Businesses may say technology learning is a priority while employees lack the time and support to develop skills. Pluralsight’s 2025 Tech Skills Report highlights that gap in UK-focused coverage; its separate 2026 report finds that skills shortages are still associated with abandoned projects across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The surveys point to a practical issue: course access or stated commitment does not by itself create time to learn or prove that workers can apply new skills.
What Pluralsight’s reports say about the upskilling gap
In its 2025 Tech Skills Report, Pluralsight found that 95% of executives said building a culture of learning was a priority, while 95% of surveyed IT and business professionals said they needed more support to learn technology skills. Pluralsight identified finding time as the leading barrier, followed by low employee engagement and lack of leadership support. Its report page says 46% of organizations give employees time to learn on the job.
Computer Weekly’s February 23, 2026 account of the report described the findings in a UK context: nearly 95% of UK business leaders regarded technology skills as a top priority, while approximately the same proportion lacked resources to provide them. It also reported that half of UK employees said they lacked time for training and 93% said lack of support was the biggest barrier. These are reported survey results, not a description of every UK employer.
Pluralsight’s separate 2026 Tech Skills Report surveyed 1,500 technology executives, L&D leaders and practitioners in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, interviewed June 30–July 20, 2026. The company reports a global margin of sampling error of ±2.5 percentage points at 95% confidence; subgroup margins differ. In that survey, 69% of organizations said they abandoned a project in the previous year because of technology skills shortages, and 29% said they tie upskilling ROI to business outcomes.
The figures from the two reports should not be read as a direct trend line: the populations, geography and questions differ. Nor do survey responses establish that a particular training programme caused or would have prevented a project outcome.
Why employees can lack time and support despite leadership intent
A learning priority becomes real only when it changes how work is planned. If delivery targets leave no room for training, employees must fit learning around their normal workload. That makes participation harder and may reinforce the other barriers Pluralsight identifies: weak engagement and limited leadership support. Offering courses without adjusting workloads can therefore leave the central execution problem untouched.
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For a business, the useful distinction is between announcing a priority and enabling it. Managers need to make space for learning, connect it to the skills teams actually need, and give employees opportunities to use new knowledge. Drew Firment, AWS Community Hero and Pluralsight’s VP of Global Partnerships, put the time issue this way: “A learning organization doesn’t make time; it builds time into their business model.”
What the project figures do—and do not—show
In the 2025 report, 48% of IT professionals and 58% of business professionals reported abandoning projects because of a lack of technology skills. Those percentages describe responses from those professional groups. The 2026 report’s 69% figure instead refers to organizations reporting a project abandoned due to technology skills gaps in the prior year. They are not interchangeable measures.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallThe newer report also says 96% of surveyed organizations invested in AI tools for at least some employees, while 52% said most or all employees were AI literate. Pluralsight reports rising cybersecurity and cloud needs alongside AI adoption. These findings indicate what respondents said about their organizations; they are not a universal assessment of workforce readiness. In announcing the report, Pluralsight CEO Erin Gajdalo said: “AI adoption has outpaced workforce readiness, and organizations are paying for that gap in abandoned projects, budget overruns, and missed opportunities.”
How businesses can turn learning priorities into action
The reports point to four practical checks for a company assessing whether its learning approach is likely to reach employees. They are decision criteria drawn from the reported barriers and recommendations, not a tested ranking of interventions.
- Protected time: Is learning scheduled within working hours, or left to employees’ discretionary time?
- Manager and leadership support: Do leaders and line managers reinforce learning through workload decisions and expectations, or simply describe it as important?
- Applied practice: Can employees demonstrate skills in relevant work, rather than only complete a course or earn a certificate?
- Business connection: Are learning goals tied to specific capability needs, and does the organization check whether the intended business outcomes changed?
That last check matters because training completion is not proof of workplace capability. In the 2026 report, 77% of technology executives said they had seen employees complete training or earn certifications yet remain unable to use those skills on the job. Pluralsight’s conclusion is that completion metrics alone do not demonstrate applied ability. Matthew Lloyd Davies, the report’s principal author in security, called skills shortages “an execution risk” when organizations abandon projects for lack of the right skills.
Pluralsight offers technology learning, skills assessments, hands-on practice and workforce insights. Those are examples of tools a company might use, but a service alone cannot protect employees’ time, secure managerial support or establish whether new skills improved business results.
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How to interpret the findings as a UK business
The UK-focused coverage of the 2025 report is most relevant to the question of why employees may be under-supported even when leaders say skills matter. The 2026 report offers a newer, three-country snapshot, but its findings should remain attributed to its survey sample and not be presented as a UK-only result. Both reports were vendor-sponsored Pluralsight research conducted with Wakefield Research; they describe respondent perceptions and reported organizational outcomes, not a census or causal test.
For a finance or operations leader, the practical takeaway is to treat learning as part of delivery planning, not as an optional extra. Set aside working time, identify the capabilities needed for real work, and assess whether people can use them. Participation counts can show that employees accessed training; they cannot, on their own, show readiness or return on investment.
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