As the world of work shifts faster than ever before, so do the skills needed for organisations to compete, creating extremely high priority, yet ever-more difficult, challenges to both find and nurture workers with the skills needed.
According to ManpowerGroup’s annual Talent Shortage Survey, in 2018, 42 per cent of European employers said they couldn’t find workers equipped with the right skills. In 2023, that had risen to 75 per cent.
This creates difficult questions directed at L&D teams from the C-suite. We seem to be no further ahead at all on the skills we need despite organisations spending $400bn (£295bn) globally on workplace training every year. The latest research by The Josh Bersin Company highlights this skills shortage further: only 26 per cent of companies believe they are effectively internally developing the skills needed to execute their business strategy.
This massive shortfall signals not just inefficiency, but fundamental constraints across today’s content, platforms and operating models. What’s going wrong here? And where does L&D go next?
Was all that money wasted?
We’ve been tracking this growing divergence for years, and recently embarked on a thorough interrogation of the reasons for the shortfall. One of the top ones: CHROs and business leaders signalled loud and clear their growing frustration with traditional learning management systems and content.
The base model of only utilising classroom and school-type education just isn’t ideal for work; all that courseware supplemented by e-learning and video-based courses is not responsive or engaging enough on its own to meet the pace and complexity of today’s business demands.
There’s also a delivery gap: the business requests a learning solution and the training department delivers it three to six months later, often without diagnosing the underlying performance problem.
Of course, introducing AI platforms to remedy these pains is an essential part of the answer. But the most successful CLOs recognise that won’t be sufficient on its own. The roots of the skills shortage run deeper and it requires going back to your overarching strategy around skills.
The technology must go hand-in-hand with a robust skills strategy that is inseparably aligned with wider business and workforce planning strategy as well as further consideration of your learning solutions portfolio.
The business requests a learning solution and the training department delivers it three to six months later, often without diagnosing the underlying performance problem
Prioritise skills priority to make learning work
Our new analysis, based on 50-plus case studies and data from 800 organisations worldwide, shows that leading learning teams operate as true strategic partners, working directly with business leaders and business-partnering HR teams to address organisational challenges.
Instead of responding to isolated training requests, top-performing organisations co-create solutions tied directly to actual business priorities. A tightly aligned learning strategy drives this partnership, ensuring that learning investments are pragmatic and support long-term workforce growth and readiness.
In practice, this begins with a clear assessment: Do you know which skills are becoming less useful in terms of the CEO’s view of where the company needs to go next, and which are emerging as mission critical?
The answers from such a study provide the best foundation for building a truly responsive, impactful learning stack inside an organisation and tackling the skills divergence issue.
And at the same time, by operating as a performance consulting function, corporate learning becomes a strategic imperative for C-suite executives (rather than a cost centre) and leaders and employees at all levels regard it more highly.
Build a diverse learning portfolio
Organisations also need a focus on flexibility, and a willingness to work not from a learning content providers’ point of view, but toward their actual people in the field. A diverse learning portfolio remains essential to developing those skills you identify.
Maybe some problems are best delivered by a combination of AI tutors and microlearning, while others are brought to life with peer collaboration. Is coaching and mentoring an essential step in understanding a problem? Will talent marketplaces and career-mapping platforms, connecting skill identification with career planning and targeted learning experiences, be useful to you as well?
Almost certainly, the answer will be yes, but all of this will only land and make that £295bn investment work for you if you integrate all these elements into one cohesive, dynamic learning ecosystem that can operate at the kinds of speeds modern business needs it to (and increasingly can’t afford to ignore).
Success requires more than technology. It demands vision to anticipate the future of work, creativity to reimagine how work is done and agility to navigate change. Organisations that build this capability with L&D as the strategic enabler will outpace competitors in adapting to disruption and capturing emerging opportunities.
Remember, insight is not the ‘death’ of L&D, but a renewed partnership between L&D and the business, one that connects learning to performance. Instead of metrics such as courses consumed or certifications earned, an organisation measure’s an employee’s contribution by real business outcomes such as increased productivity, customer retention and growth.
Do you know which skills are becoming less useful in terms of the CEO’s view of where the company needs to go next, and which are emerging as mission critical?
Actionable insights
1. Ask what’s actually broken: When a training request lands, find out what the real performance problem is before you build anything. L&D teams that do this consistently outperform those that don’t.
2. Align your skills map to where the CEO is heading: Work with senior leaders to identify which skills are becoming redundant and which are critical.
3. Match the tool to the problem: Some challenges need a coach, others a microlearning nudge. Defaulting to the same format every time won’t work.
4. Measure what the CFO cares about: Tie programmes to productivity, retention or time-to-competency and you change how the C-suite sees L&D.
5. Get the strategy right before you deploy AI: AI can personalise learning at scale, but it won’t fix a strategy problem. Nail the priorities first.
