Global Sentiment Survey 2026: L&D in Transformation

The 2026 Learning and Development Global Sentiment Survey is here, and lead researcher and author Donald H. Taylor joins us to unpack insights from more than 3,500 L&D professionals worldwide. This year’s survey shows rising pressure to demonstrate value, evolving perspectives on AI, and the challenges shaping the future of the profession.

Show Notes:

Donald Taylor discusses what this year’s results reveal about the state of L&D and why the future of L&D may depend on stronger relationships, smarter use of data, and a willingness to rethink familiar approaches.

• L&D leaders are being asked to do more with less. Don said budget pressure remains a major theme, with many professionals focused on proving value while protecting their teams and resources.
• AI is still dominant, but the conversation is maturing. Don noted that AI is no longer just about faster content creation. More leaders are thinking about how it can support skills, practice, simulation, and new kinds of learning experiences.
• Showing value is now a top concern. According to Don, this has risen to an all-time high, driven in part by concern over jobs, budgets, and the need to connect learning more clearly to performance.
• Data matters, but relationships matter just as much. Don emphasized that L&D cannot make better use of data without building trust and relationships across the organization. Access to useful business data depends on those connections.
• The most confident L&D leaders are better networked. Don observed that the people most ready to take action and try new things are often the ones with stronger internal and external networks to support them.

Read the 2026 Global L&D Sentiment Survey

Powered by Learning earned Awards of Distinction in the Podcast/Audio and Business Podcast categories from The Communicator Awards and a Gold and Silver Davey Award. The podcast is also named to Feedspot's Top 40 L&D podcasts and Training Industry’s Ultimate L&D Podcast Guide.

Learn more about d'Vinci at www.dvinci.com.
Follow us on LinkedIn
Like us on Facebook

Transcript

Susan Cort: What will be hot in workplace learning in 2026? What are your L&D challenges and what are you doing now in L&D that you were not doing 12 months ago? These are some of the questions more than 3,500 L&D professionals answered in the 13th annual Global Sentiment Survey, and we've got the results.

Donald Taylor: And the constant theme that comes up is being asked to do more with less. The fourth one is learning engagement and application. So people are wanting people to actually engage with what they create and also to go off and apply it in the workplace. And finally, there's a, a lot of, I think, and underlying all of these, but it's a category in itself as well, is a, is a fear, a sense of uncertainty about L&Ds new role as it's perceived.

Susan Cort: That's Donald Taylor, lead researcher and author of the Learning and Development Global Sentiment Survey. He joins d’Vinci's CEO Luke Kempski and me to unpack this year's [00:01:00] survey results and discuss how they impact your role in the industry. Next on Powered by Learning.

Susan Cort: The 2026 Learning and Development Global Sentiment survey results are out, and that means it's time to learn what's shaping the L&D landscape this year. Joining me now are d’Vinci CEO Luke Kempski and the lead researcher and author of the Learning and Development Global Sentiment Survey, Donald Taylor, Don, thank you for joining us again this year.

Donald Taylor: Great to be back.

Luke Kempski: Great to see you again, Don. 

Susan Cort: Don, start out by providing a brief overview of your background and then of course some background on the survey and how it's put together.

Donald Taylor: I've been involved in learning and technology, all my adult working life, so that's a long time and I've seen things grow and change over that time. Started off as a classman structure, and I've done everything since from setting up and selling [00:02:00] companies to being chairman of the board, running an institute, and now I focus on.

And facilitating conferences and also research and writing to try to help the learning and development profession move to what I think is going be an exciting but challenging future.

Luke Kempski: Uh, yes, no doubt. I guess 2026 is lucky number 13, for this survey. Uh, so I'm really looking forward to learning more about the results. Um, I guess let's start with. The second question in the survey, which was what does the, what does it say? What do the responders say about what L&D leaders are seeing as some of their biggest challenges here in 2026?

Donald Taylor: What's really interesting about this question, Luke, is that we added it to the survey five years ago, and since then, the number of words people have used to respond has increased and the percentage of people has, well, it's shot up after AI came in and people found they had a lot of challenges, but it's gone up ever since.

