people and skills where it makes the biggest difference.

Xylos is a Belgian family-owned tech company headquartered in Antwerp. Training has been our craft for forty years: we train more than 74,000 people every year, and that experience sits in a knowledge base of more than eighty courses and learning formats. With Learning Services, Xylos helps organisations train their people in Microsoft 365 and AI.

Xylos Insights is the starting point: measure first, then build. After that, you choose from Microsoft 365 training, AI and Copilot training, the AI literacy programme, PlayForward and the OASE video learning platform. The scan and the delivery come from one partner, so the report leads straight to a concrete proposal.

Curious where your people stand? Start with Xylos Insights or plan a conversation with our experts.