OUR PERSPECTIVES
Introduction
The ability to build and maintain the right skills has become one of the most pressing challenges facing organizations today. Every organization depends on people who can meet current business demands while preparing for what comes next. Yet, the path to building that workforce has become more complex. Jobs are changing, skills requirements are shifting, and organizations are being asked to keep pace with a skills landscape that rarely stands still in a traditional business ecosystem that can hardly keep up.
The skills challenge facing organizations is not simply that employees need more training, but that the target keeps moving. As work evolves, the skills that employees need today may not be the same skills they need tomorrow. New technology, new tools, new ways of working, and new business priorities are reshaping what employees need to know and do. This current reality puts greater pressure on organizations to not only identify skills gaps but also build systems that help employees continue developing as those needs change.
Learning and development (L&D) plays a critical role in that effort. While recruiting helps organizations bring in new talent and capabilities, L&D helps organizations grow, strengthen, and sustain the talent they already have. At its best, L&D strengthens workforce capability, preserves institutional knowledge, and helps employees prepare for changing work demands. The strongest skills strategies intentionally integrate both recruiting and L&D so organizations can bring in needed skills while continuing to develop the people within.
To better understand how organizations can use L&D to address evolving skills needs, SHRM Thought Leadership surveyed HR professionals involved in L&D initiatives at their organizations as well as global workers to examine:
- How are organizations approaching L&D as skills needs continue to evolve?
- What does a more strategic approach to L&D look like in practice?
- How are stronger L&D strategies connected to workforce readiness, employee experience, and business outcomes?
This research gives HR and L&D leaders a clearer path for strengthening how their organizations build skills from within. By identifying the practices most closely tied to stronger organizational outcomes, the findings offer practical recommendations for aligning development with business needs, supporting employees as work changes, and preparing the workforce for what comes next.
L&D in a Changing Skills Environment
As skills needs continue to evolve, the role of L&D must also evolve. Organizations continue to need learning programs that support employees in their current roles, but they also need development strategies that help the workforce prepare for the longer term. According to SHRM’s 2026 Talent Trends report, over one-quarter of HR professionals (27%) said that the full-time positions they’ve hired for in the last 12 months required new skills, and over three-quarters of those HR professionals (77%) said they have had difficulty finding qualified candidates to fill those roles. Not only is this challenge felt within organizations, but it is also exacerbated by a broader talent market in which the skills that employers need are changing faster than the available talent pool can keep up.
SHRM’s analysis of new job postings showed that, since 2015, the average number of skills required by employers has steadily increased over time, suggesting that roles have become more complex. Employees are expected to bring new combinations of technical, power, and business skills, while organizations are trying to understand which skills are most urgent, which are emerging, and which will remain central as technology changes how work is done.
A closer look at how the composition of skills demand has changed since the pre-pandemic era reveals a highly dynamic environment in which some skills areas have become more or less prevalent while others have remained widely sought-after even if their prevalence has held relatively steady. A detailed analysis of the scatterplot chart below illustrates how skills demand has evolved dramatically since the pre-pandemic era. The chart visualizes each skills subcategory along two dimensions: the y-axis displays the ratio of skills mentions per new job posting in 2026 versus 2019, indicating whether a skill is more or less likely to appear in new job postings. A value above 1 signals increased demand, while a value below 1 reflects decreased prevalence. The x-axis shows the share of new job postings in 2026 that reference each skill, providing insight into the overall market demand for each capability.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning stands out as one of the fastest-growing skills areas since 2019, as these skills are almost three times more likely to appear in new job postings than they were six years ago. On the other hand, the widespread use of AI and other advanced technologies has contributed to the sharp decline in prevalence of basic technology skills such as programming languages. However, the broader pattern is not limited to technology. Employers continue to seek a wide range of capabilities, including communication, leadership, business operations, social skills, and critical thinking and problem-solving.
This mix of emerging and enduring skills prevalence adds complexity for organizations. L&D strategies cannot focus only on the newest technical capabilities, nor can they rely solely on the skills that have historically supported performance. Organizations need a clearer understanding of which skills are becoming more important, which remain foundational across roles, and which skills employees may need to develop further as jobs continue to change.
