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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Only 10% of companies have the right skills.
- Business leaders must start upskilling talent now.
- AI is the key to learning new workplace skills
Only 10% of human resources (HR) and learning and development (L&D) professionals believe their teams possess the necessary skills to meet business goals within the next one to two years.
That’s the conclusion of Skillsoft’s Global Skills Intelligence Survey. Conducted by an independent market research firm, the research surveyed 1,000 global HR and L&D professionals whose organizations have a talent development program in place.
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More than a quarter (28%) of professionals said skill gaps limit their ability to expand into new markets, and over a third (37%) fear losing top employees to competitors offering stronger development opportunities.
Orla Daly, CIO at Skillsoft, told ZDNET that the research shows business leaders must keep pace with the changing requirements for capabilities in different operational areas.
“Significant percentages of skills are no longer relevant. The skills that we’ll need in 2030 are only just evolving now,” she said. “If you’re not making upskilling and learning part of your core business strategy, then you’re going to ultimately become uncompetitive in terms of retaining talent and delivering on your organizational outcomes.”
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Unsurprisingly, Daly suggests that technology, and artificial intelligence in particular, is the key enabler for the rapid pace of change in skills.
While companies continue to invest money into emerging technology initiatives, a recent MIT study found 95% of enterprises attempting to harness AI aren’t seeing measurable results.
MIT’s research suggests many initiatives fail due to an inability to adapt AIs into existing organizational workflows. That’s a trend Daly also recognizes.
“The investments in AI are outpacing the investments to upskill the organization,” she said. “We have all this great tooling now, but if the people who are using AI don’t know how to take advantage of it, then you’re not going to see the payback.”
Skillsoft’s research suggests business leaders should focus on four key areas of workforce planning to ensure employees are upskilled in the right areas. Daly provided more details.
1. Start with skills, not titles
The research suggests companies lack expertise. As many as 91% of HR professionals believe employees overstate their skill proficiency, particularly in leadership, AI, and technical domains. More than a quarter (28%) cited a lack of technical AI expertise.
While the rise of emerging technology has helped accentuate the problem of title inflation, with people adding AI to their roles to appear more impressive, Daly said it’s not the only explanation: “This is not a new problem, it’s just now relative to AI.”
Almost one in three HR managers responding to the survey said between 41% and 60% of new hires arrive with critical capability gaps.
Also: 5 ways business leaders can transform workplace culture – and it starts by listening
Daly said companies must pay more attention to the skills of their employees, including measuring and testing those proficiencies.
“That’s about using a combination of benchmarks, which we use at Skillsoft, that allow you, through testing, to understand the skills that you have,” she said. “It’s also about how you understand that capability in terms of real-world applications and measuring those skills in the context of the jobs that are being done.”
2. Measure progress continually, not once a year
Creating benchmarks to check internal skills capabilities is just the starting point. Daly said business leaders must place this process at the heart of organizational operations.
“You need to make measurement central to the business strategy, and have a program around learning, so it’s part of the everyday culture of the business,” she said. “From the executive level down, you need to say learning is a core part of the organization. Learning then turns up in all of your business operating frameworks in terms of how you track and measure the outcomes of programs, similar to other investments that you would make.”
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The research suggests only 18% of HR leaders regularly measure skills throughout the talent development journey. Daly believes AI can play a crucial role in skills development and measurement.
“Our process started with the basic things, such as how much time people invest in learning, and we’ve evolved beyond that to look at the result of the learning,” she said. “I think that’s where AI gives you a little bit more to play with. Because people can do a pilot, they can create a proof of concept with an agent or a new product leveraging AI, and you can see the real business impact of those efforts.”
3. Use AI as an enabler, not a crutch
Daly recognized that many early generative AI programs have been about productivity improvements, and there’s value in that work. However, senior executives need to think more carefully about how AI can boost employee experience.
“The real value of AI is about how you reimagine your business and how you find new potential value streams,” she said.
The survey reports that over two-fifths (41%) of HR professionals believe resistance to change is the top barrier to AI adoption.
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Daly said that allowing staff to dabble in AI means they learn new skills that could create a long-term competitive advantage.
“Success is about leaning into AI as an enabler, more so than just simply a productivity enhancer — that’s the differentiator for businesses,” she said. “Everyone’s going to get to that foundational level of using AI to do things a little bit more efficiently. But figuring out how to use AI to impact the business strategy will be the difference.”
4. Connect upskilling to business outcomes
The research found that only 20% of HR leaders believe their development programs align with business objectives.
“Organizations have been challenged with this issue for a long time, in terms of learning programs being somewhat of a check-the-box exercise,” said Daly, who re-emphasized the importance of exploration in an age of AI. “One of the big benefits in tech right now is the hands-on component. Some of my team, who are non-technical staff members, who were just curious, showed me the agents they’ve built and what they’ve learned by leveraging tools like Copilot.”
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Daly said success is about tying upskilling to the work people undertake and identifying business problems where AI can be applied, and that’s something that’s happening in her firm.
“We have a few of those problems that we’re working on right now that just make everything real,” she said. “Those opportunities connect the skills directly to the job people do, rather than training being something on the side that they then struggle to connect back to change their day-to-day behaviours.”
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