In boardrooms across North America and EMEA, CEOs and CHROs are wrestling with an uncomfortable truth: the very capabilities needed to drive future growth—technical acumen, adaptive leadership, and data-driven decision-making—are in critically short supply. Despite broad agreement that closing these skills gaps is a top business priority, most corporate upskilling efforts continue to fall painfully short.
The latest HRO Today Annual Top Concerns of CHROs report, sponsored by Hudson RPO, underscores just how severe this problem has become. In boardrooms across North America and EMEA, CEOs and CHROs are confronting a critical challenge: 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted by 2027, yet only 7% of organizations have made significant progress on strategic upskilling programs that blend soft, technical, and digital skills. This skills gap is not just an HR headache—it’s a significant business risk.
Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum warns that 44% of workers’ core skills will be disrupted within five years, but only half of employees currently have adequate access to training. If upskilling isn’t explicitly tied to the capabilities your organization needs to compete with, such as faster product development cycles, superior customer experiences, or new market entry, it will never receive the investment or executive sponsorship it requires.
Unfortunately, many aren’t prepared. In the UK, a staggering 82% of managers are “accidental managers,” promoted without formal training, resulting in inefficiencies and often toxic cultures and in the US fewer than 41% of managerial jobs ask for management skills as a requirement. Without leadership that champions upskilling and models continuous learning, most initiatives will remain at the surface level. Without equipping leaders to champion upskilling and continuous learning, most initiatives struggle to gain traction.
This technology-first transformation without a people-first roadmap is widening critical gaps in readiness.
In Hudson’s blog The AI Effect: Is Your Leadership Ready for What’s Next?, we emphasize that nearly 45% of senior HR leaders see AI as the biggest disruptor to HR in the next 2–3 years, yet readiness remains low at only 41% in North America, 53% in EMEA (Hudson RPO). That means even as organizations aggressively adopt AI, many leaders aren’t equipped to guide their teams through this transition.
At Hudson RPO we take a different approach to treat upskilling as a strategic asset linked to business outcomes:
Interestingly, North American firms rank retention first, while in EMEA, the priority is enabling employees to learn future-critical skills, highlighting regional differences but a shared strategic urgency.
At Hudson RPO, we see the same pattern across clients worldwide: organizations that successfully close skills gaps don’t treat upskilling as an HR project. They make it a board-level business strategy tied directly to revenue, market differentiation, and customer impact.
If your upskilling initiatives aren’t tied to clear business objectives, they’re not preparing your workforce for disruption—they’re creating a liability. By integrating strategic workforce insights, like those powering Hudson’s TalentIQ platform, leadership development, and RPO services, you can turn upskilling into a powerful competitive advantage.
Now is the time to build a business-aligned skills roadmap that protects your bottom line and ensures your workforce is ready to lead, adapt, and outperform in the markets ahead.
Hudson RPO offers support in designing and implementing data-driven, business-aligned skills roadmaps. Whether accelerating AI literacy among your leadership or rolling out scalable micro-learning for frontline employees, we can help you upskill your existing workforce that’s ready for tomorrow.
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