This constant movement makes skills gaps harder to address through any one strategy. Organizations need learning programs that help employees perform in their current roles, but they also need development strategies that prepare employees for the skills they will need next. That balance can be difficult to maintain when L&D strategy is pulled toward the needs that are most immediate: Nearly 3 in 4 HR professionals (72%) said that their organizations’ L&D strategies are primarily driven by current skills needs.
A focus on current skills needs is important, but it may leave organizations with less visibility into the capabilities that employees will need next. For L&D, the opportunity is to pair that immediate focus with a clearer view of how roles, tools, and business priorities are likely to change. Doing so can help organizations build learning strategies that address today’s gaps while also preparing employees for the work ahead.
Many L&D approaches were built for a more stable skills environment, in which organizations could identify needs periodically, build programs for broad audiences, and evaluate success through measures such as completion, participation, or learner satisfaction. Those activities still have value, but they are not always enough when skills needs are changing quickly. For HR and L&D leaders, the challenge is to move beyond simply providing learning opportunities and toward building a more intentional skills strategy. That means understanding where capability gaps exist, prioritizing the skills most critical to their organizations’ goals, and designing learning experiences that are relevant, accessible, and connected to the work that employees are doing.
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How Learning Shapes the Employee Experience at Work
The case for stronger L&D is not only reflected in organizational skills needs, but also in how employees experience learning as part of their work. When development opportunities are available and relevant, they can shape whether employees feel more engaged, supported, and prepared to continue growing in their roles.
Global worker data provides additional context for this connection. Among 5,832 global workers who said their organizations offer L&D programs, over 3 in 4 (78%) reported that participating in L&D had a positive or slightly positive impact on their engagement.
Even in countries where the reported impact was lower than the global average, a majority of workers still reported that L&D had a positive effect on their engagement. This pattern shows that many workers view L&D as beneficial for engagement, while also highlighting that employees’ experiences with learning are not uniform across global contexts.
Learning opportunities may also be connected to how prepared workers feel to navigate change. Workers whose organizations offer L&D were significantly more likely to strongly agree that they feel confident in their ability to adapt to new challenges at work compared with workers whose organizations do not offer L&D (38% versus 30%). This difference does not suggest that L&D alone determines adaptability, but it does show that access to learning is associated with stronger worker confidence as roles, tools, and expectations continue to evolve.
Together, these worker findings underscore why L&D matters not just as a program offering, but as part of how employees experience growth, adaptability, and readiness at work. Consistently building that kind of L&D requires a clearer understanding of what stronger L&D looks like in practice.
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Defining the Best: The Skills Strategist Model
To explore how the most effective organizations approach L&D, SHRM Thought Leadership conducted a study examining a broad set of 16 strategic practices and 48 scaled behaviors across four key focus areas, which are defined below. These focus areas reflect the major components of an effective L&D function: how learning is aligned to the business, how capabilities and learning needs are identified, how learning is designed and delivered, and how processes and tools support the work.
Strategic Alignment reflects the extent to which L&D is integrated and executed in ways that support overall organizational and business objectives. Organizations with stronger strategic alignment ensure that learning is connected to business goals, supported by leaders, informed by stakeholders, and resourced in ways that reflect its importance.
Learning Assessment reflects how effectively the organization assesses current workforce capabilities and identifies gaps related to evolving skills needs. This includes how organizations assess skills, prioritize learning needs, incorporate employee input, and use data to understand where development is needed most.
Learning Design and Delivery reflects whether L&D programs are designed, structured, and delivered in ways that support relevance, accessibility, engagement, skills retention, and impact. This includes the quality of learning content, whether learning is integrated into work, and whether programs are tailored to employees’ needs.
Processes and Tools reflects whether technology, data, and formal processes help L&D operate more efficiently and effectively. This includes the use of learning platforms, data integration, automation, and clear guidelines for the responsible use of AI in learning.
