Employee Learning and Development
Why It Matters | Our Approach | Progress | Related Topics
Last updated: July 1, 2026
Why It Matters
To Lilly:
When our people grow, we grow. We foster a culture of continuous learning where employees are encouraged to explore, develop, and lead with purpose. Investing in our employees’ development helps us stay innovative, inclusive, and aligned with our mission to make life better. Our learning and development programs are designed to keep employees highly skilled and engaged as they make meaningful contributions toward our purpose - and to give them what they need to succeed in a highly regulated, rapidly evolving industry.
To the World:
A workforce that is empowered to learn and evolve is better equipped to solve complex challenges and drive meaningful change. When people have access to growth opportunities, they advance their careers and help build stronger organizations, healthier communities, and a more resilient global economy.
Approach
Every employee has an individually tailored learning plan. We offer the specialized training to support the technical demands of our work, as well as education on corporate policies including our code of business conduct. Beyond compliance, we work to nurture a culture of lifelong learning by encouraging employees to seek ongoing education and growth experiences across the breadth of Lilly's business, from discovery and development to manufacturing, marketing, and global services.
Our many upskilling and reskilling offerings are often a win-win: employees can pursue new skills and opportunities and we benefit from retaining engaged employees who are already knowledgeable about Lilly and our industry. We also look for ways to use technology, including AI-powered tools, to make personalized development more accessible and available to employees at every level.
Leadership Development
Effective leadership is essential to a thriving organization, and we continue to expand our investment in leadership development programs, tools and resources for leaders at all levels across the globe. Our aim is to help leaders build the skills and strategies needed to lead inclusive, collaborative and high-performing teams.
Discover Leading@Lilly, our signature development program for leaders globally, offers a comprehensive curriculum through a variety of courses and experiences over an 18-month pathway. Our REACH Leadership Development program expands its impact annually, delivering both company strategy and skill-building content to more leaders globally. Additional programming has addressed inclusive leadership in hybrid environments, effective communication in a dynamic, information-rich world, compassionate leadership, psychological safety, and elevating performance.
“Take the Lead” is a live webinar series delivered by Lilly executives to all leaders globally. External live coaching is now available to leaders at all levels through a technology-enabled coaching partner, supplementing the AI coaching platform available to all employees.
Inclusive Training Design
We continue to evolve design standards for training courses to improve accessibility for people living and working with disabilities and other access needs - including compatibility with assistive technologies such as screen readers for employees with visual impairments and providing transcripts for individuals with hearing impairments.
Progress
In 2025, we continued to expand the ways our employees can learn, grow, and access personalized development support.
We launched a personal, private AI coaching platform available to all employees. Available around the clock, the coach provides real-time, personalized guidance tailored to an employee's role, challenges, and aspirations. Trained on Lilly values, culture, and processes, it delivers practical strategies and feedback to help elevate performance, strengthen relationships, and develop emotional intelligence. The platform complements our existing human coaching offerings, broadening access to development support at every level of the organization.
Enhancements to our U.S. education assistance program, including the shift to pre-pay and day-one eligibility, continued to drive results, with the percentage of employees taking advantage of the benefit growing year over year.
Across our learning platforms, employees averaged 85 total training hours in 2025 — approximately 82 hours of technical and compliance-focused training and 3 hours of development-focused learning. More than 13,900 employees viewed development content on Lilly-provided platforms, with learners averaging 9 courses and nearly 3 hours of learning time. The most popular content categories reflected where the industry is heading: AI and GenAI (including prompting, ethics, and Microsoft Copilot), digital marketing trends, and project management.
Together, these efforts reinforce our belief that when our people grow, we all benefit and that making development accessible, continuous, and relevant is part of how we deliver on our purpose.