New research with insights from 2,000 employees shows strong appetite for lifelong learning, yet confidence in emerging skills is fragile and access to practical development tools varies sharply by sector. Emma O’Dell argues employers must move from episodic training to continuous learning, equitable digital access, and pathways built for change.
There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from wanting to grow and finding that the opportunities around you haven’t yet evolved to match your ambition. New research from Lyceum Education Group and the FT Longitude, drawing on insights from 2,000 UK-based employees, shows something subtle yet strong: workers across the country are eager to develop, overwhelmingly value lifelong learning, and believe in their employers’ cultural commitment to growth. Yet the practical tools and visibility needed to turn that appetite into action are not always consistent.
48% rate their emerging skills confidence as “adequate” or “poor”
Across the UK, employees report strong foundational capability and a genuine enthusiasm for learning. Emerging skills is where confidence dips. Nearly half of employees (48%) rate their emerging skills confidence as “adequate” or “poor”, and 29% were dissatisfied with recent emerging-skills training. What we are looking at is a structural problem, rooted in years of fragmented investment, inconsistent training cultures and learning infrastructure that was built for a world that no longer exists.
Differences across industries
The technology sector showcases a notable imbalance as employees report the highest emerging-skills confidence (61%) yet the lowest satisfaction with the training designed to build those skills (36%). In professional services, 92% of employees train quarterly or more, suggesting an industry that values development, yet only 21% have access to a digital learning platform.
Finance presents a different but equally worrying picture, with 36% of workers training less than quarterly and fewer than three in ten able to access a digital platform. Healthcare, meanwhile, has room to grow in its support for non-linear career pathways, particularly in a sector that urgently needs flexible, adaptable talent. Workers in education report strong technical skills, with 82% rating themselves confidently, yet emerging-skills confidence sits at just 37%, among the lower end across sectors.
This illustrates a broader truth: demand for future skills is high across sectors. Organisations now have the chance to evolve their learning systems to keep pace with the workforce they serve.
Risk, or opportunity?
The structural gaps revealed by this research show where industries that employ millions can make meaningful improvements right now. Confidence and capability are shaped profoundly by the environment workers find themselves in rather than a function of individual effort or aptitude. The labour market is being reshaped by a skills transition that is already happening. Automation, artificial intelligence and the evolving nature of learning are creating demands that many industries now have a growing opportunity to prioritise. What is important for employers to forge is an infrastructure where training is delivered frequently, and in accessible formats, ensuring that learning opportunities are equitable and designed based on bridging critical skills gaps.
The first and most pressing change needed to address these challenges and risks is one of mindset. Organisations have a valuable opportunity to move from episodic learning to a culture where development is a continuous, integrated part of working life. Building genuine learning cultures means creating conditions where employees have regular, protected time to develop new skills, where managers are equipped and incentivised to support that development, and where progress is tracked and valued in the same way as performance output.
Mind the digital learning gap
The second shift is infrastructure. The disparity between sectors in access to digital learning platforms is not a minor operational gap; it represents a fundamental inequality in how different parts of the workforce are equipped to respond to change. Employers who have not yet invested in accessible, flexible learning technology have a valuable opportunity to enhance how they support and develop their people.
Apprenticeships are also an underused lever here, offering structured, employer-funded pathways into emerging skills that can be deployed at scale across industries that are finding increasing skills gaps in their workforce.
Career development culture
The third shift concerns how organisations think about careers themselves. The research finding that healthcare offers the lowest support for non-linear career pathways points to a broader cultural rigidity that runs across many sectors. The emerging skills economy does not reward narrow specialisation in the way that previous labour markets did, and employees who want to move laterally, to combine technical knowledge with new digital or analytical capabilities, are often working against structures that were not designed with that kind of development in mind.
Employers who redesign their career frameworks to reward breadth and adaptability, not just vertical progression, will find themselves far better placed to retain and develop the talent they already have.
One step at a time
None of this requires organisations to reinvent themselves overnight, but it does call for a genuine commitment to placing workforce development among their ongoing priorities, even as budgets evolve. Across every sector examined in this research, there are workers who want to develop, who understand that their roles are changing, and who are looking to their employers for support.
Closing that gap, sector by sector and employer by employer, remains the defining workforce challenge of this decade, and the window for addressing it is narrowing faster than most industries appear to realise.
Emma O’Dell is Skills and Capability Director at BPP, part of Lyceum Education Group
