The answer to the skills crisis hides in plain sight.

In a world of constant flux, organizations are only as adaptable as their people and their skills. Today nearly half of learning and talent development professionals see a skills crisis, with 49% agreeing, “My executives are concerned that employees do not have the right skills to execute our business strategy.”

To address this gap, learning is critical. But new LinkedIn data says there’s also more to it. Learning combined with career development — leadership training, coaching, internal mobility, and more — accelerates the flow of critical skills to keep pace with business needs.

Why is career development — a classic idea with new relevance — so powerful for adaptability and growth? Consider that career progress is people’s No. 1 motivation to learn. When employees don’t move ahead, they leave and take their skills elsewhere. By investing in career development, employers counteract the anxiety that comes with rapid change by building loyalty, energy, and innovation for the next era of work. In short, great companies are built on great careers.

Read on for data and advice to put career-driven learning into action.

A person working in front of a laptop.

What are organizations that embrace career development gaining over those that do not? To help answer this question, LinkedIn used survey responses to identify where organizations rank on a career development maturity curve, with the most mature qualifying as “career development champions.”

The upshot: Only 36% of organizations fall into the career development champions category with robust programs that yield business results. Another 31% have career development programs with limited adoption, and 33% have no initiatives or are just getting started.

What sets career development champions apart?

Data visualization showing what sets career development champions apart.
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How do career development champions outpace others in indicators of business success?

Career development champions outperform non-champions on a range of positive indicators. They’re more confident in their ability to be profitable and to attract and retain talent. Significantly, career development champions are better positioned to reap the benefits of generative AI (GAI) transformation; 51% describe their organization as a frontrunner in GAI adoption (at the “leading” or “accelerating” stage), compared to 36% of those with weaker career development programs. Stated another way, career development champions are 42% more likely to be frontrunners in GAI adoption compared to all others.

Mature career development initiatives correlate with positive outlook for profitability, confidence to attract and retain talent, and GAI adoption.

Graphic table showing different stats and percentages about the mature career development initiatives correlate with positive outlook for profitability, confidence to attract and retain talent, and GAI adoption.

Leading perspectives

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Data gathered from the LinkedIn platform also shows positive outcomes for organizations that prioritize career development. For this analysis, LinkedIn created a Career Development Index that scored organizations on four indicators of career support: commitments on the organization’s company page; keywords in job postings; prevalence of leadership development skills within the employee base; and high levels of internal mobility.

Based on their scores, companies were split into five groups of equal size, called quintiles. The group with the highest scores was compared to the bottom group to see how their results differed. Compared with low-scoring organizations, those with strong index scores are more likely to see three positive outcomes:

  • More employees who engage with learning — crucial for maintaining a flow of business-relevant skills.

  • Higher rate of promotions — an indicator that more employees are achieving impactful job performance.

  • Higher rate of promotions into positions of management and leadership — signifying a healthy pipeline of people who have institutional knowledge and strategic acumen.

Organizations scoring high on the Career Development Index have higher rates of engaged learners and job promotions.

Graph showing organizations scoring high on the Career Development Index.

Of course, promotions are not the only way to help employees feel a sense of career progress. Upskilling, coaching, and internal role changes help people feel valued, engaged, and more likely to stay with their organization. “Employees are saying, ‘I expect you as an employer to help me keep up, and if not, I’m going to go somewhere else,’ ” says Josh Bersin, global HR industry analyst.

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To better understand how employee turnover drains key skills from an organization, an additional analysis of LinkedIn platform data identified the skills most likely to show a net depletion at companies with more than 50 hires and 50 departures. The most at-risk skill?  Business strategy — the ability to set goals and adjust to changing market forces.

Other at-risk skills include strategic planning, sales management, and project planning. All are hard-to-replace skills that require critical thinking, working with uncertainty, and institutional knowledge.

The top 10 skills lost to attrition are the most valuable to the company and the hardest to replace.

Data visualization showing list of top 10 skills lost to attrition.
Two people facing each other having a conversation in front of their laptops.

Modern organizations must be “tenacious about embracing agility,” says Naphtali Bryant, executive coach and leadership development consultant at RAC Leadership. Together, GAI adoption and career development can be twin engines for future success, each powering the other to unleash productivity, innovation, and adaptability. “Think of it as a unified strategy for agility,” Naphtali says.

