2027
Skills Intelligence
Report
We asked 1,000+ HR and L&D leaders where their skills strategy actually stands. Explore the gaps they named, the budgets they’re working with, and the six-step blueprint for building a skills-based organization.
Based on a survey of 1,000+ HR and L&D leaders
Laying the
groundwork
The way enterprises work is changing faster than they can plan for it.
By their own account, HR and L&D leaders are ready.
75%
of companies say they are well prepared to reskill or upskill employees for evolving skill demands.
94%
of HR and L&D leaders collaborate on skills planning at some cadence.
93%
of skills data is accessible to both HR and L&D when making learning decisions.
96%
say role-specific skills requirements are somewhat or clearly defined across their organization.
The top 3
blockers
Most HR and L&D teams are running a skills strategy without one unified system underneath it. Here are the three biggest barriers:
-
45%
Said conflicting priorities
-
25%
Don’t have the right tool in place
-
21%
Pointed to governance
“Most organizations can describe their skills. Very few can tell you where those skills are actually being used, or what proficiency looks like in context. Without that, skills remain descriptive, not operational.”
Solution
Build a system, not a tactic
Leaders know
where they’re behind
We asked HR and L&D leaders what the most critical skill gaps were in their organizations.
53%
say that AI literacy is the most critical skill gap.
Tactically, organizations have visibility over the skills they need, and they know what skills to target.
Where things
breakdown
Organizational priorities
Closing skill gaps for AI adoption ranks 5th
AI literacy is the number one leading skill gap, but HR and L&D leaders are fighting for the budget to truly enable the workforce.
How much is learning/enablement investment tied to these organizational priorities right now?
Manager and leadership effectiveness
4.04
Employee engagement scores
3.64
Compliance/risk reduction
3.47
Internal mobility/career pathing
3.39
Closing skill gaps for AI adoption
3.35
Reducing voluntary attrition/retention
3.12
Budget misalignment
AI tooling is winning the budget battle
Two-thirds (66%) of HR and L&D leaders say AI tooling investment grew at the same pace as, or faster than, their learning and enablement budget. For 7%, it came at enablement’s expense entirely — the budget was cut to fund AI tooling.
In the last 12 months, how has the budget for enablement and learning changed relative to investment in AI tooling?
Both grew at similar pace
37.52%
AI tooling grew faster than enablement/learning
28.76%
Enablement/learning budget grew faster than AI tooling
13.52%
No meaningful change in either
13.05%
Enablement/learning budget was cut to fund AI tooling
7.14%
Hiring tension
Even headcount is feeling the AI squeeze
Skills are supposedly a top priority — but when HR and L&D leaders ask for more headcount, 47% say the budget gets redirected to AI tooling and other priorities instead. It’s the single biggest reason those requests get denied.
When you’ve asked for more headcount, what’s the biggest barrier to it getting approved?
Budget redirected to other priorities (e.g. AI tools)
46.67%
Hard to prove ROI/business impact
20.00%
No benchmark data to compare against
15.62%
Leadership doesn’t see it as a priority
13.90%
Other
3.81%
“The size of AI investment — and the expected returns — assumes business transformation, but the way organizations fund enablement often treats it as a straightforward technology rollout.”
Solution
Match visibility with action
Getting the
C-suite on board
Strategy ownership
HR owns the strategy, on paper
In 63% of organizations surveyed, HR is primarily responsible for defining a skills strategy. On the surface, that looks decisive. But the data shows more nuance.
In your organization, who is primarily responsible for defining the skills strategy?
HR
63.48%
L&D
14.59%
IT
7.00%
Talent Acquisition
4.35%
Individual Business Units
4.52%
No Clear Owner
5.12%
Other
0.94%
Budget ownership
The budget tells a different story
Only 43% of organizations keep the L&D/learning budget fully within HR.
Although HR is on the hook for proving the skills strategy works, it doesn’t fully control the budget that would fuel it.
Where does the L&D/Learning technology budget live?
Fully within HR/People
42.76%
Split between HR and business units
37.43%
Fully within business units, HR has no budget ownership
12.67%
Fully within a separate function (e.g., sales ops, cx, product)
4.48%
Not sure
2.67%
Headcount and tooling
It’s a coin flip
The CHRO gets final say on L&D headcount and tooling just 35% of the time, barely ahead of the VP of L&D at 34%.
Business unit leaders, CFOs, and cross-functional committees split most of what’s left, leading to more scattered ownership.
Who makes the final call on L&D/learning tech headcount and tooling decisions?
CHRO/Head of HR
35.14%
VP or Director of L&D (reporting into HR)
34.00%
Business units leaders
16.00%
CFO/Finance
7.71%
Cross-functional committee
4.86%
Not sure
2.29%
“The broader responsibility sits with the entire C-level, because capability building has become a strategic organisational challenge. Leaders need to create the architecture in which humans and AI can continuously learn, adapt and perform in symbiosis.”
What leadership sees,
the organization gets
If the C-suite doesn’t understand why skilling should be an organizational priority, investment won’t follow. Particularly if you’re measuring the impact of skills by metrics ultimately only HR and L&D care about.
C-suite visibility
Executive visibility into the skills strategy
52%
of HR and L&D leaders say their executive board has full visibility into the skills strategy.
Measuring impact
How skills strategy gets measured
64%
of HR and L&D leaders measure impact by growth in targeted skills — a number that reads well internally, but says little to a CFO.
