Skillsoft (NYSE: SKIL), a leading AI-native Skills Management platform, today released its Workforce Readiness Report: Execution Gap Edition. The report reveals a critical disconnect: organizations widely recognize skills gaps within their workforces yet continue to assign employees work that exceeds their current capabilities. The findings show that this execution gap has far-reaching consequences ranging from unsuccessful AI adoption and customer dissatisfaction to employee burnout and revenue loss.

The report shows that 77% of managers and 60% of individual contributors say skill gaps are present in their workplace today. Yet, more than half of managers (54%) and 37% of individual contributors say people are frequently or always assigned work requiring skills they do not have.

The consequences reach across the organization. Managers see the biggest issues with quality assurance, delayed, or failed AI adoption and slower service delivery. Individual contributors most often point to burnout and customer dissatisfaction. Compounding the problem, managers are also facing an added oversight burden, with 38% saying they’re spending more time reviewing or verifying AI-generated work.

The findings point to several structural failures as the root cause:

  • Skill gaps surface after work is affected. Individual contributors most often discover a missing skill only after struggling to complete a task (25%) or during a performance review (25%), rather than through an earlier signal.

  • Leaders and employees see workforce capability differently. Sixty-two percent of managers are “very confident” their organization can identify the skills needed to deliver on business priorities, versus only 35% of individual contributors, a 27-point gap.

  • Employee development support arrives too late. Thirty percent of individual contributors waited 3 to 12 months for help building a needed skill, while 1 in 10 received no support.

Without an evidence-based view of workforce capability and timely intervention, organizations are left reacting to workforce readiness gaps after quality, productivity, or employee capacity have been impacted.

“Organizations do not need more evidence that skill gaps exist. They need a clearer view of where those gaps will affect successful delivery of the work,” said Ciara Harrington, Chief People Officer at Skillsoft. “When skill gaps remain hidden until deadlines are missed, quality suffers, or business outcomes fall short, leaders are forced to react after the fact. Managers step in to provide additional oversight, employees spend extra effort compensating for the gap, and execution ultimately suffers. This is not simply a learning problem. It is a skills gap manifesting itself as an execution problem.”

Key Findings

Organizations see the gaps, but still assign work beyond available skills

Awareness is not translating into action. Organizations know skill gaps exist yet work continues to reach employees who are not equipped to perform it.

  • 77% of managers and 60% of individual contributors say skill gaps are present in their workplace today.

  • 54% of managers and 37% of individual contributors say people are frequently or always assigned work requiring skills they do not have.

  • Individual contributors most often discover a missing skill only after struggling to complete a task (25%) or during a performance review (25%), rather than through an earlier signal.

The skills mismatch affects quality, AI adoption, customer satisfaction and revenue

The cost of execution gaps lands differently across the organization, but no group escapes it.

  • Managers see skill gaps impact quality assurance issues most often (31%), followed by increased workload and burnout (26%), delayed or unsuccessful AI adoption (23%), slower product or service delivery (22%) and lost revenue or missed targets (20%).

  • Individual contributors point to increased workload and burnout as the main consequence of skill gaps (31%), followed by lower employee engagement or retention (24%), customer dissatisfaction (21%), and slower product or service delivery (20%).

Turning Workforce Readiness into Execution

The findings point to a problem that extends beyond identifying individual skills. The findings show that leadership teams across functions need to understand the skills the work requires, the capabilities available internally, and employees’ level of proficiency. Inherently, this also means leaders must have a thorough understanding of the work itself — what it requires and what impact it has.

That requires a connected approach to Skills Management, the discipline through which organizations identify, measure, develop, and deploy workforce capabilities against business demand. Skills provide the core units of talent data. Capability reflects whether those skills can be combined with the necessary knowledge, experience, context, tools, workflows, and support to perform the work and deliver a result.

The Skills Supply Chain™ provides a framework for putting that discipline into practice. It begins with the business outcome and connects that outcome to the human and AI work, skills, and readiness needed to deliver it.

“The organizations that pull ahead will not necessarily be the ones that adopted AI first,” said Harrington. “They will be the ones that understand the skills their business depends on, know whether people and AI are ready to do the work, and can close gaps before execution suffers. Adopting AI without the skills to use it effectively can create as much risk as moving too slowly. The real differentiator will be how well organizations develop and deploy their combined human and AI workforce against business outcomes.”

Download the full Skillsoft Workforce Readiness Report: Execution Gap Edition here to see where skills gaps may be creating execution risk.

Read Skillsoft’s analysis of how organizations can close those gaps before execution suffers here.

Research Methodology

The Skillsoft Workforce Readiness Report: Execution Gap Edition was conducted through an independent market research firm in August 2026. The survey included 2,000 full-time individual contributors, managers, and executives across the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. The research examined skills visibility, ownership, and gap closure.

About Skillsoft

Skillsoft (NYSE: SKIL) is a global leader in Skills Management for the human + AI era. The AI-native Skillsoft Platform gives a clear view of workforce capability, closes critical skill gaps, and proves the impact of skills on business outcomes. With Skillsoft, organizations can build AI-ready teams, lower the cost and time of workforce development, and reduce execution risk as work continues to change. Thousands of organizations worldwide trust Skillsoft to power workforce readiness. Learn more at Skillsoft.com.

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