Somewhere, as you read this, a company is spending an ungodly amount of 💰on AI, while its employees are collectively scratching their heads trying to figure out how the hell to use it productively.

That alone should tell you where a lot of workplace learning is falling apart.

The tech arrives first, announced with the energy of a royal wedding, then leadership expects productivity to magically soar by the following week.

Not to mention…

HR teams have a lot on their plates, managers are overwhelmed to the max trying to figure it all out, while employees worry whether or not the tech they’re supposed to learn is gonna snatch up their job shortly after!

TBH: The likelihood of being able to teach AI governance, critical thinking, coaching, compliance, etc. without ANY outside help doesn’t feel like a realistic ask to me.

But we all know advocating for budget can feel like an uphill battle. When that’s the situation what we need is to arm ourselves with the data!

I got my hands on Udemy + Coursera’s first joint report, the 2026 Global Learning & Skills Trends Report and I’m here to report it's a GOLDMINE on data and content around what teams can expect when it comes to learning and development.

Today, I wanna focus on three findings from the report that stood out to me:

• Why AI spending needs skills spending attached to it
• Why critical thinking is gaining massive value
• Why we need to develop a combo of AI + human skills 

As ALWAYS, it all ties back to people, y’all!

Impressive tech is never and has never been enough. You have to empower people to know what to do with it all.

1. The AI Budget Has a Training-Shaped Hole in ItCopy anchor linkCopied

Orgs totally love purchasing a solution because it feels like progress when there’s a contract and implementation timeline.

🤓 Unfortunately, learning is a lot messier, and the progress you yearn for takes time.

People need practice, and confidence arrives at different speeds.

According to the report, 88% of tech leaders say their AI plans will hit a wall if they don’t train their people to use it.

(That number should interrupt a few budget meetings IMO)

And BTW: AI fluency has to extend beyond technical teams, too.

Udemy + Coursera describes it as an “operating system for the entire company” and not just a technical skill set for a person or team.

🤯 On its platform, AI courses with Udemy Business are gaining more than 10 enrollments every minute. 🤯

A lot of folks aren’t sure where to start, and “Learn AI” is about as useful as telling someone to learn finance.

Which part? For what job? And when, between a calendar packed full of meetings?

Ultimately, I think it’s up to HR and L&D to connect learning to real work, and give people a way to practice job-specific conversations on their own time, so what they learn is more likely to stick!

That’s where AI Role Plays come in: Udemy reports that nearly 300 enterprise customers created more than 950 Role Plays within three months of launch.

That number doesn’t surprise me. Adults don’t learn by sitting through content, they learn by doing. Without real chances to practice, the skills just don’t stick.

👀 Okay, but who should care???Copy anchor linkCopied

🧠 HR: Tie every major AI investment to a workforce-readiness plan, with time and clear expectations. Otherwise, adoption becomes your emergency six months later.

💻 Employees: Training turns AI from a threatening mystery into something you can use with more confidence.

💼 Managers: Your behavior gives everyone else permission. Learn visibly, talk about your own mistakes, and stop treating development like the activity people squeeze in after finishing an impossible workload.

2. Critical Thinking Just Got a PromotionCopy anchor linkCopied

The funniest outcome of the AI boom is everyone racing toward technical skills and rediscovering thinking.

Critical thinking enrollments grew 107% year over year.

As we have all experienced, ChatGPT can produce a confident, authoritative answer that is spectacularly WRONG!!

As routine tasks become automated, employees are overseeing more of the workflow, and that takes judgment.

It means knowing when an answer feels off or when a fast result could create a compliance migraine three departments away. 😬

Someone can be excellent at prompting and still accept a hallucination because it sounds plausible. Someone else understands the business but can’t use the tool. Both need development!!!

Both also need to understand why the robots still need adult supervision.

Responsible AI guidance is developing while the tech keeps sprinting. In the U.S., state laws are evolving unevenly while employees already use these tools.

