UK employers are investing heavily in training, but new evidence suggests many may be answering the wrong questions.
What matters most for the UK workforce is whether current learning efforts are developing capabilities that will remain valuable in five years’ time.
New research from Lyceum Education Group and FT Longitude, drawing on insights from 2,000 UK-based employees, reveals a subtle, but important, disconnect.
Employees are motivated, value lifelong learning and believe their organisations care about development. In fact, 79 per cent of employees say they would recommend their employer as a great place to learn. And 85 per cent say lifelong learning is part of their organisation’s culture.
However, many remain unconvinced that the training they receive is equipping them for the future.
Confidence lacks in future‑critical capabilities
Skills tied to employees’ current roles are where confidence is strongest: 73 per cent of workers rate their technical skills as “good”. This indicates that investment in traditional, role‑based training is largely effective.
However, confidence drops when it comes to future‑critical capabilities. Emerging skills is the area where confidence declines most. Indeed, 29 per cent of workers express dissatisfaction with recent emerging‑skills training. Almost half (48 per cent) rate their emerging‑skills confidence as “adequate” or “poor.”
Organisations are successfully reinforcing existing capability. But nvestment is often falling short in equipping employees with the skills they will need as roles and industries continue to evolve.
Emerging skills is the area where confidence declines most
A damaging disconnect
The research suggests the disconnect lies within a systemic issue. It stems from misplaced investment, uneven access to training and learning infrastructure designed for a previous era of the working environment.
It’s an almost universal issue, with the same mismatch seen across industries at varying degrees.
Employees in the technology industry express the highest confidence in emerging talents (61 per cent), as would arguably be expected. But employees express the lowest satisfaction with the training intended to develop those skills (36 per cent). This demonstrates a clear discrepancy.
Only 21 per cent of workers in the professional services sector have access to a digital learning platform. This is despite the fact that 92 per cent receive training on a quarterly basis or more. This indicates a sector that prioritises development but lacks the infrastructure to deliver learning in a way that is flexible, visible and equitably accessible for a modern workforce.
Finance presents another variation of the same issue. More than one-third of workers train less than quarterly, and fewer than three in 10 can access a digital platform.
In sectors where risk management and regulatory change are constant, this lack of structured, accessible learning raises questions about long‑term preparedness.
Meanwhile, healthcare has room to grow in its support for non-linear career pathways. Especially as a sector that needs flexible, adaptable talent.
And in education, 82 per cent of workers rate their technical skills highly. Yet emerging-skills confidence falls to just 37 per cent, among the lower end across sectors.
A new infrastructure
This reflects a broader reality in which demand for future-facing skills continues to rise across all sectors. This creates an opportunity for organisations to evolve their learning systems so they better cater to changing needs of the workforce.
The structural gaps highlighted by the findings show where industries that employ millions can make significant improvements right now.
A skills transition that is already underway is reshaping the labour market. Automation and AI are reshaping demands that many industries now have a growing opportunity to prioritise.
Establishing an infrastructure where training is regularly provided in easily accessible formats is crucial for businesses to ensure that learning opportunities are equitable and built to fill vital skills gaps.
So, what needs to change? The first shift relates to how organisations see careers. The research finding that healthcare offers the lowest support for non-linear trajectories suggests 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.
Employees who want to move laterally, to combine technical knowledge with new digital or analytical capabilities, are often working against structures that weren’t designed with that kind of development in mind.
Establishing an infrastructure where training is regularly provided in easily accessible formats is crucial
Embedding skills development
Employers will be in a much better position to retain and grow their current talent if they rethink their career frameworks to emphasise breadth and adaptability rather than vertical progression.
The second is one of mindset. Employers should move beyond episodic training towards learning cultures where skill development is purposeful and embedded into everyday work.
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.
Infrastructure is the third change. Discrepancy between sectors in access to digital learning platforms represents a fundamental inequality in how different parts of the workforce are equipped to respond to change.
A continuous priority
Employers have a great chance to improve how they assist and grow their employees if they haven’t yet made an investment in accessible, flexible learning technology.
Apprenticeships are also an underused lever here, offering structured, employer-funded routes into emerging skills that can be widely-implemented across industries that are finding growing skills gaps in their workforce.
While none of this calls for organisations to completely change overnight, it does necessitate dedication to making workforce development one of their continuous priorities, even as budgets evolve.
The research shows that confidence in technical, role‑specific skills is already high across many sectors. Ensuring learning strategies are fit for the future is now the greater challenge.
Across every industry examined, employees recognise that their roles are evolving and are actively looking to their employers for support in building emerging, transferable capabilities.
Closing the gap between training activity and future readiness is now one of the defining productivity challenges facing British business today.
