TalentLMS report finds workers learning skills on the job

TalentLMS has published a report on how quickly workers and managers are adapting to changing skill demands, based on a survey of 1,500 respondents in the United States.

The Speed-to-Skill Report found that 53% of respondents learn new skills by doing the work and figuring things out for themselves. It also found that 44% said work priorities were pushing learning aside, while 27% said learning was not integrated into daily work.

The findings point to a gap between the pace of change in the workplace and the pace at which employers help staff build new skills. Only 16% of respondents said skill-building happens quickly when new needs arise at their company, even though 70% agreed that employees need faster ways to build skills.

Nearly half of those surveyed, 47%, said some of their job skills had become outdated within the past five years. The results suggest managers are noticing the change earlier than employees.

Among managers, 21% said their skills had become outdated within the past year, compared with 10% of employees. Managers were also more than twice as likely as employees to say this had happened within the past six months, at 12% versus 5%.

Learning at work

The survey covered 964 managers and 536 employees. The results suggest informal learning during day-to-day work is becoming more common as formal programmes struggle to keep pace with changing job requirements.

The pattern is emerging as companies face pressure to respond more quickly to shifts in technology and business processes. The report argues that workers are often adapting in real time even when structured training is slower to respond.

Artificial intelligence featured heavily in managers' responses. Some 38% of managers said it was difficult to predict which skills their teams would need in the next 12 months, while 36% said they struggled to keep up with how quickly AI was changing their teams' skill needs.

TalentLMS's parent company linked the trend to AI's effect on the workplace.

"AI isn't just changing the skills people need, it's accelerating how fast those skills expire. Employees are already adapting in real time, but organizations are still relying on training cycles built for a slower world. The ones that close the gap between learning and doing will lead. The rest will keep training for a world that's already moved on," said Dimitris Tsingos, Chief Executive Officer of Epignosis.

Manager concerns

The findings indicate that managers feel the strain of this shift more sharply than other workers because they are closer to changing operational demands and team planning. Their responses suggest a more immediate awareness of how quickly existing knowledge can lose value.

The report suggests the issue is not a lack of recognition that new skills are needed. Instead, the gap lies in the slower process of identifying those needs, creating learning pathways and applying new knowledge at work.

That matters for employers trying to keep teams effective as job requirements change more often. If learning remains separate from daily work, companies may find it harder to respond when new tasks, tools or processes arrive faster than training plans can be updated.

For employees, the results suggest self-directed learning is becoming a practical necessity rather than a choice. For managers, they point to a planning challenge as teams navigate rapid shifts in skill requirements and uncertainty over which capabilities will matter next.

The report sets out six strategies to help organisations build skills more quickly as work changes, although the published findings focused mainly on the scale of the gap between learning and day-to-day demands. One of the clearest findings was that only 16% of respondents said their company builds skills quickly when new needs arise.