Fosway’s latest findings came out last week. These are the 11th iteration of their research and this year includes responses from 333 HR, L&D and talent professionals, 75% of whom are based in European organisations.

I found them especially useful because they surface the real signals beneath the noise. The headlines about skills, AI and transformation are incredibly familiar. The implications for leaders are, however, less visible and – ironically – more important. These are the messages that stood out for me.

1. Skills are now a business issue, not a learning issue
   Fosway shows that skills sit at the heart of organisational priorities, yet most reskilling efforts are ineffective. This is not a motivation problem but a delivery problem. If skills underpin strategy, leaders need a clear line between capability, capacity, ability and performance, not another cycle of training requests.
   
2. AI is changing work faster than it is changing learning
   The research shows rapid adoption of AI tools but limited evidence of performance gains and spend is rising while value remains unclear. Leaders should expect productivity through work redesign, not from adding AI to existing learning processes. I am not sure we have this thinking in place yet and it leads back to the strategic ambiguity I mentioned before..
   
3. Learning is still focused on activity rather than outcomes
   If you have followed me for a while you know I talk about performance a lot. Across the seven reports there is heavy emphasis on platforms, content and priorities and very little on business results. That gap matters because it shows a function judged by what it delivers rather than what it changes. Leaders who want transformation need to ask for evidence of impact, not evidence of usage.

David Perring from Fosway highlighted something important. For ten years less than ten percent of L&D teams have said they are effective at measuring value. The needle has never moved. HR is starting to become more value centred and intelligence led. The revolution is happening there first, not in L&D.

The latest GP Strategies report reinforces the same pattern. Ninety eight percent of organisations say they want to measure business impact and ninety six percent believe it is possible, yet only twenty four percent actually fund it. Capability and intent are high, but resourcing and system support are not. The study also shows that only a small group of teams operate as true strategic partners. They listen to the business problem, work with data and build the right partnerships. Many teams appear not to and remain trapped in delivery, not impact.

This is the same story Fosway is telling, just in a different way. The desire for impact is real but the system conditions that allow impact to be measured or achieved are missing.

Fosway makes it clear that L&D cannot shift the system alone. L&D needs a performance brief that sets out the business problem, the required behaviours and the measures that matter.

Only once that brief is in place can L&D broker the connection between strategy, work and capability and show where learning will make a real difference.

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#WorkforceLearning #SkillsDevelopment #BusinessPerformance