Each focus area is supported by four underlying strategic practices that help define what effective L&D looks like in practice, for a total of 16 strategic practices across the model. Together, these four focus areas and their respective strategic practices provide a more detailed view of how organizations build, manage, and sustain learning strategies that meet evolving skills needs.
| Strategic Alignment | Learning Assessment | Learning Design and Delivery | Processes and Tools | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it reflects | How L&D is strategically integrated and executed in ways that support overall organizational and business objectives. | How the organization assesses current workforce capabilities and identifies gaps related to evolving skills needs. | How L&D programs and content are designed, structured, and delivered to maximize quality, relevance, accessibility, engagement, skills acquisition, retention, and overall impact. | How technology, data, and processes enable a more efficient and effective L&D function through connected systems and the use of automation and AI. |
| Strategic practices |
|
|
|
|
To identify organizations taking a stronger and more consistent approach to L&D, the research measured practical behaviors across the model. Each of the 16 strategic practices was assessed through three survey questions, for a total of 48 items. Responses were scored on a 5-point scale, with higher scores indicating stronger alignment with effective L&D practices.
Organizations that scored within the top 20% across the four focus areas overall were identified as Skills Strategists. Skills Strategists are not defined by the size or budget of their L&D function or by the volume of training programs they offer. They are defined by the consistency and strength of their approach. They are more likely to connect learning to business priorities, effectively assess current and future skills needs, personalize learning to employees, and use processes and tools that strengthen the effectiveness of the function.
The model also underscores that effective L&D is not defined by a single practice, program, or investment. Organizations may excel in one area while facing constraints in another. For example, an organization may offer strong learning content but have limited visibility into future skills needs. Another may have useful skills data but lack the leadership support or resources needed to act on those insights. Skills Strategists stand out because they demonstrate strength across the full L&D spectrum, including strategic alignment, learning assessments, program delivery, and enabling processes.
The distinction between Skills Strategists and most organizations also appears in how they approach L&D implementation. Skills Strategists are significantly more likely, compared to most organizations, to take a calculation-driven approach (66% versus 28%), meaning they are more willing to test and adopt new approaches when the potential value is high. By contrast, most organizations are more likely to describe their approach as caution-driven or comfort-driven, meaning they either make smaller, lower-risk changes only when there is clear evidence the change will work or rely on familiar approaches with limited change. This pattern suggests that Skills Strategists are not simply maintaining existing L&D practices — they are more likely to make deliberate decisions about when new approaches are worth pursuing.
What is a Skills Strategist?
Skills Strategists are organizations that take a consistent, strategic, and targeted approach to L&D across four key focus areas: Strategic Alignment, Learning Assessment, Learning Design and Delivery, and Processes and Tools.
In practice, Skills Strategists approach L&D with a different mindset than most organizations. They are strategic thinkers that connect learning to business priorities, forward-lookers that anticipate future skills needs, performance drivers that evaluate L&D by workforce and business outcomes, and calculated risk-takers that experiment responsibly when the potential value is clear.
How Organizations Approach L&D Decision-Making
Organizations tend to fall into four broad approaches when implementing new L&D strategies:
Comfort-driven:
Rely on familiar approaches and rarely make changes.
Caution-driven:
Make small, low-risk changes only when there is clear evidence they will work.
Calculation-driven:
Test and adopt new approaches when potential value is high, even with some uncertainty.
Chance-driven:
Pursue higher-risk changes without prior testing or clear evidence.
In practice, Skills Strategists are more likely to take a calculation-driven approach — balancing experimentation with intentional decision-making — while most organizations rely on methods that are more cautious or familiar.
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Strong L&D Shows Up First in the Workforce
The value of the Skills Strategist model lies in its connection to workforce capability. L&D has the greatest value when it helps employees build skills they can retain, apply, and use as their work changes. Access to learning is important, but it alone does not determine whether development strengthens the workforce.
Skills Strategists are more consistent in how they structure and support L&D, which better positions them to identify skills gaps, prioritize the capabilities that matter most, and ensure learning can be applied in their employees’ day-to-day work. In that sense, workforce capability is an important first measure of whether L&D is strengthening the organization in ways that extend beyond the training experience itself.
