Report

The Workplace Skills Development Benchmark Report 2026

What Is Included in the Download

A three-lens learning and development benchmark that goes beyond spend as a percentage of revenue, covering investment, program design, and measurement.

The five-level learning and development maturity model, from Content-Centric to Skills-Intelligence-Driven.

The support-versus-sponsorship test to assess whether your L&D investment can withstand a hard budget conversation.

An L&D maturity assessment with a self-assessment scorecard and recommendations for each maturity band.

Download the Free Benchmark Report

Workplace Skills Development Benchmark Report 2026 by Upside Learning, covering L&D investment, program design, and measurement maturity.

Chapters

Benchmark Lenses

Maturity Levels

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What Is in the Report

Introduction

A Fresh Starting Point for L&D Benchmarking

Spend as a percentage of revenue rarely tells you enough. This learning and development benchmark assesses your function’s maturity across three lenses: investment, program design, and measurement.

Chapter 1

Why Enterprise Learning Investment Needs a New Benchmark

What the Fosway Group survey of 334 L&D and HR leaders reveals about learning budgets in 2026. The difference between support and sponsorship, and the question that tests whether an investment is outcome-ready.

Chapter 2

Learning Investment by Enterprise Size and Maturity

Where spend goes as maturity rises. The build-versus-license decision, including the audience size at which the economics change. Why increased spending in one category does not necessarily mean greater maturity.

Chapter 3

Program Design Maturity Benchmarks

How learning ownership shifts between L&D and the business. How personalized learning really is, whether it happens in the flow of work, and where your organization stands on a five-stage AI readiness model.

Chapter 4

Measurement and ROI Maturity Benchmarks

Where organizations stand on measurement maturity, what leading practices look like, and the gap between stated priorities and demonstrated capability, including L&D measurement and business impact.

Chapter 5

Recommendations and Where to Benchmark Your Organization

A self-assessment that scores your L&D function across three dimensions on a 1–5 scale. Understand your score, identify your maturity band, and use the recommendations to decide what to address next.

Who Should Read This Report?

Heads of Learning & Development

Understand where your L&D function stands across investment, program design, and measurement, and identify what needs attention next.

Chief Learning Officers

Build an evidence-based case for your next L&D budget, grounded in business outcomes rather than last year’s numbers.

CHROs and HR Leaders

Connect workforce capability goals with learning investment, and bring a clearer basis for those conversations to the leadership team.

Learning Leaders and eLearning Experts

Use benchmark data to inform decisions about learning strategy, program design, and investment priorities.

Five Findings Every L&D Leader Should Know

L&D execution confidence is falling.

Fosway Group’s research shows declining confidence across five L&D execution capabilities between 2022 and 2026, even as AI and skills-building remain prominent priorities.

More AI spend doesn’t necessarily mean greater maturity.

While 63% plan to increase AI content-authoring spend, only 11% rate their AI capability as advanced.

Business teams are taking on a greater role in learning.

The involvement of business-side experts and project teams in learning resourcing grew from roughly 40% in 2021 to 65% in 2026.

Measuring business impact remains a gap.

75% of HR managers say their L&D strategy aligns with business KPIs, but only 37% of companies measure L&D success by business impact.

Skills gaps persist as skills-building priority declines.

The share of organizations rating skills building as a high priority fell from roughly 80% in 2020 to 65% in 2026, while 75% still report a significant skills gap.

Try the Sponsorship Test

Name the one executive who owns the capability your learning spend is meant to build.

If you can name that person, your investment has a clearer basis for sponsorship. If you cannot, the report shows you where to start.

Get the Full Framework in the Report

Benchmark Your L&D Maturity

The self-assessment in Chapter 5 helps you evaluate your L&D function across three dimensions:

Investment alignment

Does your spend balance off-the-shelf content with bespoke, contextual capability building and performance support?

Program design maturity

Do business leaders co-own learning, and is learning embedded in daily workflows?

Measurement and impact

Do you measure success through business impact and operational KPIs, rather than completion or satisfaction alone?

This skills assessment helps you identify where your L&D function is ahead, where it lags, and what to prioritize next. If you’re considering how to assess L&D maturity, the report provides a structured scoring framework and maturity bands to guide that evaluation.

About the Author

Venudhar Bhatt

Thought Leader in Workforce Skilling and Enterprise Learning at Upside Learning

Venudhar Bhatt is a practitioner and researcher in workforce skilling and enterprise learning, with more than two decades of experience leading capability transformation initiatives across global enterprises.

At Upside Learning, he works with enterprise L&D and HR leaders to connect workforce capability development with measurable business outcomes. His work explores how organizations can move beyond content delivery to build more mature, skills-focused learning functions.

This report draws on Venudhar’s research and frameworks to help L&D leaders assess their organization’s maturity across learning investment, program design, and measurement and impact.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The report is free to download, with instant access after you complete the short form.

The companion report explores how to build a skills-focused learning operation. This benchmark report helps you assess your L&D function against the same five-level learning and development maturity model across investment, program design, and measurement. The two reports complement each other.

The self-assessment is designed to be completed in one sitting. You rate criteria across three dimensions on a 1–5 scale, then use your total score to identify your maturity band.

Yes. The assessment helps you identify priorities and connect your L&D strategy and budget to business needs. It gives you a more evidence-based starting point than relying on last year’s spending alone.

No. It is a practitioner-oriented benchmark and self-assessment framework designed to help you evaluate your L&D function and identify where to focus next.

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