Taking a more detailed look at the survey data, the research focuses on four stages of GAI upskilling: not yet started, emerging, accelerating, and leading. Career development champions outpace non-champions at both the accelerating and leading levels of GAI adoption — indicating the strong relationship between career support and future-facing upskilling.

The state of GAI adoption: Career development champions show significant adoption compared to others.

Graph showing organizations that career development champions show 15 percentage points higher AI adoption compared to others.
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Many career development champions view AI as a competitive advantage that they can scale across their organizations — upskilling employees on a wide range of roles and levels of proficiency. For example, administrative assistants benefit from introductory GAI fluency while engineers require highly technical skills to build and deploy AI-based systems.

And many are acting in line with Naphtali’s advice — pursuing AI upskilling and career development in equal measure. Compared to non-champions, career development champions are 32% more likely to be deploying AI training programs this year and 88% more likely to offer career-enhancing gig opportunities or project-based learning. Even though champions already offer tangible career support for employees, they are 33% more likely to agree that career development is more of a priority this year.

So what are the most common best practices for career-building initiatives? Leadership training comes out on top — 71% of organizations offer leadership training.

The most common career development practices are leadership training and sharing internal job postings.

Percentage of career development champions who employ each practice. Respondents selected all that apply.

Illustration showing stats from the most common career development practices.

Career development stories

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What’s standing in the way of bigger leaps forward on career development? A picture emerges: Managers, employees, and talent teams are all stretched too thin to go beyond daily work and make progress for their teams, themselves, and their organizations.

Asked to choose the top three barriers standing in the way of career development, respondents say a lack of time and resources is a glaring pain point: 50% say managers lack proper support, 45% say employees lack support, and 33% say talent teams themselves lack support.

But only 11% of survey respondents cite “leadership doesn’t value career development” as one of their top three barriers. Clearly, most leadership teams are not standing in the way of career development, but they are also not addressing the systemic challenges to allow managers, employees, and talent teams to properly prioritize it.

Talent leaders must bring this story to life for the C-suite and articulate what’s needed to drive bottom-line results. To help this conversation, here are five talent strategy foundations that organizations can adopt to create business value with career development and continuous learning.

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It’s a simple idea — put the right people, with the right skills, in the right jobs, at the right time. But most talent leaders know that building an agile skills ecosystem is easier said than done.

Artificial intelligence is here to help. While AI is revolutionizing in-demand skills, it’s also delivering the dynamic, on-demand, and personalized learning technology to help organizations keep up. Organizations no longer need to choose between personalization and scale. And L&D pros are leaning in to use AI for their own routines — 71% are exploring, experimenting, or integrating AI into their work.

Other talent development practices that promote speed and agility include tracking skills gap data, creating skills-based career paths, collaborating with executives and talent colleagues, and using skills assessments. Less common across the board: large-scale upskilling initiatives that can be slow-moving and laborious. Not surprisingly, agile practices are more common for career development champions. Check out the Playbook on Agile Approaches to Upskilling for more tips and strategies.

Skills-based talent strategies are more prevalent for career development champions and include greater collaboration with executives and cross-functional HR teams.

Graph showing the skills-based talent strategies that are more prevalent for career development champions with an illustration of a person in front of a laptop.

Accelerating skill building through closer collaboration

AI is reshaping skills at lightning speed. To meet the moment, we compressed a 12-month plan to redesign Teradyne’s core curriculum into 45 days. Our mission went beyond rapid upskilling — we aimed to foster a culture of continuous learning, strengthen career paths, and boost learner engagement. We embraced an iterative approach with our strategy — gathering weekly feedback from functional leaders and tracking real-time data on learners’ interests and skills. By bringing stakeholders in at every step and embracing progress over perfection, we’ve helped Teradyne become more adaptive and agile.

Kelly Salek
Director of Talent Development at Teradyne

Focusing on internal mobility helps build an agile workforce that can apply transferable skills and cross-functional knowledge across the organization.  It’s not surprising, then, that about half of both career development champions (55%) and all other survey respondents (48%) see internal mobility as a higher priority in the year ahead.

More than half of career development champions see internal mobility as a rising priority.

Graph showing the stats of career development champions that see internal mobility as a rising priority with an illustration of two people walking and having a conversation.

How can more organizations kick-start internal mobility? Collaboration is key.

As a whole, career development champions already collaborate more often with other HR partners; 47% say they’re working more closely with talent acquisition this year compared with 36% for non-champions, and 55% of champions collaborate with talent management compared with 45% of non-champions.

