The talent velocity advantage

Skills are shifting faster than most companies can see or respond to — and it’s becoming the defining divide of the AI economy.

The clock is ticking, and the gap is widening. According to new LinkedIn data, 86% of companies lack adequate talent velocity — ​​an organization’s ability to see its skills, build or acquire what’s needed, and mobilize talent in real time to get ahead of market demands.

A small minority — just 14% — are racing ahead. These talent velocity leaders are already reaping a substantial advantage, including greater confidence for the AI frontier.

Everyone else faces a widening velocity gap, failing to deliver needed human and AI skills to keep pace with disruption. This report introduces the Talent Velocity Curve to help organizations assess where they stand and five accelerators to help close the gap before it becomes a lasting divide.

Velocity is the solution.

Winning with velocity

Leaders are conquering uncertainty with confidence for the AI frontier.

As companies brace for staggering change, talent velocity leaders are winning by outperforming laggards on key confidence metrics. Their advantage averages 28 percentage points across four measures, including confidence to attract and retain critical talent and confidence to align talent to changing priorities. (Talent velocity leaders represent level 5 on the Talent Velocity Curve. Laggards represent levels 1–3 on the Curve.).

The need for velocity will only increase

Today’s pressures are already acute: 89% of talent leaders are concerned about skills agility (delivering the right skills at the right time for the right work), and despite economic uncertainty and slower hiring, 88% are concerned about employee retention. Providing learning opportunities remains the No.1 retention strategy; others include coaching and mentoring, and internal mobility.

Organizations must prepare for a future where AI tools and agents steadily gain capability, creating enormous and unforeseen opportunities. “New-collar” roles are becoming the backbone of the new economy. These new horizons require a workforce that can develop, mobilize, and innovate without friction.

This means skills and people need to be free from siloed domains and static structures. They must flex and grow as part of a fluid talent ecosystem.

Velocity accelerators

Velocity leaders put human potential at the center of transformation.

Against the backdrop of fluid tasks and melding functions, talent systems must evolve. The five accelerators are the critical areas of transformation to increase talent velocity — enabling work, skills, and people to realign continuously as business needs shift. In adopting the accelerators, leaders outpace laggards to a dramatic degree.

Employee growth — in the form of learning, career guidance, and skill building — lives at the center of each accelerator. This is the place where employee motivation and organizational goals come together to power business success.

The Talent Velocity Curve

The Talent Velocity Curve helps organizations identify their current state and plot a course for progress along five levels of velocity. Organizations at Level 1 are subsumed with day-to-day work priorities, unable to grow talent for what’s ahead, while Level 5 represents the talent velocity leaders who are transforming across all of the accelerators.

Clarity is the superpower for velocity

Building on the five accelerators, this research identifies key traits to go with each — a mindset, practice, and system (explored more deeply in the report’s next section). Talent velocity leaders are far more likely than laggards to embrace these traits, and two signature characteristics stand out for providing clarity for navigating uncertain times:

They leverage shared HR data and talent architecture. The most innovative leaders harness data that’s readily available and reflects the real-time status of the workforce. They also use talent architecture as a source of truth for roles, skills, and career pathways. Together, data and architecture enable predictive action to accelerate learning and mobility.

They guide employees with AI-powered career development. Velocity leaders treat career support as a wayfinding system, pointing people to build skills with the highest impact. Career development becomes a business imperative, with personalization at scale helping employees reskill for the most relevant and needed roles and tasks.

Together these traits deliver what both companies and people want: real-time intelligence to take their next best steps. Velocity leaders create a dynamic picture of workforce capability that informs not only talent development and mobility decisions but also enables talent acquisition to target, calibrate, and source based on the same unified skills intelligence.

By treating talent architecture as the shared source of truth across HR, talent development, talent acquisition, and business leaders, organizations align internal upskilling and mobility with external hiring needs — ensuring every talent action, whether build or buy, strengthens long‑term capability and accelerates business outcomes.