Skills Strategists are significantly more likely, compared to most organizations, to see stronger outcomes closely tied to L&D’s core purpose. They are more likely to report that L&D is helping to close skills gaps, sustain skills development, and build confidence in their internal talent. These differences show up first at the workforce level and provide a clear starting point for understanding how a more strategic approach to L&D strengthens organizational capability.
Skills Strategists Are Better Positioned to Close Skills Gaps
Closing skills gaps is one of the clearest ways to assess whether L&D is fulfilling its core purpose. As role requirements shift and business needs evolve, organizations need learning strategies that do more than provide general development opportunities. They need L&D that is targeted to the needs that matter most, personalized to employees, and relevant to the work so employees can apply what they learn.
The Skills Strategist approach is especially relevant because it directs learning toward the gaps that matter most. HR professionals at Skills Strategist organizations are over 2.5 times more likely to agree or strongly agree that their organizations’ L&D initiatives are effective at filling skills gaps compared to those at most organizations (77% versus 30%). Skills Strategists align learning with business priorities, assess current and future skills needs, and tailor development to employees to more effectively close skills gaps and build the capabilities their organizations need to succeed.
Skills Strategists Are Better at Sustaining Skills over Time
Addressing skills gaps require more than training employees in new skills when the need emerges. It also requires organizations to help employees retain these capabilities as roles, tools, and expectations evolve. Without this continuity, learning can become a temporary intervention rather than a long-term strategy.
Skills Strategists are better positioned to support more lasting skills development because their approach emphasizes relevance, accessibility, reinforcement, and connection to work. These practices create stronger conditions for employees to retain and apply what they’ve learned, especially when learning is aligned with their roles and supported beyond the initial training experience. As a result, Skills Strategists were twice as likely, compared to most organizations, to rate the level of skill retention at their organizations as good or excellent (68% versus 34%).
Skills Strategists Report Broader Workforce Readiness
Compared to most organizations, Skills Strategists were significantly less likely to report further development needs in areas such as leadership and management development, power skills, technical skills, compliance skills, and business skills. However, AI literacy stands apart from this pattern, with approximately 2 in 3 organizations in both groups saying their workforce still needs further development in this area. This finding highlights that even the most advanced organizations have not fully closed this gap, underscoring how quickly new skills demands are emerging.
Skills Strategists Report Greater Confidence in Internal Talent
A strong skills strategy should also give organizations greater confidence in the talent they already have. When organizations believe their internal workforces have the capabilities needed to achieve their goals, it signals that development efforts are supporting business objectives from within.
Internal talent confidence is especially important because it connects L&D to workforce readiness. It reflects whether organizations are building the capabilities that employees need to respond to changing priorities, take on new challenges, and continue contributing as business needs evolve. Skills Strategists reported stronger confidence in that internal talent base. On a 10-point scale, their average confidence score was 8.01, compared with 6.81 among most organizations.
Taken together, these functional L&D outcomes establish the foundation for how the organization performs. When organizations are better able to close skills gaps, sustain skills development, and build confidence in internal talent, they are also better positioned to achieve stronger outcomes across the business.
Skills Strategists Show Stronger Workforce Capability
Skills Strategists were 2.5 times more likely to agree or strongly agree that their organizations’ L&D initiatives are effective at filling skills gaps compared to most organizations, and twice as likely to rate the level of skills retention at their organizations as good or excellent.
Skills Strategists Drive Stronger Organizational Outcomes
A strong L&D foundation is valuable because workforce capability is closely tied to how organizations perform and how employees experience work. When learning is aligned with business priorities and designed to help employees build relevant skills, L&D can support outcomes that extend beyond the learning function itself.
The difference between Skills Strategists and most organizations is not limited to how they approach L&D. It also shows up in the outcomes they report across the business. Compared to most organizations, Skills Strategists were significantly more likely to report better financial performance, stronger performance against nonfinancial key performance indicators (KPIs), higher employee engagement, and better organizational culture. These findings suggest that effective L&D is associated not only with stronger workforce capability outcomes, but also with broader measures of business performance and workplace health.