[00:03:00] So this year, like in 2024, we had 95% of people who took the survey responding, and that's a total of 41,000 words that we've got describing the challenges. So that's a lot. It's about the same as a, as a short book and the challenges that they're describing are very different to the ones that we had when we first had this question in 2022 pre AI.

Then it was all about coming outta lockdown and pandemic. Now I can describe for you what the five key themes are that people are concerned about. Obviously, AI is one of them. Adoption and use. So adoption and integrating it into into work value remains a really high concern for people. And the other side of that is budget people.

And the constant theme that comes up is being asked to do more with less. The fourth one is learning engagement and application. So people are wanting [00:04:00] people to actually engage with what they create and also to go off and apply it in the workplace. And finally, there's a, a lot of, I think, and underlying all of these, but it's a category in itself as well, is a, is a fear, a sense of uncertainty about L&Ds new role as it's perceived.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, you mentioned, um, fear. I guess in, in general, what would Is the, what you feel from the sentiment of the L&D leader, the responder to the survey about kind of the state of the, the practice of learning and development inside an organization and in the midst of all this change, do you get a sense of how they're feeling these days?

Donald Taylor: Yeah, it would be very easy to say that everyone's running scared of AI. And if you look at some of the numbers that would, that would seem to indicate it. But there's, there's a subtle twist here, which is that there's a new question this year. What are you doing new that you weren't doing 12 months ago?

And. It's very interesting to see how people have [00:05:00] have changed over the course of a year. Actually, very often what they're saying they are tackling anew are also the stuff that they have as a challenge, and so I'm rather heartened by that. It strikes me that people are facing up to the challenges and are tackling them rather than running scared.

So, I think that there is a real concern and value is a particular part of this. So the option showing value has risen for the last two years to an all-time high this year. It's just an all-time high, but it is an all-time high. And the reason when I talk to people about this that they say they're concerned about showing value is they're concerned about their jobs and their budget and their team.

I think that's reasonable. But if we're talking to people who are fully engaged in using L&D as part of the business. And this actually comes out in the survey, those people are much less afraid. Those people are much more challenged by being able to get the most out of [00:06:00] AI new technologies rather than look after their current position.

Things are also a little bit, um, it, it's difficult to, to put an exact figure on it, but there appears to be a different flavor internationally. So I think people in the UK are more concerned about their jobs, I think in the U.S. People are more concerned about low quality learning content, for example. So I think there's a slight geographical bias too, in people sentiment.

Luke Kempski: Interesting. Yeah. So, uh, when, when you talk about value, and I guess, you know, pulling from the sentiment and the responses in the survey, you know, where, where do the L&D leaders, how are they connecting the value to their, the businesses that they're working with, the leadership that they're providing.

Donald Taylor: They're doing what they should be doing. And it's very clear when you read the responses of people who've there are, there are a number of responses where [00:07:00] somebody talks about the challenge of providing value and at the same time is saying what we're doing is dot, dot, dot. And they're doing exactly the right things to tackle the issue of value.

So, um, we've got people who are doing things like engaging with stakeholders and it's just, you know, it sounds so trivial, but it's absolutely right. Um, here's one classic couplet the challenge somebody said was, the focus is on creating practical, measurable learning that impacts performance, not just participation.

So that's this participant's words, that's the challenge and the action they're taking. I now take more ownership of projects and focus. On improving learning outcomes, not just delivering sessions. So this is, I love the idea of taking ownership and I think that's exactly the right thing to be doing. We can talk all we want about strategy and big picture, but ultimately what's gonna make sense in this new world where things are a bit different is taking ownership, taking [00:08:00] action, and doing things in the right way that will support an active, effective learning department.

Luke Kempski: Yes. I think, uh, the other challenge might be too aligning, you know, the, the ability to measure value in the investment in learning and development. Uh, and then also kind of taking all of the data that's generated both in, you know, throughout the enterprise, but then also in the, the L&D function and making that connection.

Donald Taylor: I, I really think there's a real problem there with data. You're a hundred percent right, two reasons. Firstly, there's a lot of data in the learning department, which doesn't really, nobody else is really concerned about. And getting access to data outside the department is much more complicated than a lot of people think.

