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As the year wraps up, L&D leaders all over the globe face a similar dilemma: unspent budget, mounting pressure, and the quiet fear that if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it next year.
But done right, this moment presents some huge opportunities.
Instead of scrambling about spending budget with little thought, you can use these final weeks to make decisions that strengthen capability, improve employee experience, and set your organisation up for a more confident, future-ready 2026.
Instead of reactive spending, here are 9 practical, strategic, and genuinely high-impact ways to make the most of your remaining budget – supported by real-life stories from L&D leaders who are seasoned end-of-year spenders.
Before you spend a penny, do a fast diagnostic: What skills are about to matter most next year? What capability gaps could slow us down?
A rapid review, even if it’s light-touch, helps you spend on what will actually move the needle, not on what simply fits into this year’s cycle.
Think: high-impact roles, changing priorities, digital demands, new markets, leadership gaps. This single action can turn reactive spend into strategic investment.
Mentoring is climbing the priority list for organisations looking to strengthen leadership, engagement, and retention. And the data backs it: 84% of Fortune 500 companies now run formal mentoring programmes, with mentored employees reporting higher engagement, performance and commitment.
With many organisations also facing retirement waves, shifting demographics, and increased internal mobility, it’s also becoming essential for succession planning.
Instead of investing heavily on external recruitment or scrambling for interim support when experienced people leave later down the line, your year-end budget gives you the chance to capture knowledge before it walks out the door.
Whether that’s long-tenured specialists nearing retirement or senior leaders who hold critical institutional know-how, mentoring helps you retain and transfer their expertise while you still can.
With the right investment, you can:
Done now, mentoring becomes a proactive strategy: safeguarding knowledge, accelerating emerging talent, strengthening DEI and leadership pipelines, and reducing the cost and disruption of external hiring.
It’s one of the smartest ways to use leftover budget, because you’re investing in capability that already exists within your business - you’re simply unlocking it before it leaves.
The year-end temptation is often to grab bundles of course licences. But volume rarely equals value. Remember, L&D impact depends on alignment, not accumulation. So the real win comes from ensuring content tightly aligns to the skills you identified at the start.
Spend smarter by:
A few smart decisions here can save months of work next year.
Even if you’re tied into your existing LMS for another year or more, year-end budget is the perfect window to explore further options. Many teams wait until renewal, but that’s when prices go up and negotiation power goes down.
A smarter approach?
Most LMS providers raise their rates in the new year. By shortlisting and locking in pricing now, you secure today’s lower rate - even if you don’t switch until your current contract ends.
We’ve seen organisations do exactly this and save tens of thousands across a three-year cycle.
Your year-end budget is a perfect match for leadership development – particularly for middle managers, first-time leaders, DEI and diverse leadership pipelines, or senior leaders navigating transformation or growth.
That’s because leadership programmes benefit from layered investments: frameworks, diagnostics, workshops, coaching, action experiments, communities of practice.
When done well, they influence culture, engagement and performance, not just skills.
Sometimes the most valuable L&D investments aren’t learning content or tools. Sometimes, creating connection can be the secret ingredient to a thriving culture. Forums, expert sessions, mentoring circles, peer learning groups, internal communities. These all create connection, which research repeatedly links back to enhanced engagement and performance.
These don’t have to be huge or expensive. Even a small amount of budget can ignite spaces where people reflect, collaborate and solve problems together.
Think of these as culture accelerators, not training ‘add-ons’. And they’re shaping how people learn together in 2026.
One of the most overlooked, but most valuable, uses of the year-end budget is securing external support to help you start the new year with clarity: defined goals, aligned priorities, sharper campaigns, and a stronger measurement strategy.
Many L&D teams enter January with ambitious plans but limited capacity. That’s where targeted ‘impact support’ can be game-changing. With the right partner, you can bring in specialist skills in goal setting, campaign design, data analysis, and learner engagement for a fraction of the cost of additional headcount.
Here’s what this can look like in practice:
This kind of resource is often described as ‘three new recruits for the price of one’, because you’re effectively getting design, marketing and data capability in one package. It’s a cost-effective way to ramp up your impact, accelerate campaigns, and make sure your 2026 initiatives are set up to succeed before the year even begins.
If you’ve got some budget left, this is one of the smartest ways to turn it into visible impact that leaders actually notice.
And chances are, your LMS provider has a wrap-around service that you’re able to tap in to for support with this. Thrive certainly does.
AI is quickly becoming a core part of how learning is delivered, accessed, and personalised. With many providers increasing their prices in the new year, using the remaining budget to explore or pilot AI can give you a competitive advantage.
Thrive’s AI assistant, Kiki, offers exactly this — but the key point is that many modern platforms are now delivering AI layers that dramatically reduce friction and improve findability.
Just like LMSs, AI add-ons and upgrades often increase in January. Scoping your AI needs now allows you to:
A small investment today can future-proof your whole ecosystem.
Now to turn this on its head. Many companies are facing big budget cuts next year. Purse strings are tightening across the globe, so instead, this might be the time to clean house. Because preparation and optimisation are essential when budgets are tight.
So before you spend, check:
A quick optimisation sweep can reveal funds you didn’t know you had.
The key takeaway here is that the ‘use it or lose it’ phenomenon doesn’t have to result in rushed or reactive spending. With the right choices, it becomes a launchpad for a more capable workforce, stronger leadership, smarter systems and a learning function that enters 2026 with clarity and momentum.
Spend on the things that produce multiple results, not just activity.