Compared to most organizations, Skills Strategists are…
2.3x
More likely to report better financial outcomes
3.4x
More likely to report better nonfinancial outcomes
5.3x
More likely to report better employee engagement
5.4x
More likely to report better organizational culture
Note: Results from this table control for organization size, organization age, organization type, region, and industry and are derived from an ordinal logistic regression of 1,818 observations.
Skills Strategists Report Better Financial Performance
Financial performance is not the only measure of organizational success, but it remains a critical indicator of whether organizations are achieving the goals needed to sustain operations and invest in growth. When stronger L&D is associated with stronger financial outcomes, it becomes imperative to position learning as a business priority rather than simply an employee development function.
Compared to most organizations, Skills Strategists are 2.3 times more likely to report good or excellent financial performance. In a more focused analysis of publicly traded and nonprofit organizations, Skills Strategists also had 5.5 percentage points higher revenue growth than most organizations. These results position L&D as part of the broader performance picture: Organizations that take a more consistent and targeted approach to developing their workforces are also more likely to report stronger financial outcomes.
2.3x
More likely to report better financial outcomes
5.5
Percentage points higher revenue growth
Skills Strategists Report Stronger Nonfinancial KPIs
Nonfinancial KPIs complement financial outcomes by capturing other indicators of organizational effectiveness. These measures may include customer satisfaction, brand reputation, productivity rates, and net promoter score, among others.
Skills Strategists were 3.4 times more likely than most organizations to report better nonfinancial outcomes. This finding suggests that a more effective L&D system may be connected to the operational and business-specific measures that organizations rely on to assess progress. When learning is aligned with the work the employees perform and the goals the organizations is trying to achieve, L&D is better positioned to support performance in ways that extend beyond participation or completion.
3.4x
More likely to report better performance against nonfinancial KPIs
Skills Strategists Report Higher Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is shaped by whether employees feel prepared, supported, and able to grow. Development opportunities serve as a signal that the organization is investing in employees’ growth, helping them build relevant skills, and preparing them to succeed as expectations change. When learning feels connected to employees’ roles and goals, it can strengthen the relationship between employees and the organization.
Skills Strategists were 5.3 times more likely than most organizations to report better employee engagement. This is one of the largest differences across the organizational outcomes examined. The difference between Skills Strategists and most organizations reinforces that stronger L&D is closely connected to employee experience, especially when learning helps employees build skills that matter to their work and future growth.
5.3x
More likely to report better employee engagement
Skills Strategists Report Better Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is shaped by what the organization consistently supports, reinforces, and makes visible. When learning is visible, valued, and reinforced, it can become part of how the organization supports growth and adapts to change. That cultural signal matters because development is more likely to take hold when employees see that learning is encouraged by leaders, supported by managers, and connected to how the organization operates.
Skills Strategists were 5.4 times more likely than most organizations to report better organizational culture. This is the strongest difference across the organizational outcomes examined. The finding suggests that effective L&D is closely tied to the broader environment in which employees work, not only the programs they complete. A strong learning culture is not just a programmatic advantage, it is a cultural signal about whether growth is truly valued.
5.4x
More likely to report better organizational culture
The pattern across these outcomes shows that the value of L&D is not limited to the L&D function alone. Skills Strategists were more likely to report stronger results across business performance, employee engagement, and culture, making it important to examine the practices most closely tied to those differences.
What Stronger L&D Looks Like in Practice
The outcome differences establish the business case for stronger L&D and are most meaningful when viewed alongside the practices most strongly associated with them. Across the outcome analyses, six practice themes stood out for the strength and breadth of their connections to financial performance, nonfinancial KPIs, employee engagement, and organizational culture. The pattern does not point to specific formulas for specific outcomes. Instead, it shows that certain L&D practices are connected to multiple outcomes, suggesting that some actions can influence more than one measure of organizational success.
