2026 Upskilling Trends: Personalization, Measurement, Compensation

A lot has changed over the past year. To kick off 2026, we sat down with a panel of skills experts at SkillsWave to predict some of the 2026 upskilling trends as the landscape shifts in the year to come. 

Microlearning is losing steam 

Short-form, “cocktail party” learning is insufficient for real career transformation. meaningful learning requires multi-week progressions with metrics and real-world and real-job application. 

“I feel like microlearning had its moment. That’s not to say micro-credentials (executive education, micro-Masters), I’m a fan of all of those things. I think they’re hugely valuable. Those are multi-week progressions courses with metrics application,” says Kathleen Carr, VP of client and partner experience.  

“I remember in the heyday of the microlearning, which maybe we’re still in, it was, ‘what can you learn while in line at the grocery store?’ I don’t learn anything in line at the grocery store. What am I going to learn in three minutes? That’s cocktail party learning. That isn’t real, sustained learning that leads to new outcomes, that leads to changes in your life and your career. That’s just tidbits. And that’s fun in conversation, but I think that’s less meaningful in your life and in your career.” 

Government investment in upskilling will grow 

Governments at state, provincial, and federal levels are increasingly funding skills development to stabilize economies and support struggling industries. 

“We’re seeing governments increasingly trying to use and support skills development and upskilling in an effort to stabilize economies and support struggling industries,” says Nick Oddson, SkillsWave’s president. 

“And so it’s interesting because everybody is trying to do it at different scales, whether it’s at the state or provincial level or federal level. Just thinking through, how do we help the people who are struggling and how do we help those industries that are impacted?”

Skills will become part of compensation conversations 

HR teams are beginning to formally tie skill development to compensation structures, elevating L&D from a “nice to have” to a core business function. 

“This is the first year I’ve actually seen in a compensation session with 200 HR people where one of the focuses was on skills. I hadn’t seen that before,” says Lesley Dalzell, head of people and culture at SkillsWave. “It was quite interesting for me to see that was one of the topics that they did breakout sessions with 200 people was, ‘what do skills mean for your company? How are you applying skills? What are the top skills that people need?’ 

“And I walked away going, ‘wow, I have not seen that before.’ I find learning has sort of fallen in between the cracks, like we always talk about compensation, we talk about benefits, but where is actually learning in that employee journey? Where is that in the company journey?” 

Learning must be anchored to real projects 

Skills stick when employees can immediately apply them to relevant work, as opposed to open-ended self-directed learning budgets with no strategic direction. 

“I still feel in general there is this knee-jerk reaction to what we should be upskilling, what we should be driving our teams toward, and there’s a disconnect,” says Nadeem Sheikh, head of product and engineering. 

“In a past life, our company was going forward with Amazon Web Services. No one had Amazon Web Services skills. I happened to sit beside a dev and I was like, ‘this looks like the type of person who I think, if I invest in, will make this difference.’ And it wasn’t just this one and done model. It was, now that you’ve got the learning, the background, I’m going to put you in this Amazon project. And this Amazon project that gave both of us the wins, in that he had repetitive practice of that skill and it aligned with the business need. It moved the department forward, it moved the company forward. But more importantly, this person got immense satisfaction from their job.” 

Proof of applied learning will matter more than credentials 

Organizations will demand evidence that employees can actually apply skills on the job, moving beyond traditional credit-based models.

“For decades, I think we were trying to find a new model of skill currency that’s different than credit at a university level,” says Carr. 

“We’ve talked about it for many, many years, but now it seems to be coming to more recognition of, we need different proof points of learning beyond credit. We need proof of learning and proof that you can take something and do your job differently. And so I think what that evolves to look like is very interesting.”