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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.