Not many organizations have a dedicated internal mobility leader. And even when such a leader is present, internal mobility still requires significant cross-functional work. It pays to begin by convening partners, including talent acquisition and talent management, to align on goals and share their perspective and expertise. Check out the Playbook on Fostering Internal Mobility for models, tips, and assessments to kick-start your internal mobility program. 

Creating specific training programs for career advancement

"Opportunity is part of Walmart’s DNA. We’ve always had a strong culture of promoting from within, with approximately 75% of our salaried managers starting in hourly positions. We’re taking that to the next level by creating pathways to the roles that are critical to our business, both today and in the future. For example, we’ve created pipeline programs that help frontline associates become Walmart truck drivers and technicians — two jobs that are facing industry-wide talent shortages. It’s a win-win: associates are moving up into careers with greater responsibility and higher pay, while Walmart is filling key roles that help us deliver for customers and members."

Josh Allen
Group Director, Enterprise Frontline Learning at Walmart

Learning and talent development leaders struggle to articulate the value of their work, but the stakes are more important than ever before. Now is the time to define and gather metrics that demonstrate how investments in career development and skill-building support the organization’s highest objectives — think productivity and profits.

Employee engagement and retention are currently the most common ways to measure the impact of career development. But there’s an opportunity to aim higher. “You must be able to answer at least one of these three questions: How will this initiative help you to make money, save money, or mitigate risk for the company?” says Amanda Nolen, co-founder of the consulting firm NilesNolen. Get more advice from the Playbook on Measuring the ROI of Learning

Employee engagement and retention are the most common ways to measure the business impact of career development.

Percentage of career development champions who use each measurement method. Respondents selected all that apply.

Graph showing the percentage of measurement methods for career development champions with an illustration of two people in front of a computer.

Raising the bar for sales performance outcomes

Visa is evolving rapidly. Our sales team used to focus on landing one value proposition — now we have more than 200. To build proficiency across Visa’s range of products, we have embedded AI-powered training and coaching capabilities into a broader Visa product knowledge and solutions learning program. Now sales teammates can learn about the new product/solution value proposition and practice pitches in a safe space, receiving automated feedback without fear of judgment. This new approach and tool has resulted in a 78% increase in confidence with our sellers to pitch Visa products, and 83% of leaders saw value in their sellers leveraging the program and tool to practice their pitches.

Jeremy Broome
Global Head of Talent at Visa

The best managers can also claim the title of career development champion. They steer their people to skill-building opportunities, experiences, and connections that allow them to succeed and lead anywhere. Great managers share their employees’ accomplishments with others and connect them to people who can help advance their careers.

Unfortunately, employees have seen significantly less support from their managers year over year: Only 15% say their manager helped them build a career plan in the past six months — a decline of 5 percentage points from 2024.

Dramatic drops in manager support for their teams point to widespread drains on manager time. Organizations must provide systems of empowerment to help managers regain their momentum and impact, such as dedicated training and easy-to-use resources. ​​Recognition helps too — organizations must shine a spotlight on managers who embrace career-building and internal mobility. 

The state of managers: Critical career builders are actually losing steam when it comes to delivering employee support.

Percentage of employees who say their manager provided forms of learning and career support.

Graph showing the percentage of employees who say their manager provided forms of learning and career support.

Unlocking managers’ potential as career coaches

People managers at many companies are overwhelmed — juggling team leadership, employee well-being, and their full-time roles. 
At The Coca-Cola Company, we empathize with this challenge and are evolving how we select, prepare, and support our leaders. 
We’ve implemented rigorous leadership assessments to select the right people for leadership roles upfront and provide cohort-based development and transparent upward feedback through our performance enablement practice. This approach helps set our people managers up for success by enabling them to better coach, remove roadblocks, and align priorities around the work that matters most. Over the past three years, we’ve seen significant improvements in how our managers and senior leadership are rated by our people, 
along with overall satisfaction working at Coca-Cola.

Tapaswee Chandele
Senior Vice President of Global Talent, Development & HR System Partnerships at The Coca-Cola Company

No organization can become a true career development champion without this essential ingredient: giving people a sense of purpose. In fact, 84% of employees agree, "Learning adds purpose to my work."

Career development flourishes when employees feel in control of their careers and are inspired to build their own best future. Organizations can offer tools and support systems that help employees identify their unique strengths, set career goals, pursue skill-building, and access internal mobility opportunities.

