Doing more with less: How a small L&D team delivered 10x more learning opportunities

Elizabeth runs Learning & Development at Wellthy, a fast-growing work/life company that is changing the way families care for their loved ones, from eldercare to child care to backup care support and beyond.  

She loves designing training herself, but like most small L&D teams, she faced a brutal math problem:

• Building one new training takes ~2 weeks (or more!)
• At best, she could create 12-15 per year.
• Meanwhile, her employees needed hundreds of sessions across leadership, manager skills and AI.

It was impossible to keep up with all the demands… until Wellthy launched Electives Membership.

The opportunity:

As a mission-driven family care organization, Wellthy was facing a common, but critical challenge: how to provide meaningful professional development for a wide range of employees with different skill gaps without overwhelming their lean L&D team.

As Wellthy scaled in a fast paced, high growth environment, the L&D and People team needed to keep employees engaged and developing to grow with their business. Employees needed to get comfortable with AI, build core management skills and deepen the empathy, communication and collaboration skills that bring Wellthy’s mission to life.

Elizabeth loves designing training content herself, but she admitted the ROI wasn’t there:

“I enjoy creating classes, but with the number of different types of training our team needs, it was clear experts could deliver more content at scale.”

Her team needed:

• Scalable, high-quality training that they couldn’t create internally
• Flexible scheduling for their hourly caregiver population
• Content aligned with career growth and organizational impact (not just learning for the sake of learning)
• Access to expertise in emerging areas like AI

The solution:

Wellthy implemented Electives Membership to quickly scale broad access to live training and development across several key areas of content.

With Electives Membership, Wellthy gave employees ongoing access to world-class instructors and live, interactive learning experiences without the heavy lift of internal content creation.

Elizabeth emphasized balance: programs had to connect to employees’ roles while also supporting wellbeing and long-term growth. Electives helped her team achieve both by offering curated classes from Ivy-league professors, industry leaders and expert facilitators.

Every month, Wellthy employees get access to new live classes and Elizabeth helps steer people into the right classes relevant to their roles.

The results:

1. 10 years of content in 1 year!

Elizabeth calculated that creating a single new course took her ~2 weeks. At best, she could produce 12–15 new courses per year.

Her employees? 

They’ve taken 153 unique Membership classes in a single year.

That’s 10 years of internal content creation, delivered instantly through Electives Membership.

2. Monthly utilization reached 90–100% 

In an industry where digital, pre-recorded learning often struggles to gain traction (with industry averages around 3-5%), Wellthy employees have shown exceptional engagement in live classes: 90–100% monthly utilization rate at Wellthy with live Electives classes.

Elizabeth’s 3 tips to drive best-in-class utilization:

1. Utilize your leaders! Having managers talk about professional development opportunities like Electives in their 1:1s and team meetings reinforces that a) they exist and b) they’re there to help employees uplevel themselves in their role. I really lean on managers to help communicate and reinforce learning goals in this way. Making managers a primary channel for promoting development helps connect the team members’ known learning goals directly to specific Electives courses. Managers have the best finger on the pulse of their direct reports’ direction, challenges and interests. 
2. Use recommended class features to leverage company goals and core values. For instance, when I saw the class "Manage your Team for Impact," I immediately recommended it to our Electives learners because "Impact" is one of Wellthy's core themes this year. This makes the learning immediately relevant and strategic to our business.
3. We front-loaded accountability instead of chasing people down mid-program by building a commitment feature into the sign-up process. We asked learners to commit to attending one class per month. If they couldn't commit, we recommended they find a resource that better fit their current scheduling needs. This ensures our resources are utilized by committed learners.

Employees not only signed up — they applied the learnings immediately.

One employee at Wellthy shared:

“One key takeaway from the Electives classes I've attended this year is the importance of clear and intentional communication, especially in collaborative settings like ours. In one of the courses, we focused on strategies for giving and receiving feedback effectively, which has really helped me improve how I interact with colleagues. I've been able to apply this by being more mindful of how I communicate expectations and respond to input, which has made team projects run more smoothly and productively.”

3. Skills that matter: Leadership, managers and AI

The most popular categories at Wellthy have been leadership, manager effectiveness and AI skills — exactly the areas where employees and leaders said they needed growth.

Elizabeth highlighted AI in particular:

“Our survey results showed AI skills were some of the most impactful. Having experts teach these classes gave us confidence we were preparing our workforce for the future.”

4. Surprising experiences

Elizabeth originally thought networking with peers would be one of the most important aspects of Electives’ live classes because you are in classes with peers from other companies. Instead, she was struck by the quality of content and facilitation:

“I expected to care most about networking. But I found the real value was in the instruction itself — professors and facilitators who knew how to engage without distractions.”

“And the Electives classroom management is top notch. No one dominates the room or takes up air time. The live classes are very well run.”

What this means for lean L&D teams

For a lean L&D team in a mission-driven organization, Electives amplified their team's capacity while ensuring employees grew in the areas that matter most.

Electives is how a lean L&D team delivers like a department of ten.

Elizabeth summed it up best:

“Electives allows us to reach more employees with high-quality content we simply couldn’t create internally. It’s the partner that makes scalable, meaningful growth possible.”

Lessons for teams doing more with less

• Amplify your team’s capacity: 10 years of content can be delivered in one.
• Drive real utilization and engagement: 90–100% monthly attendance shows that live, expert-led classes engage employees.
• Support both growth & wellbeing: Employees thrive when learning connects to both their roles and long-term development.
• Invest where it matters: Leadership, manager training and AI are the skills shaping the future of work.

Electives Membership turns learning into a force multiplier.

For Elizabeth, Electives didn’t just deliver classes. It multiplied her team’s capacity: “It would have taken me over 10 years to build that much learning for my team.”

If your L&D team feels like it’s constantly playing catch-up, Electives Membership can make your one-person team feel like ten.

Ready to see how Electives could scale development for your employees? Let’s talk.