AI and skills are L&D’s top strategic priorities

Published in November 2025, Fosway Group’s Digital Learning Realities research analyses all the critical trends and opportunities for learning leaders in the next 12 months. Here, Fosway analysts look at AI and skills and other digital learning priorities for 2025 and beyond.

A sea change has happened in learning. Over the past three years of the survey, we have seen the dramatic demise of compliance as the top priority for learning teams. Compliance had held the top spot for more than a decade – but has now tumbled down the priority list to such an extent that only one in four says it’s a high priority. The new leader last year, skills has maintained its position as the most influential strategic topic for learning teams, growing and cementing its position as a strategic imperative for learning teams. We have truly entered the age of skills-centred learning strategy, as organisations begin to assess just how fit they are for the future, and plan to build the capabilities that maintain organisational competitiveness at a time of huge upheaval and radical innovation.

That AI is also neck and neck with skills is no coincidence. It’s the first time we have added this as a priority option in the survey. What the results show is that AI is seen as a critical element of learning strategy. AI is clearly both a catalyst for changing work and working that in turn fundamentally influences how work gets done and is organised, radically changing the nature of learning itself and fundamentally what people need to learn. Equally, AI is powering the intelligence which enables L&D teams to identify the skills and capabilities needed for organisations to succeed at a speed and scale that has never been achievable before. Such is the revolution in people development caused and enabled by AI that it’s safe to say learning will never be the same again.

Business transformation is at the heart of L&D’s role in organisations like never before

Whilst empowering personal and career development is always central to building a strong employee value proposition and driving engagement – this not the greatest driver of the strategic momentum behind skills building in most organisations today.

There is a more significant, pragmatic, business focused  and critical driver behind skills – delivering transformation and making organisations fit for the future.  Invariably – when career and skills development is deeply integrated with strategic workforce planning, future skills, internal mobility reskilling and upskilling is not a matter of guesswork, blind altruism or best intentions. It’s intelligently aligning L&D and people development to genuine skills needs that matters. So it is increasingly essential for L&D teams to be closely connected to wider HR and business transformation teams than ever before.

This is an excerpt from Digital Learning Realities 2025. Get the full insight and discover all the latest market and solution trends by downloading all infographics here.

What should you do next?

• There’s still time to be involved in Phase Two – alongside Fosway’s publicly available suite of AI research papers come a range of private assets for this AI project’s participants, with a level of detailed analysis and insight you will not find anywhere else. Contact us for more, join Fosway’s strategic AI project for 2025: ‘AI in Learning’.

Other recommended reading

• Build your AI strategy with evidence, not guesswork. You can find an overview of the research programme here: Fosway AI Strategic Research Programme
• The 2025 Fosway 9-Grid^TM for Digital Learning – full report. Before the 2026 report is published, get the full analysis of the 2025 market today.

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