The payoff: a workforce motivated to learn new skills — and an organization ready to adapt and thrive today and tomorrow.

Employees see increasing value in learning for adaptability in times of change.

Graph showing the percentage of employees who agree that learning helps to adapt during times of change.

Personalizing learning to drive continuous growth

To respond to rapid changes and talent shortages, we reimagined our approach to learning and growth. We created MyGrowth, a people-centered approach that brings together scalable offerings and engaging experiences in the areas of self-reflection, learning and career, connected through continuous dialogues called Growth Talks. With MyGrowth, we are supporting our people to stay relevant and resilient. In addition to 180,000 available learning offerings, MyGrowth entails upskilling and reskilling through My Skills. This powerful application enables skill assessments, skill gap analysis, and individual skill-based learning recommendations. With MyGrowth, over 254,000 Siemens people are embracing lifelong learning and cultivating a growth mindset.

Jenny Lin
Global Head of Learning and Growth at Siemens

Go deeper with playbooks

Turn this year’s Workplace Learning Report insights into action with LinkedIn data, frameworks, and advice from 20 Talent Development leaders and experts.

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Fostering internal mobility

Find tips and tactics to align internal mobility with business goals — and retain top talent.

Access playbook

ROI Playbook thumbnail.

Measuring the ROI of learning

Identify and measure metrics that matter — and demonstrate the value of career-driven learning to your business.

Access playbook

Skills Playbook thumbnail.

Agile approaches to upskilling

Accelerate upskilling with streamlined processes, manager training, and career growth plans.

Access playbook

2025 Workplace Learning Report.

Read methodology & acknowledgments

Survey data

The LinkedIn Learning 2025 Workplace Learning Report surveyed 937 L&D and HR professionals with L&D responsibilities who have some influence on budget decisions and 679 learners. Surveyed geographies include: North America (United States, Canada); South America (Brazil); Asia-Pacific (Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong); and Europe (United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, France, Germany, Austria).

LinkedIn platform insights

All data reflects aggregated LinkedIn member activity as of September 2024. Behavioral insights for this report were derived from the billions of data points generated by 1 billion members, 14 million jobs, and 5 million profile updates per minute. Specific analyses:

Career Development Index

To determine whether companies have a stronger or weaker Career Development Index, LinkedIn created a tool that assigned more points to companies demonstrating these components of career development index and fewer points to companies not demonstrating as many components of career development index:

  • Career growth: We defined career growth as any point at which an employee took a new position at the same company in the last 12 months and calculated the proportion of all transitions that occurred internally.
  • Leadership skills development: We identified the proportion of employees that have added at least one of 55 leadership skills to their profile while they were employed in a position at the company in the last 12 months.
  • LinkedIn career commitment: We flagged companies that have added at least one commitment with “Career Growth and Learning” on their LinkedIn Career page for promoting career growth.
  • Career-oriented job posts: We quantified the number of LinkedIn Job Posts from a company that mention keywords such as “career growth,” “professional development,” and “promotion” across three major languages (English, French, German).

After developing the career development index, companies were split into five groups of equal size, called quintiles, based on increasing values of the index. We then compared the top group, with the highest career development index, to the bottom group, with the lowest, to see how their outcomes differed. The outcomes are defined as follows:

  • Overall promotion rate: We considered all internal promotions that occurred in the last 12 months by the company and calculated the percentage of promotions that took place.
  • Leadership promotion rate: We considered all internal promotions that occurred in the last 12 months by the company and calculated the percentage of leadership promotions that took place (i.e. member was promoted to a manager role or higher).
  • Number of learners: We calculated the total number of learners that have engaged with LinkedIn Learning content in the last 12 months.
  • Investment in L&D: As per the Executive Confidence Survey, executives were asked to respond if their own company “In the next 6 months, plans to increase, make no change, or decrease financial investments in L&D.”  The proportion of companies that responded with “Increase” was calculated.

Loss of Critical Skills Due to Employee Turnover

The skills explicitly added by employees were identified and the number of hires and departures in a company in the last 12 months were calculated for a given skill. The total departures by total hires for a given skill was calculated as the skill-loss ratio in a company. Finally the median skill loss ratio across all the companies was calculated for a given skill to identify the loss of critical skills.

Fastest Growing Skills

The skills explicitly added by L&D professionals are identified, and the skills that have seen the largest growth among L&D professionals from September 2023 to September 2024 are classified as Fastest Growing Skills.