These practices point to various ways that organizations can strengthen the conditions around L&D. Some practices focus on making learning more relevant and useful for employees, such as personalizing learning to employee needs and creating new pathways for building skills. Others focus on making L&D more visible and better informed through senior leaders promoting L&D and gathering feedback from multiple stakeholders. Other practices reinforce the processes and tools behind learning by keeping tools current and implementing guardrails for the use of AI.
Some practices have especially broad reach. Personalizing learning to employee needs is associated with all four outcomes examined, while introducing new learning pathways and senior leaders promoting L&D each appear across three outcome areas. Clear guidelines for the use of AI in learning is associated with both engagement and culture. Reviewing skills assessment tools and gathering stakeholder feedback across the business appear in more targeted parts of the outcome pattern.
The larger takeaway is not that organizations should select one practice for one desired outcome, it’s that certain L&D practices can influence more than one measure of success. For Skills Strategists, targeted improvements in how learning is designed, supported, informed, and governed can be reflected across multiple areas of organizational performance.
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Becoming a Skills Strategist
The practices that stand out across the research point to an actionable path forward. Becoming a Skills Strategist does not require organizations to rebuild L&D all at once. It starts with strengthening the connections that make learning more targeted, relevant, and sustainable: the connections between learning and business priorities, between current skills and future needs, between development and employees’ day-to-day work, and between L&D strategy and the systems that support it.
The four focus areas of the Skills Strategist model provide a useful way to organize that work. Each area gives HR and L&D leaders a place to examine how learning is planned, how skills needs are understood, how programs are designed, and how the function is supported over time.
When learning is not connected to business needs, L&D can become a collection of programs rather than a strategy for building capability. For Skills Strategists, stronger alignment helps ensure that learning priorities are tied to business goals, workforce needs, and the skills that employees need to support long-term business success.
- Map major L&D initiatives to specific business goals or workforce needs. Connecting learning priorities to the organization’s goals positions L&D as an integrated function that supports broader organizational success.
- Create a process for revisiting whether L&D priorities still reflect current and future business needs. Regular review cycle throughout the year, not just during the annual review period, allows L&D to adjust as roles, tools, and business priorities change.
- Engage senior leaders, business unit leaders, managers, employees, and other stakeholders when shaping L&D strategy. Input from across the organization helps L&D reflect both strategic priorities and day-to-day experiences.
- Communicate the connection between learning programs, business objectives, and professional development. When the purpose of learning is clear, leaders are better able to support it, managers are better able to reinforce it, and employees are more likely to understand how development applies to their work.
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In a rapidly changing skills environment, outdated skills data can be almost as limiting as no skills data at all. Organizations need a current view of workforce capabilities to understand which skills employees have today, which gaps are emerging, and which capabilities will matter most in the future.
- Assess employees’ skills and competencies regularly. Regular assessment gives organizations a clearer picture of where capabilities are strong and where development is needed.
- Review skills assessment tools to ensure they reflect evolving business needs and technological changes. Assessment tools should evolve alongside jobs, technology, and business priorities so the information they provide remains useful.
- Use multiple sources of information, including employee input, manager input, business leader feedback, labor market data, and external expertise. A broader set of inputs helps organizations avoid relying on a single perspective when identifying skills needs.
- Compare current workforce capabilities with future business requirements. This comparison helps L&D focus on the capabilities that employees will need next, not only the gaps that exist today.
- Share relevant skills assessment outcomes with employees so they understand where and how to grow. When employees understand their own growth areas, they can take a more active role in their development.
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Learning is more likely to strengthen workforce capability when employees can see its relevance and use it in their work. Skills Strategists consider who the learner is, what the employee needs to accomplish, where barriers may exist, and how the skill will be practiced and reinforced after the initial learning experience. This becomes especially important as skills needs become more varied across roles and employee groups. A single program may still be useful in some situations, but stronger L&D strategies create room for personalization, follow-up, feedback, and application.
- Personalize learning programs to employees’ needs, roles, levels, and career goals. Personalizing helps employees see why learning is relevant to their work and how it can support their growth.
- Differentiate learning by employee group when a single approach will not meet all needs. Different roles and teams may need different levels of depth, formats, or support to make learning relevant and effective.
