Donald H Taylor launches his L&D Global Sentiment Survey and TJ digs into the results
At the launch event for the of the L&D Global Sentiment Survey 2025, the 12th annual check of the pulse of L&D worldwide, Donald H Taylor has analysed answers from 3,339 people covering 93 countries.
Don asks “What will be hot in workplace L&D?” for the coming year and people make a selection from 16 options, including AI, reskilling, learning analytics and others.
Don highlights some of the key findings, including:
- AI dominates. Again.
- Data holds on to the top 5
- Value is BACK
- The year’s challenge: strategy, skills and resources
Artificial intelligence #1
There’s a huge gap between first place, AI, and second place, reskilling/upskilling. AI has still increased in votes compared to last year, and reskilling/upskilling has had a major decrease compared to 2024. If AI is so prevalent, strong and intertwined with everything we do and, for many, becoming business as usual, does it warrant a place on the list for 2026? Egle Vinauskaite commented, “There is AI for upskilling/reskilling and upskilling/reskilling because of AI.”
Laura Overton added, “In the 1980’s we might have said is the personal computer going to be hot in learning. In the 1990’s the question might have been is the internet going to be hot. AI is the same now, it covers all!”
Don shared that the US votes for AI in the survey have usually led trends, and for AI this has been the case since 2021. However the votes are down 4% this year – so where have those votes been placed instead.
Value trio
Consulting more deeply with the business, showing value and performance support are what Don called the “value trio”. Where most items on the list have moved down, these three have moved from stagnation to rising for 2025. “With AI absorbing so many votes, every other option on the table fell, so this recovery by the value trio is significant.”
Laura Overton commented, “At last VALUE is back! I’m not surprised – but is it due to lots of concern about being seen to add value or excitement about opportunity to add more value?” With such a change to our working landscape that AI has forced, is this us questioning our own value within the organisation, to keep our jobs and departments, or actually focusing forward on performance improvement?
Some comments at the launch event were that the value trio are foundational within organisations and that’s why there has been a refocus, especially if AI is becoming more useful and saving resource across L&D and the business more widely and in a context of uncertainty it can provide some certainty. Some referenced the World Economic Forum report and that focusing on skills and job longevity might be coming top of mind again for wider stakeholders.
Record year for challenges
“There’s an entire book of people’s misery, despair and challenges” from the survey, shared Don, of the near-30,000 words that people contributed.
Comments that fell into the category of ‘resources, budget, workload’, such as “do more with less”, has gradually increased in the last three years. The category of ‘strategy, skills, talent’ had gown down 2022-2023, not surprising with the focus on technology in 2024 due to AI. However this year it’s the number one category of concern for people. People in the leisure, retail and childcare services also discussed how findings like these can help teams support workers that aren’t at desks and aren’t able to spend time at a computer within an eight-hour shift.
Some concerns are reducing. Content has stagnated over the last four years, though one could wonder if it would change when considering the use of AI for content creation. Read more on trusting AI results. The concern about delivery is similar to last year, but concerns that fall into the category of people (talking about learners, employees, helping serving people), has dropped for the fourth year in a row. Was 2022 a spike because of people focusing on Covid-related issues? Is there more of a focus on people self-serving their learning, especially if companies have experiential/learning management systems that are personalising learning and resources much more?
The CEO doesn’t get excited by AI, they get excited by what it can do for the organisation
At the event the challenges were discussed about whether the data in the report was reflective of the reality in the room. One person made a great point about the headline finding of the report, “If there wasn’t AI, what would we be talking about?” There were some that felt AI was part of normal work now, whilst others commented that people didn’t know what AI really meant for their organisation, what to do with it and needed stability before investing in it. After all, one person contributed, the CEO doesn’t get excited by AI, they get excited by what it can do for the organisation. This shouldn’t be about what we are doing with AI in L&D, but about how we are supporting change in the whole organisation.
Summing up, Don stated: “The point of the survey and the report is always to promote discussion” and it certainly did on this launch day.
Jo Cook is Editor of Training Journal and virtual classroom specialist at her company Lightbulb Moment