Um, and I always say, don't start with AI, start with data, but don't start with data. Start with data plus relationships, because you don't get hold of the data. Unless you know who owns it. And in most organizations, people are pretty jealously guarding onto their data. They [00:09:00] don't want you to see their sales numbers or whatever.

You have to have a relationship with them before they'll give them up and then yeah, they'll, they'll let you have the data if they think it's gonna help them.

Luke Kempski: How did data rank this year in the survey?

Donald Taylor: We don't have, we don't have a separate thing for data, unfortunately. Though it is interesting that at the top of the table, of course, is artificial intelligence. And then after that we've got, um, reskilling, upskilling, which relies on data personalization needs data, skills based talent management needs data.

So these things at the top of the table are, are, are all about data. Um, what's interesting is that falling down the table tends to be the individual tools such as coaching and mentoring and micro learning, those things are, are dropping down. I would say this though, next year I'm gonna be taking AI off the list.

It makes no sense to have it there. It's more like, uh, saying what do you prefer in your kitchen? What's most important, the microwave, dishwasher or electricity. And you know, it, [00:10:00] it, it, it's not a sensible choice. So I'm gonna take AI off and I'm gonna also strip some of the other ones out. The metaverse has been languishing at the bottom of the table for three years now.

Nobody loves it. So there'll be a few changes on the list. And what I might be doing is adding a few options that enable us to think about, as you are saying. The bigger picture data maybe would one of those, or, or a wording around it suggests that people are engaged with that. Another one would be, um, not performance support, which is one side of things, but, um, simulation because I think simulation is a growing area in learning development that a lot of people are interested in, and I think it's gonna take off.

So that's what I try to do is pick some winners and see which ones take off in people's imagination.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, I think that's the, with simulation, The tools that AI are providing us allow, you know, much more cost-effective development of simulations.

Donald Taylor: Absolutely. It's [00:11:00] some of the things that people show me because I get hit up quite a lot by people wanting to show me stuff, and you look at this stuff and you think. Firstly, I didn't really think that was possible. And, and secondly, this is insane because if this takes off then and it, there's no reason why it wouldn't do, then it transforms what we're doing.

And I think it's this transformation of AI, which is of, of a learning development through AI, which is extraordinary. Somebody was telling me the other day that about, about 10 years ago. They, they had, they had come back into an L&D role having been out of it for 10 years, and they were able to fit right back in.

I can't imagine anybody leaving L&D now and coming back in five years and knowing which way is up. It's just gonna be a different ball game.

Luke Kempski: Uh, when you think about the technology and the sentiment about the technology and how it's emerging, what do you, what do you see in terms of where, uh, the L&D leaders are the [00:12:00] most enthusiastic about where it's going?

Donald Taylor: Well, I think people are, obviously people are enthusiastic about the ability to create content faster, but I think people are smart about that as well. Uh, they, they're not just focusing on that, they're focusing on some of the other things which are interesting extensions of that, particularly around skills.

People are interested in being able to get an idea of the skills of an organization. I would say also that there's a certain amount of weariness about a couple of things. Firstly, the environmental and other and security issues around using AI, and I think security issues are fairly high on people's lists.

They're concerned about protecting their own employees and organizational data. I think people are also concerned about something else as well. The word human didn't crop up in those challenges at all, uh, in 2022, 2023. But in 2024, five and six, it's increased and it occurred more than [00:13:00] 60 times this year.

What's going on? Well, some of those phrases are like, well, we think that there's a risk of taking the human out of learning. I think there's a bit more than that going on for that word to be used so much. I think it's referring to more of an identification with learning that people have, they feel that we are doing this and we are bringing ourselves our humanity to this, and we are concerned about being cut out from it by machines.

So I think there's something fundamental going on there as well. So we'll gonna keep track of that next year and see, well, I'll have a human count a, a humanometer that will tell us how many times we are being mentioned as humans in the, in the word count.

Luke Kempski: So with this 13 edition of the survey, any surprises for you, Don, like anything that stood out that you said, oh, I didn't expect that.

Donald Taylor: There was a relief rather than a surprise that AI finally, finally stopped going up. I wouldn't say any one thing surprised me, but there were a number of [00:14:00] results, which together gave me pause for thought.

