Outsourced L&D
Outsourcing works until it reaches the part that cannot leave the building.
Thrive provides learning content, live delivery, guided setup, coaching on request, and progress reporting. Your team owns priorities, reminders, and review of application at work. This page draws that line before you buy.
What the term means
Outsourced L&D, defined.
Outsourced L&D means using an external provider for agreed parts of learning and development, rather than staffing every activity internally. Scope varies: a provider may supply content, delivery, administration, or consulting. Specify who owns assignments, reminders, and evaluation before comparing prices.
It is worth doing at this size because the list costs roughly the same whether six people or sixty are being developed. An enterprise absorbs that with a department. Everyone else was asked to absorb it with nobody, which is why the honest description of talent development at most companies of 50 to 2,500 is a shared inbox and good intentions.
Why this costs the same at two hundred people as at ten thousand →
How Thrive fits
The line, and why it falls where it does.
Thrive provides the course library, live delivery, guided setup, enrollment on request, coaching between sessions, and progress reporting. Morgan works from your employee list and approvals. Coach Taylor helps with enrollment and questions when asked. Your team maintains accurate information, chooses participants, sends reminders, and reviews progress.
One job deliberately does not cross. Applied work in the program goes back to the participant’s own manager, with the prompts to review it, and not to us. Reviewing it ourselves would be easier to sell and would quietly remove the only person whose attention changes how somebody behaves on a Tuesday. So the ask is a manager who will spend twenty minutes, and it is made before you buy rather than after.
See an illustrative first month for a 250-person company, including the price, responsibilities, and a worksheet for evaluating application—not just completion.
Who arrives at this page
- Companies about to post an L&D role who would rather see the function running before they write the job description.
- HR teams of one to three people carrying training on the side of a job that is already full.
- Multi-site companies that need the same program run the same way in three locations without flying anybody anywhere.
The same function is also searched for as Fractional L&D and L&D as a service. Different argument, same product. Companies ready to start can buy the talent development function at a flat organization price. For organizations comparing executive coaching platforms, see how Thrive compares to BetterUp for developing the management layer.
The line
The jobs, allocated.
Learning resources and delivery come from Thrive. Setup needs your information and approval. Application review and reminders remain with your team.
Carried
Designing the material
One hundred thirty-five courses across five libraries, fifty-six of them free in the compliance library, plus sixteen live workshop topics. Nothing to write, nothing to license, nothing to keep current.
Carried
Delivering it live
Facilitators who have held the role, in public cohorts and on a published workshop schedule. Two hours, twenty-five seats, small enough that somebody watches each person practice.
Carried
Enrolling and scheduling
Morgan guides setup from your employee spreadsheet and approvals. Coach Taylor helps with enrollment when asked. Your team selects participants, checks available sessions, and names the owner of the rollout.
Carried
Coaching between sessions
Coach Taylor answers on the situation the person is actually in, at whatever hour the question happens, without a booking and without costing one of your managers an hour.
Carried
Reporting learning progress
Progress and completion reporting in the platform for your admins, so whoever approved this can see what happened without asking us for a deck.
Yours, on purpose
Reviewing the applied work
The program hands applied work back to the participant’s own manager with the prompts to review it. This is the one job we will not take, because taking it would remove the only person in the arrangement whose opinion the participant has to live with.
Your team, today
Reminding and following up
Your team sends reminders and follows up with people who miss learning. Coach Taylor answers when asked; scheduled reminders are on the roadmap, not in the product today. Name an owner before launching.
What this is not
This is not a staffing arrangement. Nobody from Thrive sits in your leadership meetings, writes your policy, runs your performance cycle, or documents how your company works. If what you need is a person in the building, hire one. If what you need is your own processes written down, that is a different product and there are good ones. What is being outsourced here is the function, not a headcount.
Who teaches
Held the job. Not studied it.
Content is the easy part to buy. A dozen vendors will sell you a library this afternoon. What none of them sells is the person who has already done the job, live, for two hours, watching your people practice it.
Every Thrive session is led by someone who has done the work they are teaching: run a shift, carried a quota, managed a team through a change, sat across from the person who needed the hard conversation. They bring the real version of the problem into the room, and the practice is done on your people’s actual work, not on a case study.
Sessions are small enough that a facilitator can watch each person practice and coach the delivery. Between sessions, Coach Taylor keeps the thread going.
- Session size
- 25 max
- Length
- 2 hours
- Format
- Live
- Where
- Teams
The price
One flat price for the whole organization.
The band is set by how many people you employ, and that is the only thing it sets. Nothing is metered, nothing is held back for a higher band, and adding people inside your band costs nothing. Cohort programs are the one line priced per participant, because a facilitator and a fixed group size are a real constraint.
| Organization size | Monthly | Annual | Per person, per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compliance LibraryAny size, no card. Start free | Free | Free | Nothing, at any size. |
| Thrive Platformup to 100 employees | $399 | $3,990 | $3.99 at 100 people, and less every time you hire inside the band. |
| Thrive Platform101-500 employees | $799 | $7,990 | $1.60 at 500 people, and less every time you hire inside the band. |
| Thrive Platform501-2,500 employees | $1,499 | $14,990 | $0.60 at 2,500 people, and less every time you hire inside the band. |
| Above 2,500 employees | Set with you, not looked up. Usually with private cohorts of your own. | ||
This table has no column for what is included, because the answer does not change by band: live workshops, all one hundred thirty-five courses across five libraries with fifty-six of those free in the compliance library, Coach Taylor for every learner, Morgan for setup, and the reporting. Annual billing is ten months charged for twelve months of access. A monthly plan is one month, charged once; nothing renews on its own yet.
Talk to ARIA
Ask what you would ask us.
ARIA works the way a good first call works. She asks who is involved and what should change, recommends the closest starting point, quotes the real price, and hands you to a person when you want one.
Start with one of these
Prefer a person? Say so in the conversation and the team follows up, or use the contact page.
Questions
Questions about outsourced l&d.
What is outsourced L&D?
Using an external provider for agreed learning and development activities. Thrive provides a course library, live workshops, guided setup, coaching on request, and progress reporting. Your company chooses participants, approves assignments, sends reminders, and reviews application. Leadership cohorts are priced separately from platform access.
What will not be outsourced?
Your team owns training priorities, accurate employee information, approvals, reminders, and review of application. Program participants bring applied work to their own managers. Coach Taylor answers when asked, but scheduled reminders are not available today.
What do you need from us to start?
A named owner, an accurate list of people to enroll, a clear training priority, and managers who will review application. Morgan guides setup; your owner approves roles and assignments. Check the published workshop dates and seat availability, and decide who will send reminders. The first-month example on our HR page shows one way to organize the work.
Can an outsourced provider use our own situations?
Yes. In public cohorts each participant works on a real situation from their own job, so the material lands on your problems even in a shared room. Any program can also run as a private cohort for your company alone, using your situations as the applied work, on dates set with you. Private cohorts are priced per participant and quoted with the dates.