Dive Brief:
- For information technology workers, skills are evolving too quickly and many organizations’ traditional training cycles can’t keep pace, according to Info-Tech’s IT Talent Trends 2025 report.
- The research found that IT employees’ core responsibilities changed about every 18 months, but many companies still saw learning “as a periodic initiative rather than as part of operational execution,” according to the release.
- Many organizations treated learning “as a benefit instead of a business discipline,” per the report. Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority of respondents (93%) said IT skills need to evolve within five years to meet future demand.
Dive Insight:
Episodic training models have widened the gap between IT workers’ current capabilities and future workplace needs, according to the report, on top of mounting pressure on IT teams to deliver innovation amid shifting technology demands.
The problem isn’t limited to IT employees. According to HR Dive’s Identity of HR survey in 2025, companies said training programs continue to move “lower and lower on the priority list,” even as it becomes harder to find workers with the right skills.
This type of disconnect is “a primary driver of persistent skill gaps and slowed execution,” according to Info-Tech Research Group’s report. Development programs “often operate outside the flow of work,” while feedback cycles are delayed and “learning expectations are inconsistently defined,” the report added.
As a result, there is a growing skills latency among IT workers, the report said, meaning there is a gap between learning a new skill and applying it in the workplace.
“Learning cannot solely sit outside the work if IT is expected to lead transformation,” Heather Leier-Murray, research director at Info-Tech Research Group, said in a statement. She added that chief information officers need to embed learning directly into workflows “so capability development can keep pace with execution and change.”
The research offered a framework for embedding learning into the workplace environment, which included building out a team skill backlog and assessing strategic gaps in the workplace. Once that has been mapped out, the report said, teams can begin to embed learning into the workflow and create recurring reassessment cycles.
“This phased approach reframes learning as an operational system rather than an isolated HR initiative and aligns skill development directly with business execution and measurable outcomes,” Leier-Murray added.
Incorporating learning into a company’s workflow could also encourage job retention. Among workers recently surveyed by TalentLMS, 73% said training would make them stay at their job longer, and 35% “explicitly said that a lack of training opportunities would make them look for another job.”
