The latest L&D news, reports, research and updates, personally compiled by TJ’s Editor, Jo Cook. This week: AI investment fails to deliver results, leaders lack confidence in managing change and rogue AI agents raise concerns. Plus, overlooked internal talent, tighter Scottish Government office rules and employees shunning mental health support.
Over half of L&D teams struggle with identifying learning needs
More than half (52%) of learning and development (L&D) professionals say they struggle to identify what their workforce needs to learn, making this a key area of weakness in their organisation, a report has argued.
360Learning, an AI-driven learning management system, found that 46% of L&D professionals also struggle to measure learning impact and 40% struggle with learner engagement. Learning strategy and SME collaboration were named as further weak points, by 33% and 31% respectively.
Only about 30% of employers said they’ve established processes for identifying and tracking worker skills
Employees may not understand which skills they need — and are losing resources that may help them develop said skills, according to a report from WTW, a global advisory company.
Work is changing quickly, the report noted, but fewer employees surveyed said their manager helps develop their abilities, dropping from 84% saying as much to 78% over the past four years. And while the 7,000 employees surveyed acknowledged that work is changing, they expressed uncertainty over whether they can keep up, WTW said, creating what the company called “capability anxiety.”
CEOs want ‘enterprise CHROs’ who can talk strategy and skills, report finds
CEOs at high-performing companies are working with CHROs to reshape the function into an “enterprise” role — one that puts CHROs on the team with CEOs, CFOs and senior technology leaders and at the heart of securing the organisation’s long-term performance, according to a report from leadership advisory firm Heidrick & Struggles.
Enterprise CHROs are defined by three criteria, the report explained. They provide strong operational effectiveness across core HR responsibilities; advance capabilities for integrating workforce planning, executive succession planning and artificial intelligence transformation; and maintain alignment with the CEO.
More than half of managers say employees are assigned work they don’t have the skills to do, Skillsoft research finds
Skillsoft, a leading AI-native Skills Management platform, released its Workforce Readiness Report: Execution Gap Edition. The report reveals a critical disconnect: organisations widely recognise skills gaps within their workforces yet continue to assign employees work that exceeds their current capabilities. The findings show that this execution gap has far-reaching consequences ranging from unsuccessful AI adoption and customer dissatisfaction to employee burnout and revenue loss.
The report shows that 77% of managers and 60% of individual contributors say skill gaps are present in their workplace today. Yet, more than half of managers (54%) and 37% of individual contributors say people are frequently or always assigned work requiring skills they do not have.
Mediazoo Group whitepaper finds the missing variable in AI performance is human
Mediazoo Group has published The AI Performance Gap, a whitepaper by its CEO Giles Smith on why so much AI investment is yet to translate into business performance. The evidence points to a clear gap between AI capability and AI profitability.
PwC’s latest CEO Survey found that 56% of CEOs have seen neither higher revenue nor lower costs from their AI investment, and only 12% have seen both. McKinsey’s State of AI research found that 80% of people say AI has made them more productive, yet only 37% report any impact on profit, and just 6% of organisations qualify as AI high performers.
Leaders say they are worried about their ability to handle change
Although company leaders are critical to organisational growth, only 17% said they “feel confident anticipating and reacting to change,” according to the Global Leadership Forecast 2027 from consulting firm DDI.
That percentage has not changed much since 2025, DDI said in a statement, adding that leaders who didn’t feel confident “are a third as likely to stay productive during setbacks.” Additionally, 19% reported that they often felt “used up,” even though most elected to stay in their roles.
The confidence problem can create real challenges for companies because organizations with “effective change leadership” were 2.4 times more likely “to meet or exceed their financial targets,” according to the research.
Enterprise controls can’t keep up with AI agents
Enterprises are giving AI agents more authority faster than they’re building the systems needed to track them and control their actions.
That gap is becoming more visible as companies move beyond experimenting with agents and start letting them act across enterprise systems. The challenge isn’t only determining what an agent should be allowed to do. Companies first need to know which agents are operating, what they can access and whether they can stop them when something goes wrong.
Your employees are building AI agents. Do you know what they’re doing?
According to a recent survey by engineering staffing firm Howdy.com, two-thirds of knowledge workers that use AI also use agents, and 16% have begun to build their own.
About a quarter of agent users have had to deactivate them, however, largely because the agent’s outputs were inconsistent or the agent never worked. But 7% of knowledge workers have had to kill agents that went rogue.
The findings put a point on the potential repercussions of shadow agent creation and even sanctioned citizen AI strategies that encourage business users to roll their own agents.
The skills you’re trying to hire for might already be on your payroll
More than eight in 10 workers stated they would retrain to secure a more senior role (83%) or a different role altogether (82%). And almost nine in 10 (89%) would sit through a formal skills assessment to demonstrate what they can do.
The disconnect is stark. Two-thirds (66%) of workers believe they will have to leave their current employer to advance their career. Yet the same workers are telling their organisations, clearly, that they don’t want to.
The findings come from SHL’s Talent Mobility at Work in 2026: The Hidden Workforce report, based on a survey of over 2,000 employed adults across the U.S. and U.K.
Scottish Government limits remote working and introduces location-reporting tool
Officials will be required to go into work two days a week, while also being asked to use a new digital platform to let their employer know where they are. Scottish civil servants will be required to work 40% of their hours in the office, according to new guidance from the Scottish Government.
The new rules further require senior officials to spend 60% of their time in the office, while all staff will also be required to use a new self-reporting tool to record where they are working from.
Read more on our sister website PublicTechnology.Net
74% of businesses define work around outcomes, but only 15% are ready to turn them into an advantage
Three in four enterprises (74%) define significant work around outcomes, but only 15% are ready to deliver it consistently, according to new global research from HR tech leader Vertage.
These ‘outcome-ready’ enterprises report higher customer satisfaction (91% vs. 67%), stronger delivery of strategic goals (86% vs. 65%) and faster conversion of opportunities into value (85% vs. 64%). They also have a cultural edge: 69% of their employees understand their contribution and can adapt how they work, compared with 34% elsewhere.
Employees shun workplace mental health support
A survey of 2,010 UK employees found that while 91% have access to employer-provided mental health support, just 37% of respondents said they would use it.
When asked in the survey what deters employees from accessing the help they need, nearly a third (32%) said they are concerned it would affect their career or job security. Almost as many (29%) said they would feel embarrassed about asking for help, and 23% said they think their problems aren’t serious enough.
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