The latest L&D news, reports, research and updates, personally compiled by TJ’s Editor, Jo Cook. This week: AI capability gaps, synthetic managers, security scares and agent readiness dominate this week, alongside warnings over leaked chatbot conversations, a podcast milestone, squeezed small-business training, and fresh thinking on L&D’s commercial influence today.
AI productivity gains risk being lost without work redesign, says Erica Farmer
AI may be helping individuals produce more, but organisations will not see the full performance benefit unless they rethink how work, roles and decision-making operate around it, according to AI strategist Erica Farmer.
Farmer will explore the issue as keynote speaker at TJ Conference 2026: L&D Means Business, taking place on 21 September at the Royal Society of Chemistry in London.
Her keynote, The AI fire hydrant: Turning more output into better performance, will examine the growing gap between individual AI productivity and organisational performance.
Report: Companies are losing 26% of time to wasted effort
For all the talk of efficiency and money invested in AI programs, work is still getting in the way of work. And ironically, AI has a lot to do with it. That’s the finding of a field study of 680 processes at 128 companies across 10 sector groups, conducted by Ace Workflow. At six of those companies, every step of every process was timed: 187 processes, 2,546 hours a week of ordinary work, stated by the people who do it.
The State of Work shows the leaks predominate in five key areas: reporting, onboarding, invoicing and billing, approvals, and CRM cleanup.
Employees report receiving an average of 13 individual onboarding documents
For many employees, the onboarding process requires reviewing a large volume of documents and information in a short amount of time. As onboarding materials continue to expand across digital platforms, employees may struggle to retain the information that matters most.
- The top 10% of employees receive more than 30 documents and spend more than 35 hours reviewing
- Employees say only 60% of all onboarding materials are truly necessary or important to their role
- One in four employees say confusion or gaps in their onboarding had a significant or moderate negative impact on their job performance or confidence
Research urges employers not to assume young people are digitally work-ready
Research from education charity NCFE’s No One Left Offline campaign found that more than half of respondents aged 18 and under lacked the essential digital skills needed for modern life, despite often being perceived as “digital natives”. More broadly, one in five respondents across all age groups lacked the essential digital skills needed to fully participate in today’s increasingly digital world.
The findings come as digital skills become increasingly important across almost every profession. Research from FutureDotNow estimates that over 20 million working-age adults cannot complete all of the digital tasks considered essential for today’s workplace, underlining the importance of helping people develop these skills throughout education and employment.
The AI capability gap: tech innovation is outstripping human readiness
New research by Talogy, a global leader in talent management, reveals a concerning gap between the pace AI is changing compared to our ability to understand, measure, or develop the human capabilities that determine where AI will create value in the long term.
The study, which was conducted among 207 senior HR leaders, talent acquisition managers, and learning and development experts, extended to both the US and the UK and spanned seven vertical sectors – manufacturing, retail and commerce, financial services and fintech, healthcare, technology, and the public sector and government.
- 95% of organisations say AI is automating work at least moderately
- 78% face challenges when assessing AI skills, with current frameworks lacking depth and personalisation
- Just 38% feel ‘very prepared’ to adapt job descriptions and career paths for AI
More than one in three UK employees say an AI manager would boost productivity, Careerminds research reveals
UK employees are more likely to expect a productivity boost than a decrease if artificial intelligence (AI) took over from their line manager, according to new research from Careerminds UK. In fact, 36.7% say an AI manager would raise their productivity, compared with 25.5% who expect it to fall.
With 82% of UK bosses stepping into management with no formal training, according to the Chartered Management Institute, the findings also raise questions about whether gaps in management training are shaping employees’ perceptions of human leadership.
Spot your biggest impact barrier
Use the TJ Readiness Enablers Index as a quick reflection tool to see what’s helping, and what’s holding back your L&D impact right now.
In just a few minutes, you can sense-check your access to decision-makers, data, permission to experiment, and support to scale what works.
Your response also helps TJ build a clearer picture of what L&D readiness looks like across the profession.
OpenAI scales back AI development, but it could be too late
OpenAI’s decision to slow the development of its upcoming model due to recent cybersecurity concerns about AI should signal to enterprises that they need stronger security measures, regardless of which model they use for their AI workloads.
OpenAI’s move to slow down and focus more on safety is in response to a recent incident in which an AI agent powered by OpenAI models escaped its sandbox and hacked AI platform Hugging Face’s production systems.
Only 1 in 5 organisations are prepared to move toward autonomous AI agents, Deloitte finds
Poorly documented or misunderstood processes, fragmented data systems, and entrenched ways of working are impeding the transition, according to the report.
- Nearly three-quarters of U.S. company leaders expect that in the next four years, about half their business processes will be redesigned or rebuilt around artificial intelligence agents, according to a report from global consulting firm Deloitte
- Of the 501 U.S. senior managers and C-suite-level executives surveyed this spring, 61% expect that most AI agents will be largely autonomous, with humans serving primarily in an oversight role
- Yet only 1 in 5 leaders say their organisation is prepared to redesign business processes to run autonomously with AI agents, the survey showed
Why AI chat leaks keep landing on Google – and what to actually check
Hundreds of private conversations people had with Claude, Anthropic’s AI chatbot, turned up searchable on Google late last month, including medical records and company documents. In some cases, even children’s names and phone numbers. The chats had been shared using Claude’s built-in ‘share’ feature, which is meant to let one person send a conversation to another.
Secrets from a Coach podcast celebrates 300th episode
The Secrets from a Coach podcast hosted by wellness coach Debbie Green at Wishfish and TEDx speaker Laura Thomson-Staveley at Phenomenal Training this week celebrates its 300th episode. The team has committed to weekly recordings with special guests, evolving in recent years from stand-alone episodes into themed monthly mini-series, each unpacking a single workplace topic across three to five conversations.
Small businesses ‘left behind’ by the UK’s skills system
Small businesses are being let down by the UK’s skills system despite their crucial role in providing opportunities for young people. Rising employment costs are putting pressure on small firms to do more with less and training is increasingly one of the areas being cut, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) warned.
According to its research, 32% of small business employers have cut their training budget due to increasing tax bills, and 27% have reduced training because of spiralling labour costs.
Three L&D leaders showcase how to influence and deliver value in the AI Age
Learning technology provider Fuse recently hosted Leading Through Change: Practical Tactics for L&D to Influence & Deliver Value in the AI Age, bringing together progressive L&D executives to address the rapid evolution of enterprise training.
The session focused on how modern learning functions can move away from traditional, course-heavy structures to become internal business advisors that drive measurable commercial performance through artificial intelligence and community-led learning.
Do you want to make sure you stay in-the-know about the L&D industry?
Then the TJ newsletter is where it’s at.
It’s free, arrives every Thursday to your inbox, and it comes with exclusive subscriber-only content!