Velocity actions

Innovation begins with small steps forward.

Knowing what drives talent velocity is only part of the equation — success comes from putting it into action. This section shines more light on the key traits for each accelerator — the critical mindsets, practices, and systems. Cultivating these traits supports real progress.

An important reminder: transformation doesn’t have to start with sweeping change — it begins with one step forward. The most important action is moving ahead instead of standing still.

1. Velocity action for leadership momentum
Engage leaders to be champions for career development

What does tangible success look like for the leadership momentum accelerator? It starts with a mindset: managers and leaders — including the C-suite — embrace career development as a business imperative. Helping people grow is viewed as a strategic lever, not a discretionary spend.

As a practice, leaders and managers sponsor and celebrate career transformation in visible ways. This includes publicly endorsing career development initiatives, allocating budget for mentorships, job rotations, and internal mobility programs, and providing time and coaching for employees to learn and grow.

At the systems level, talent priorities should be embedded into company operating rhythms, putting employee growth alongside revenue growth in leaders’ field of vision.

2. Velocity action for culture as catalyst
Put growth at the center of culture

As AI reshapes work, innovation and growth must be core values. For velocity leaders, a culture of rapid learning inspires experimentation, curiosity, and employee development. This begins with a mindset of psychological safety, where people feel empowered to take risks and innovate without fear of failure.

As a practice, learning isn’t confined to formal programs — it flows through daily work, turning every project into an opportunity to grow. Microlearning is embedded in everyday tools and peer rituals — like post-project debriefs or informal lunch-and-learn sessions.

Shared values and rituals are the system to reinforce this culture, creating measurable impact across teams and ensuring that learning becomes a strategic advantage rather than an afterthought.

3. Velocity action for leading on AI
Craft an AI-first talent strategy

Talent velocity leaders are moving beyond scattered AI experiments to build talent strategies with AI at the core. This means connecting dynamic skills data to upskilling, career guidance, and mobility in one cohesive system.

The required mindset is clear: AI isn’t the future of work — it’s the way we work now. As a practice, strong change management enables rapid rollout of AI capabilities, minimizing friction and accelerating adoption. Leading organizations start with phased rollouts that clearly communicate the “why,” and executives model their own AI use.

At the system level, employees are equipped to explore and apply AI in their roles, using it not only to enhance performance but also to unlock new pathways for growth. Increasingly, leading organizations offer AI-powered personalized learning recommendations and AI coaching during daily tasks — all aligned with career progress.

4. Velocity action for an integrated talent ecosystem
Make talent architecture the foundation

An integrated ecosystem begins with a mindset that values agility and alignment over silos. In practice, it means planning holistically across hiring, learning, and mobility so that every stage of the employee experience feels connected.

And underpinning all of this is a system of shared data and talent architecture (a strategic framework for mapping roles, skills, and career pathways). Velocity leaders are building dynamic, digital maps for roles and skills — fluid enough to adapt as business needs and global trends shift.

But just as AI transformation is only beginning, adoption of talent architecture is early and accelerating: 43% of velocity leaders are already investing compared with 23% of laggards. Around the globe, the average for all companies is 31%, with the most momentum in Asia-Pacific at 40%, followed by 31% in Europe/Middle East/Africa, and 28% in North America.

5. Velocity action for career power
Ensure every employee has a career goal and plan

Velocity leaders possess a mindset anchored on a clear conviction: career support makes people feel valued and inspires them to grow. Alongside this belief, a foundational practice is coaching — including both manager-led and AI-powered guidance — making career navigation practical and actionable.

The system for success is using skills-based principles. Skills data empowers internal mobility, ensuring that talent moves fluidly across the organization and that growth is driven by capability, not hierarchy.

It all starts with every employee having a career goal and a plan to get there. Growth isn’t just personal; it’s how the workforce evolves in sync with business priorities.