The emergence of AI has many people wondering what's next for organizations and their workforces. One thing is clear: things are changing. 

To help business leaders and professionals navigate the fast-evolving workplace, Workera has released its 2025 State of Skills Intelligence Report. The research surveyed 800 learning and development (L&D) leaders and 800 full-time professionals to get their perspectives on how they approach workforce transformation. 

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The common thread? AI skills matter. However, there's a disconnect between how business leaders and employees view AI and the best ways to upskill. 

"The majority of the issues we're going to run into in the coming years are people issues, not technology issues," said Kian Katanforoosh, founder and CEO of Workera. "We're going to have really good technologies coming in, but people are going to struggle to catch up." 

AI skills are in demand 

AI has permeated almost every business sector and can help most professionals with their everyday workflows in some capacity. As a result, employers are giving more opportunities to employees who have developed the skills necessary to use AI more efficiently. 

"As a manager, if I'm going to give my project to someone, I would rather give it to someone who's mastered AI because it almost feels like you're giving your project to a group rather than a single person," said Katanforoosh. 

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The survey found that 88% of business leaders report prioritizing AI skills over other skills within their organizations for promotions or job assignments. Furthermore, 84% of respondents prioritize verified AI skills over degrees in hiring decisions. 

AI skills are even factored into headcount decisions, with 88% of business leaders at companies with 5,000 to 9,999 employees saying AI is an important factor compared to 73% at companies with 10,000-plus employees. However, 80% of enterprise L&D leaders believe AI will lead their company to increase rather than reduce overall headcount.

Employees feel starkly different. The survey found that 54% of employees are not confident in their organizations' recognition of AI skills, only 4% feel like AI skills are always prioritized in promotions, and 47% believe having AI skills has no noticeable impact on career advancement. 

These contrasting numbers show a gap in leader confidence and workforce perception, pointing to a disconnect in how business leaders communicate the importance of AI to achieving business and career goals. More than half (57%) of employees felt their leadership had poorly communicated the organization's AI strategy and its goals for AI upskilling. 

Katanforoosh said the disconnect is partly due to the different incentives between leaders and employees, and, as a result, the perceived value varies greatly. 

"Leaders who are in charge of digital transformation have incentives to show optimism and to show that yeah, people are great with AI and they're doing great things," said Katanforoosh. "Employees, on the other hand, are seeing the realities, and they're more pragmatic." 

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This situation leads to divergent perceptions on how close companies are to being AI-ready. Just one in five employees (22%) thought their companies would be fully AI-ready in the next two years, while 63% of business leaders believed their organization would be AI-ready in the next two years, according to the report. 

The research showed that an inability to adapt to new skills leaves companies vulnerable to falling behind, with 49% of leaders suggesting their organization is falling significantly behind competitors due to being unable to reskill or upskill effectively. 

So, what can businesses do to help close the gap and promote better AI adoption? Workera found the answer lies in a concept known as Verified Skills Intelligence. 

Verified Skills Intelligence

Traditionally, an employee's skills are evaluated based on what they self-report or what managers infer the person knows based on their credentials, resume, content completion, and more. Companies often make important talent decisions on those signals, such as targeted learning courses or job opportunities, but they can be flawed. 

"We looked at your resume, we looked at your job profile, and we looked at the projects you're working on, and these are the skills we think you have, so you got that project, which feels really unfair to the employee, because the employee may have so many other skills," said Katanforoosh. 

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Workera analyzed 22,000-plus adaptive assessments taken on the Workera platform and found that only 11% of employees accurately assessed their skill levels, with nearly seven in 10 incorrectly estimating what they could do. However, 85% of the L&D leaders surveyed reported confidence in the self-reported skills data. 

Katanforoosh said a reason for this discrepancy is that "you don't know what you don't know," which leads people to overestimate their capabilities. Other people downplay their skills because they are humble or insecure. Either way, the result is inaccurate data. 

According to Workera, Verified Skills Intelligence can help by directly testing a person's abilities through a series of assessments. This approach eliminates guesswork and provides business leaders with more accurate insights they can use to drive investments, including upskilling opportunities. 

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"Verified Skills Intelligence is more precise, more granular, and gives more opportunities for the employees to showcase, and say, 'I actually studied AI outside of work, and I'm ready to take on a project, and my job profile says otherwise, but give me the opportunity to show you that I have those AI skills,'" said Katanforoosh. 

The L&D leaders surveyed expected skills verification to help with data-driven decision-making (45%), employee engagement and retention (43%), and training efficiency and personalization (41%). Other benefits cited by the leaders included targeted career decisions, faster onboarding, and closing critical skills gaps. 

Moving forward 

Although the report suggested the return on investment from learning programs remains elusive for 69% of L&D leaders, Katanforoosh advised organizations to consider increasing their efforts in employee learning: "If you think you are doing enough to train your employees, you are not." 

The research data supports that conclusion. When employees were asked if they had personally been offered any AI-specific training opportunities by their organization during the past 12 months, only 25% of employees said they had. 

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However, business leaders must ensure their talent is prepared accordingly to see tangible results from implementing the latest technologies.

"For every dollar invested in technology, you probably need to invest$5 in people, otherwise you're not going to see the technology come to life," said Katanforoosh.

Katanforoosh also said the first step companies can take to lead this charge to success is to benchmark their current state. Then, they can develop an action plan regarding upskilling and hiring depending on business requirements. 

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