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This year’s Workplace Learning Report starts with a statistic that rings all too true. Nearly half — 49% — of us who work in learning and talent development are feeling the pressure of a skills crisis. 

That’s why my personal takeaway from the report, which launches today, is to prioritize a new superskill for all employees: learning how to learn. To close business-critical skill gaps, we need to empower all of our people to cultivate curiosity and reach for new knowledge on a daily basis. 

So how do you unlock the magic motivation for employees to always be learning? This year’s report, titled “The Rise of Career Champions,” makes a strong case for the power of career development as an astonishing accelerator for learning — and business impact. The report also sheds light on a vital focus for all of us, the state of generative AI (GAI) as a key driver and enabler of transformative change. 

Keep reading for data that shows why “astonishing” is an apt adjective, plus a look at what we’re doing here at LinkedIn to continuously strengthen our learning culture.

Enter career development champions

In preparing the report, LinkedIn sought to answer some important questions: Are organizations embracing career development and, if so, are they reaping the benefits?

Using global survey data, LinkedIn ranked organizations on a “career development maturity curve.” The most mature — those that offer healthy doses of career-focused initiatives like leadership training and internal mobility opportunities — qualified as “career development champions.” 

While only 36% of organizations have earned this title, this group is winning on multiple fronts. Not only are career development champions more likely than their peers to have a positive outlook on profitability, they’re also more confident about being able to attract and retain talent.

The Workplace Learning Report survey also asked respondents to evaluate their GAI adoption on a scale with four stages: 1) not yet started, 2) emerging, 3) accelerating, and 4) leading. Career development champions outpace non-champions in the advanced stages; 51% are at the accelerating or leading stages compared with only 36% of non-champions.

The report goes on to explore the ways in which future-facing organizations are embracing both GAI upskilling and career development in parallel to unleash productivity, innovation, and adaptability. While the rise of GAI means we must arm employees with new skills to remain competitive, the technology is also vastly improving our ability to offer personalized, accessible, and scalable learning and career development programs. 

Modern organizations must be “tenacious about embracing agility,” says Naphtali Bryant, executive coach and leadership development consultant at RAC Leadership. “AI adoption and career development are a unified strategy for agility.” 

Real-world career development advocates

Some of the report’s most interesting details can be found in case studies that show how organizations are supporting their employees’ careers and reaping the rewards. Here is a sampling:

• Amazon offers prepaid tuition to frontline employees across its customer fulfillment and transportation network so that they can pursue GEDs, college degrees, and professional certifications. Since 2012, Amazon’s Career Choice program has upskilled more than 200,000 employees across 14 countries. 
• Visa is leveraging AI to turbocharge their sales teams, rolling out AI-powered training and coaching to all their sellers. This AI-powered coaching has resulted in a 78% increase in confidence with their salespeople to pitch Visa products, and 83% of leaders saw value in their sellers leveraging the program and the tool to practice their pitches.
• Walmart has created “pipeline programs” that help move current employees into new jobs within the company. One of these programs helps frontline associates become truck drivers and technicians. 

How we’re building critical skills — and learning culture — at LinkedIn

At LinkedIn, continuous learning and career development are part of our DNA. We believe learning and career development are deeply connected to innovation, employee engagement, and a sense of belonging. 

To support these outcomes, we launched a Coaching for All program, which gives every single employee access, if they would like it, to a human coach. We’re also committed to improving three critical skills company-wide:

1. GAI in the flow of work, which is core for every individual’s career progress while also driving business impact. 
2. Adaptability, a crucial skill for career resilience. 
3. Leading with clarity for people leaders, enabling teams to prioritize the objectives that are most consequential for progress and growth.

As part of this effort, we’re offering in-person and virtual  interactive sessions, taught by globally recognized experts for “adaptability” and taught by our own product and engineering experts for GAI. Employees can also access LinkedIn Learning paths to reinforce what they’ve learned.

I’ve seen firsthand how LinkedIn’s commitment to upskilling, continuous learning, and career development is making a difference. Recently, an employee from our talent acquisition group joined my team — a perfect next step for his career. As he delved into new responsibilities, he was asked to design a learning facilitator guide, an unfamiliar task. Having participated in GAI trainings, he was able to use Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT to help design the guide, saving a significant amount of time he would have otherwise spent ramping up. 

For me, Chris Foltz, the chief talent officer at IBM, said it best in this year’s report: “The more we invest in our employees learning and building their own career strategy, the more we capture that value in the future.” 

Final thoughts: Turning data and insights into action

What does this all mean for you? How do you put the report’s insights into practice at your organization?

We know it’s not easy. Workplace Learning Report data indicates that lack of time and resources are major pain points at all levels at many organizations. 

It’s clear that talent leaders must enlist the support of the C-suite and make a case as to why investments in learning and career development drive bottom-line results. As Crystal Lim-Lange, CEO and co-founder of Forest Wolf notes in the report, it’s important to “make talent development a nonnegotiable part of a company’s constitution.”

But that’s just the start. You’ll need to design a career development program that builds business value. To work toward North Star success, the report features five talent strategy foundations — the must-haves for a modern, holistic approach to continuous skill building. 

I encourage you to dig in and explore the foundations alongside all of the data and tips, including ideas on how to harness GAI to jump-start career development and on how to empower managers to support employee careers. You’ll also find links to additional playbooks on skills agility, internal mobility, and the ROI of learning to help you put these insights into practice.

Check out the report today and share it with your colleagues.

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