Using ‘employee-led development’ to promote lifelong learning in SMEs: a research note Rick Holden, Vikki Smith and Dave Devins Leeds Metropolitan University Introduction This paper examines an innovative initiative within the context of lifelong learning. Commitment to lifelong learning requires subscription to a radical new learning agenda. Lifelong learning is more than simply continuous education. The workplace is a significant context for learning and individual employees need to be empowered to take the responsibility for developing their potential through learning. This poses real challenges for both policy makers and HRD practitioners alike in trying to break out of traditional paradigms of learning and traditional approaches to its delivery. The challenge is particularly acute within the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector, notoriously weak in terms of infrastructure and investment in training and development (Matlay 1999; Westhead and Storey 1997), yet seen as key to the extension of the learning society beyond current levels of workforce education and training (DfEE 1998a; Fryer 1999; McGivney 1997). The project discussed in this paper sought to square up to such challenges. It championed many of the credentials of the new learning agenda. It purported to be ‘learner-centred’. It was located within the workplace and specifically within the SME sector. Furthermore, it embraced information and communication technology (ICT), which is increasingly seen as a means both to stimulate and to sustain lifelong learning (DfEE 1998a, 1998b). The aspirations and outcomes of the project are discussed. It would be unfair to cast the project as a failure. However, the research undertaken over its course highlights the significance of a powerful network of stakeholders in limiting the implementation of a specifically learner-centred publicly funded policy initiative. Lifelong learning was subsumed under a largely capability-driven HRD agenda (Garavan et al. 2000), utilizing a narrow and formal curriculum. The research, therefore, raises a doubt about the feasibility of such initiatives to facilitate the sorts of significant change implied by any serious approach to lifelong learning. Context The project was funded through the European Community initiative ADAPT. To secure funding through ADAPT projects must contribute to the drive to assist companies and workers to address change. In this project, ‘learning’ was chosen as the principal means by which this would be realized. Through the resourcing and estab- lishment of ICT-based learning centres on each of three industrial estates, the project • PERSPECTIVES ON PRACTICE • Human Resource Development International ISSN 1367-8868 print/ISSN 1469-8374 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/13678860110071425 HRDI 6:1 (2003), pp. 125–132