- Build follow-up activities, reinforcement, and opportunities to apply skills into the work itself. Reinforcement helps learning move beyond completion and gives employees a better chance to use new skills on the job while driving employee engagement.
- Use learner feedback to improve relevance and engagement. Feedback can reveal where learning feels useful, where employees face friction, and where programs may need to be adjusted.
- Address access barriers related to location, role, scheduling, resources, and awareness. Removing these barriers makes development more available to employees who might otherwise miss or delay learning opportunities.
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The systems behind L&D determine whether strategy can be delivered consistently. Even strong L&D strategies can stall when the systems behind them are disconnected, outdated, or difficult to use. Learning platforms, data practices, automation, and guidance for AI-enabled tools are not the strategy on their own, but they shape whether L&D teams can identify needs, reach employees, evaluate progress, and adjust when priorities shift.
- Regularly evaluate L&D platforms for alignment with organizational needs and emerging practices. Platforms should support the way employees learn and the way L&D teams need to manage, measure, and improve development.
- Connect L&D data with other HR and business information. Connecting data helps leaders better understand how learning relates to workforce needs, talent decisions, and business priorities.
- Identify L&D administrative tasks that can be streamlined or made more efficient. Leveraging automation, AI, or improved workflows to make routine processes more efficient can help L&D teams create more capacity for planning, design, stakeholder partnership, and continuous improvement.
- Provide clear guidelines for the ethical use of AI in learning. Guardrails help organizations use emerging tools responsibly while setting expectations around privacy, quality, and appropriate use.
- Equip employees with the knowledge and skills needed to use AI-enabled tools responsibly. Employees need to understand what these tools can do, where human judgment is still needed, and how to evaluate AI outputs before applying them.
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CONCLUSION
The skills landscape is changing in ways that make workforce development more complex. The Skills Strategist model shows that stronger L&D depends on more than any single program, platform, or investment. Organizations are better positioned to meet their goals when learning priorities are connected to business needs, informed by a clear view of current and future skills gaps, designed around employees’ roles and growth needs, and supported by systems that help L&D operate effectively over time.
For HR and L&D leaders, the path forward begins with four areas of focus. First, organizations should align L&D with business needs and organizational goals so that learning is tied to the work the organizations are trying to accomplish. Second, they should build a clearer view of current and future skills needs by regularly assessing capabilities; reviewing assessment tools; and using input from employees, managers, leaders, and external sources. Third, they should design learning that employees can access, value, and use by tailoring programs, reinforcing learning after training, and addressing barriers that limit participation or application. Finally, organizations should strengthen the systems and processes that support learning, including data connections, administrative efficiencies, platform evaluation, and clear guidance for the responsible use of AI-enabled tools.
These actions matter because the value of L&D is not limited to training completion. When L&D is connected, targeted, and supported, it can help organizations close skills gaps, sustain skills development, build confidence in internal talent, and strengthen outcomes across the business. As work continues to evolve, organizations that treat L&D as a strategic system for building workforce capability will be better positioned to keep skills current, support employee growth, and meet the demands of tomorrow’s jobs.
Methodology
SHRM Thought Leadership surveyed 1,891 HR professionals from organizations with L&D initiatives and who are involved in those initiatives. The research assessed L&D across four focus areas, 16 strategic practices, and 48 scaled behaviors on a 5-point scale. Organizations scoring in the top 20% across the four focus areas overall were classified as Skills Strategists.
Descriptive statistics are based on the full sample of 1,891 HR professionals. Analyses comparing Skills Strategists with most organizations are based on 1,818 observations, excluding respondents whose organizations do not assess skills, because skills assessment was a component of the index used to determine Skills Strategist designation.
The study also included survey data from 6,650 workers across Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Ghana, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the U.K., and the U.S. Worker data should be interpreted as employee perspective data and not as a direct comparison between Skills Strategist organizations and most organizations.
The organizational outcome findings comparing Skills Strategists and most organizations control for organization size, organization age, organization type, region, and industry. The revenue growth analysis is based on a smaller sample of publicly traded and nonprofit organizations and should be interpreted with that sample context in mind.