Reviewing data
How current is the data, really?
43%
of HR and L&D leaders review and update their skills data on a quarterly basis — a snapshot of a workforce that’s already shifted by the time anyone looks at it.
Team tensions
Where collaboration breaks down
64%
of HR and L&D leaders say their collaboration breaks down over prioritization, followed by strategy (41%) and budget (35%).
“L&D and HR leaders need to be having conversations not about efficiency but about what efficiency leads to. The CEO doesn’t care if you saved 10% of your time on this process or that. They do care if it affects profitability, customer lifetime value, or retention.”
No system to track it all
What tools or systems does your organization use to track employee skills?
34%
track employee skills using spreadsheets.
Most organizations don’t have a unifying system tracking employee skills. In fact, they have several.
Solution
Speak the CFO’s language
Start building,
together
Skills can’t be one department’s initiative. It takes a mandate from the top, HR and L&D building from a shared plan, and a system that tracks it all continuously. Only then is workforce readiness truly possible.
See how enterprises win when they stop treating skills like a disjointed project, and start building it on the right foundations.
Continuous improvement
20,000 employees, 3 languages, and 6,600 new skills declared monthly.
Speaking in business
Doubled overnight across 60 countries due to a merger, with non-negotiable compliance needs.
One priority for the whole company
Near-50% dilution of institutional knowledge during rapid growth spurts.
Voices
behind the
research
The Skills Block features data from 1,000+ HR and L&D leaders, and insights from 11 industry experts.
Kason
Morris
Dr Christie
Vanorsdale
Shellie
Grieves
Sharath
Hari
Michael
Rochelle
Liana
Karimova
Sandra
Loughlin
Ben
Eubanks
Vicky
Kennedy
Egle
Vinauskaite
Katja
Schipperheijn
Get the skills blueprint
Explore the data behind what’s blocking most enterprise skills strategies, and the playbook for building past it.
Build workforce readiness
Most skills data shows you who’s available. Skills Intelligence shows you who’s ready.
Solution
Build a system, not a tactic
A skills strategy that lives in a deck, or a spreadsheet, is a tactic. This report shows most organizations are stuck there, regardless of how thorough the underlying taxonomy is. Turning that tactic into a system requires three things.
- A company mandate
- A skills intelligence engine
- A governance team
“Sponsorship and leadership buy-in is the first element of a successful implementation. The project team can build a perfect platform, put every integration in place, but if leadership isn’t ready to embrace the change it brings, isn’t ready to support it with resources and influence, there’s no success in it. You need strong sponsorship and leadership for these projects to work.”
Anastasia Panina, Customer Success at 365Talents
Solution
Match visibility with action
Every organization in this study can name its skills gaps. Visibility isn’t the problem. But what happens after the data’s on the table? That’s where leaders are getting stuck.
A tool license and a training budget solve different problems, and treating them as interchangeable is how organizations end up well-equipped and under-skilled at the same time. AI literacy is the most urgent version of this right now, but it won’t be the last.
So, how do you fix it? Shift the perspective on training. From optional overhead, to a critical lever in developing your workforce. The budget needs to reflect that before real transformation is possible.
Solution
Speak the CFO’s language
A quarterly look at skill growth and performance ratings tells you what happened last quarter, not what’s happening now, and not whether any of it moved the business.
The fix is real-time data tied to the outcomes the CFO and C-suite already tracks, cost per hire, retention, time-to-fill, so the skills strategy stops being something HR reviews on its own terms and becomes something the business runs on, in the business’s own numbers.
“When organizations look at skills-based transformation through a business case lens, they start asking about ROI and business impact. This is business language. It’s no longer just HR or L&D language focused on upskilling. I would recommend that HR and L&D leaders approach skills strategy with a clear business case in mind and be prepared to answer those questions for the C-suite.”
Liana Karimova, VP of People and Workforce Transformation at ThinkLabs AI
Download the Report
Veolia
The challenge
20,000 employees, 3 languages, and 6,600 new skills declared monthly.
The solution
Instead of catching up quarterly, Veolia built a continuously updating system with AI-driven taxonomy.
The results
15,800
skills managed
800
job descriptions unified
73%
active profiles
“365Talents gave us the visibility we needed to understand our workforce and support our employees in developing their skills.”
Sophie Peroy, HRIS Domain Manager at Veolia
Alstom
The challenge
Doubled overnight across 60 countries due to a merger, with non-negotiable compliance needs.
The solution
Leveraged AI for self-reported skills, giving HR a directionally accurate view integrated with HR systems without demanding manager sign-off on every entry.
The results
55,000
employees deployed in 9 weeks
4,000
internal mobility applications in 9 months
“Meeting once a year to review our skill framework no longer fits the speed of change. Skills are evolving faster and faster, and this is exactly where 365Talents comes in.”
Vincent-Pierre Giroux, Global L&D Director at Alstom
Infinite Campus
The challenge
Near-50% dilution of institutional knowledge during rapid growth spurts.
The solution
Used AI-driven Skills Intelligence to see internal capabilities without expanding headcount.
The results
27
qualified internal candidates for hard-to-fill director roles
90%+
active profiles
“I don’t want this to live within HR and L&D. I want it to live within the operations of the organization, where managers are consistently thinking about their people, and where we’re using it in planning rather than reacting.”
Greg Cornman, Head of HR at Infinite Campus