(I think you can take a wild guess who is left standing in the middle of it all.)

💡The report also points to leadership and ethics as essential pieces of AI transformation. 💡

88% of employees surveyed by Udemy agree that effective leadership is critical to AI success, yet only 48% believe their managers are ready for the AI era.

Translation: Managers are drowning, and development is one of the first things to disappear when the week gets ugly, then orgs wonder why people use new tools badly or can’t explain their decisions.

What kind of company are you building if speed increases while judgment stays frozen???

📝 Here’s who gets the homeworkCopy anchor linkCopied

🧠 HR: Build technical fluency alongside critical thinking, ethics, and decision-making. Teach people how to interrogate an output in addition to building one.

💻 Employees: Your human skills are gaining value, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Curiosity, skepticism, communication, and judgment help you take charge of your future, especially when your job keeps changing shape.

💼 Managers: Make practice part of the work. Ask how someone reached a conclusion, and reward the employee who catches the polished BS before it reaches a customer

3.The Real Power Move Is the ComboCopy anchor linkCopied

Here’s the plot twist nobody put on the AI roadmap: the most valuable skill isn’t an AI skill OR a human skill.

✨ It’s the two together. ✨

Udemy + Coursera’s report tracks which AI and human skills people are building side by side, and the same three human skills keep showing up!!

Each one lines up with a job you can’t hand off to a robot:

💡 Innovation: figuring out where AI should even be used

🧐 Judgment: checking whether what it spit out is actually right (see above)

🤝 Influence: getting real humans to adopt the thing

Think of it as before, during, and after. The full story!

And this holds whether someone’s learning to prompt AI OR building AI agents. The tech can get more advanced, but the human skills stay the same.

Pro-tip: The full breakdown of which skills pair up is in the report, and it’s worth a look if you’re building learning paths for 2027.

The report even built a whole new index around this: the AI-Human Skills Synergy Index, which ranks 98 countries on whether people are building AI and human skills together!!

My hot take: most orgs still treat these as two totally separate learning tracks. AI training lives in one corner, leadership and communication live in another, and nobody connects them.

Then we act shocked when someone builds a slick AI workflow and can’t get a single person on their team to use it. 🙃

👀 So what do we do with this?Copy anchor linkCopied

🧠 HR: Design learning paths around skill pairs. Pick the AI skill a role needs, then pair it with the human skill that makes it usable at work.

💻 Employees: Don’t just stack AI certificates. “I can prompt” is good. “I can prompt AND get buy-in for what I built” is what gets you to the next level.

💼 Managers: When you hand someone an AI project, ask which human skill it’ll stretch too! Then coach that part, not just the output.

Some Hopium, Because We Deserve a LittleCopy anchor linkCopied

I can’t scroll TikTok without crying at least once.

I’m just a feely Pisces queen living through an era where every 24 hours, there’s a fresh headline about layoffs, AI, or some off-the-wall statement a billionaire said into a microphone.

I’m excited and terrified, sometimes within the same meeting! 🤪

But here’s what’s still giving me hope: people are learning.

They’re enrolling in AI courses, reaching for critical thinking, and using micro-credentials to prove what they can do.

The future of work hasn’t been fully assigned yet, and HR has a significant role in shaping it! 🤩

You can turn AI investment into workforce readiness and give both managers and employees a path through the panic. Technical ability should grow alongside ethics and leadership.

AI won’t be the final disruption of our working lives, and it’s hard to even imagine what else is next, but we’re starting to figure out what works best.

This article covered a lil fraction of Udemy + Coursera’s Global Learning & Skills Trends Report, so I highly recommend looking through the full report for more data behind what top skills orgs should focus on building in tandem for AI and human skills.

This is the kind of report I’d bring into a planning meeting with several passages highlighted and one aggressive note in the margin. Use it to question your roadmap and figure out what your people need before another shiny tool arrives. 😌

Get the Skills Forecast