If you want to explore mentoring, future-ready platforms or impact-driven support, you can book a conversation with one of the team.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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As the year wraps up, L&D leaders all over the globe face a similar dilemma: unspent budget, mounting pressure, and the quiet fear that if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it next year.
But done right, this moment presents some huge opportunities.
Instead of scrambling about spending budget with little thought, you can use these final weeks to make decisions that strengthen capability, improve employee experience, and set your organisation up for a more confident, future-ready 2026.
Instead of reactive spending, here are 9 practical, strategic, and genuinely high-impact ways to make the most of your remaining budget – supported by real-life stories from L&D leaders who are seasoned end-of-year spenders.
Before you spend a penny, do a fast diagnostic: What skills are about to matter most next year? What capability gaps could slow us down?
A rapid review, even if it’s light-touch, helps you spend on what will actually move the needle, not on what simply fits into this year’s cycle.
Think: high-impact roles, changing priorities, digital demands, new markets, leadership gaps. This single action can turn reactive spend into strategic investment.
Mentoring is climbing the priority list for organisations looking to strengthen leadership, engagement, and retention. And the data backs it: 84% of Fortune 500 companies now run formal mentoring programmes, with mentored employees reporting higher engagement, performance and commitment.
With many organisations also facing retirement waves, shifting demographics, and increased internal mobility, it’s also becoming essential for succession planning.
Instead of investing heavily on external recruitment or scrambling for interim support when experienced people leave later down the line, your year-end budget gives you the chance to capture knowledge before it walks out the door.
Whether that’s long-tenured specialists nearing retirement or senior leaders who hold critical institutional know-how, mentoring helps you retain and transfer their expertise while you still can.
With the right investment, you can:
Done now, mentoring becomes a proactive strategy: safeguarding knowledge, accelerating emerging talent, strengthening DEI and leadership pipelines, and reducing the cost and disruption of external hiring.
It’s one of the smartest ways to use leftover budget, because you’re investing in capability that already exists within your business - you’re simply unlocking it before it leaves.
The year-end temptation is often to grab bundles of course licences. But volume rarely equals value. Remember, L&D impact depends on alignment, not accumulation. So the real win comes from ensuring content tightly aligns to the skills you identified at the start.
Spend smarter by:
A few smart decisions here can save months of work next year.
Even if you’re tied into your existing LMS for another year or more, year-end budget is the perfect window to explore further options. Many teams wait until renewal, but that’s when prices go up and negotiation power goes down.
A smarter approach?
Most LMS providers raise their rates in the new year. By shortlisting and locking in pricing now, you secure today’s lower rate - even if you don’t switch until your current contract ends.
We’ve seen organisations do exactly this and save tens of thousands across a three-year cycle.
Your year-end budget is a perfect match for leadership development – particularly for middle managers, first-time leaders, DEI and diverse leadership pipelines, or senior leaders navigating transformation or growth.
That’s because leadership programmes benefit from layered investments: frameworks, diagnostics, workshops, coaching, action experiments, communities of practice.
When done well, they influence culture, engagement and performance, not just skills.
Sometimes the most valuable L&D investments aren’t learning content or tools. Sometimes, creating connection can be the secret ingredient to a thriving culture. Forums, expert sessions, mentoring circles, peer learning groups, internal communities. These all create connection, which research repeatedly links back to enhanced engagement and performance.
These don’t have to be huge or expensive. Even a small amount of budget can ignite spaces where people reflect, collaborate and solve problems together.
Think of these as culture accelerators, not training ‘add-ons’. And they’re shaping how people learn together in 2026.
One of the most overlooked, but most valuable, uses of the year-end budget is securing external support to help you start the new year with clarity: defined goals, aligned priorities, sharper campaigns, and a stronger measurement strategy.
Many L&D teams enter January with ambitious plans but limited capacity. That’s where targeted ‘impact support’ can be game-changing. With the right partner, you can bring in specialist skills in goal setting, campaign design, data analysis, and learner engagement for a fraction of the cost of additional headcount.
Here’s what this can look like in practice:
This kind of resource is often described as ‘three new recruits for the price of one’, because you’re effectively getting design, marketing and data capability in one package. It’s a cost-effective way to ramp up your impact, accelerate campaigns, and make sure your 2026 initiatives are set up to succeed before the year even begins.
If you’ve got some budget left, this is one of the smartest ways to turn it into visible impact that leaders actually notice.
And chances are, your LMS provider has a wrap-around service that you’re able to tap in to for support with this. Thrive certainly does.
AI is quickly becoming a core part of how learning is delivered, accessed, and personalised. With many providers increasing their prices in the new year, using the remaining budget to explore or pilot AI can give you a competitive advantage.
Thrive’s AI assistant, Kiki, offers exactly this — but the key point is that many modern platforms are now delivering AI layers that dramatically reduce friction and improve findability.
Just like LMSs, AI add-ons and upgrades often increase in January. Scoping your AI needs now allows you to:
A small investment today can future-proof your whole ecosystem.
Now to turn this on its head. Many companies are facing big budget cuts next year. Purse strings are tightening across the globe, so instead, this might be the time to clean house. Because preparation and optimisation are essential when budgets are tight.
So before you spend, check:
A quick optimisation sweep can reveal funds you didn’t know you had.
The key takeaway here is that the ‘use it or lose it’ phenomenon doesn’t have to result in rushed or reactive spending. With the right choices, it becomes a launchpad for a more capable workforce, stronger leadership, smarter systems and a learning function that enters 2026 with clarity and momentum.
Spend on the things that produce multiple results, not just activity.
If you want to explore mentoring, future-ready platforms or impact-driven support, you can book a conversation with one of the team.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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