By Mark Onisk
AI is reshaping workforce demands, exposing critical skills gaps in leadership, technology and AI. To stay competitive, organisations must treat learning as a strategic investment. By using real-time skills data and AI-driven insights, businesses can build adaptive, AI-ready teams that drive innovation, agility and measurable performance outcomes.
AI isn’t just reshaping industries; it’s redefining what it means to be skilled. As AI accelerates business transformation, it’s exposing a widening gap between workforce capabilities and organisational imperatives.
Only 10% of HR and learning and development (L&D) professionals are fully confident their workforce has the skills needed to achieve business goals over the next one to two years. Meanwhile, 28% say skill gaps are restricting their ability to pursue new markets, with leadership, AI and technology emerging as the most critical shortages.
This deficit doesn’t just threaten productivity, it limits innovation, agility and ultimately profitability. Yet, only 1 in 10 UK businesses link their L&D investments directly to revenue growth.
As budgets tighten and performance pressures mount, HR and L&D leaders face a defining challenge: prove that learning fuels business results to secure board-level buy in or risk being deprioritised.
Why the ROI of skilling goes beyond cost
For decades, L&D was viewed as a cost of doing business. But, in an AI-driven economy, learning is the engine that fuels business growth. Organisations that thrive will be those that treat learning not as an expense to be managed, but as an investment in strategic capability, that drives innovation, operational performance and market competitiveness, while actively building AI-ready workforces.
The urgency is clear, with 94% of business leaders today reporting shortages in AI-critical skills and one-third facing gaps of 40% or more. In other words, nearly half of the roles essential for AI adoption can’t currently be filled internally.
Addressing this gap starts with “skills intelligence,” the ability to connect learning data to business execution. Rather than focusing on activity metrics like course completions, organisations can now demonstrate how skills development contributes to project success, revenue growth, risk reduction and workforce optimisation across both human talent and AI agents.
With real-time skills data, enterprises can optimise their workforce at scale, assembling best-fit teams of people and AI. A unified framework for tracking capabilities across humans and AI also reduces complexity and regulatory risk, while real-time talent matching ensures the right resources are assigned to the right tasks. This data-driven visibility allows leaders to build dynamic, high-performing teams, blending human creativity with AI precision. The result is faster execution, reduced costs and a more resilient organisation.
Turning workforce data into strategy
Data is the foundation of effective skill transformation and value realisation. AI takes this capability to new heights. AI can capture and interpret data on engagement, performance, and skill application in real time. These insights empower leaders to identify which learning experiences drive measurable performance, understand team-level learning patterns and connect skill development directly to business outcomes.
Beyond diagnostics, AI enables foresight. By analysing industry trends and job performance data, AI can predict which skills will be most critical in the next 12-24 months. This allows organisations and their learners to design self-service learning pathways in real-time that support long-term goals, rather than being reactive to immediate gaps.
Transforming your workforce to a skillforce
The future belongs to organisations that can continuously assess current skills, prioritise rapid development and deploy those capabilities effectively across both people and AI. This emerging Skillforce™ – a workforce where human and AI capabilities are seamlessly aligned, measured, and intelligently deployed – will define the next era of workplace performance.
By integrating real-time skills data, leaders can anticipate risks, address capability gaps before they impact results and rapidly deploy best-fit teams to capture emerging opportunities. A shared skills language creates agility at scale, embedding learning into how the business operates.
From skills gap to competitive edge
AI is already changing how organisations approach the entire employee experience. The question is no longer if you’ll adapt but how fast. Those who embrace skills intelligence today will build more adaptive teams that outpace disruption. Those who hesitate risk being outperformed by more agile competitors.
Start by asking: What skill gaps most impact business performance? How is your skills investment connected to measurable outcomes? What data do you need to build an AI-ready Skillforce?
With intentional investment and skills intelligence, organisations can train AI smarter, close skill gaps faster and prepare their teams – human and AI – to work together effectively.
Mark Onisk