So there's a series of countries, five of them, where they're voting for at least five years, probably 10 had been predictable. The Netherlands was always the country that supported performance support the most. Ireland was the lead country for coaching and mentoring and so on. In 2024, all of these countries.

Took a hit on their favorite thing, whatever it was, and that's because all the votes got sucked up by AI. The following year, 2025, everybody bounced back. It was a recovery. It was almost like, not across the board, but if a country had wanted a particular thing in the past, it wanted it again and it went back to voting for it.

That didn't continue this year. That's my shock. This is the sign for me that we're entering into a new area. In some cases, the voting continued, so the UK, I think, went up this year with showing value. [00:15:00] The Netherlands was flat with performance support, collaborative and social learning in Sweden, which was a, they were leading the world on This took a complete head dive.

This shows me that the old predictability of the past. Isn't there anymore. So it wasn't one single thing by itself, but a collection of these things together showing me that AI makes things different. We're entering a new world. We dunno what all the rules are. We can't use the pass as a guide. We have to work out how we make sense of this new terrain and map it out for ourselves as we go.

Luke Kempski: That's so interesting. So culture matters, but we just, it's just less predictable now. That's what

Donald Taylor: It, it, it, yeah.

Luke Kempski: notice a difference, um, in terms of the relevance and the, um, I guess the, the optimism about learning and the, the learning and and development function in the different countries, um, in the different cultures where, uh, it feels more [00:16:00] connected to an enterprise versus it being, you know, on the down.

Donald Taylor: I, I did have a question, which I tried once. It was, uh, five years ago, I think. What's your level of optimism? Do you feel more level, more or less optimistic than last year? And I wish I'd kept that in because that would be the great simple Yes no barometer to, to see where we were. Um, I don't have any way really of tracking how people are feeling about things generally.

Um, and I wish I did. I might go back. Of course, the great thing about AI is we've got tremendous. To look at data now, and so I might go back and ask that question of the data and if I get anything, I'll come back.

Luke Kempski: That sounds good. That sounds good. I imagine budgets are issues across all the cultures for sure. And, and that certainly leads to a much more, uh, emphasis on demonstrating value and, you know, making sure that they're, make, that the [00:17:00] L&D leaders are making the case for how critical. The L&D function is in this era of lots of change in AI and cultural change, and political change, and economic change.

All of those things hitting one time.

Donald Taylor: Uh, it's a good point. You know, we talk about AI as if it was everything, but it's not the only thing. And you, one thing you do get from this survey is the real sense of individual circumstances and individual places affecting people. I mean. A number of places in the world are at war and we, that gets referenced in the, in the survey.

Um, definitely the economic situation in the UK doesn't help people here. Uh, in the US I think people are feeling a bit better, but there's a certain uncertainty as well. I think there's a feeling in the U.S. that. The economic situation might be about to turn. Um, in Southeast Asia, there's more of a sense that, well, we can get things done, but we haven't got the budgets in the first place.

And, and very often from there, there's a sense that the hierarchical [00:18:00] arrangements in the workplace are hampering innovation. So you are absolutely right that the culture of what happens in a particular place. Will affect and the local circumstances will affect what's going on. And it's also worth bearing in mind that cultures do change because I've noticed that in both Brazil and Sweden, which both have supported collaborative and social learning very strongly in the past, there's, and these, these are two countries obviously very far apart.

Um, there's a shift towards more individualism and if you talk to individual, to people in those countries, they're both talking about how there's a move. Away from collectivism towards individualism in, in quite different ways. I mean, um, ed Hofstadter, the, uh, the famous, I guess you'd call 'em an anthropologist or a statistician, produced these different dimensions of culture, collectivism and individualism being one of the dimensions.

And Brazil is famously on one end of it, but it seems to be shifting more towards an [00:19:00] individualistic view of life. And that's. Independent of anything else that might be going on in learning and development. It's just a cultural shift. So circumstances do, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say dictate circumstances do influence what goes on, but nothing is set.

Things do change over time, and that's one change we've definitely seen.

Luke Kempski: Oh, for sure. Uh, I know I asked this, to you last year about the, uh, evolving role of the L&D leader and kind of what skills and what, what they should be doing to, be prepared for the evolution of their roles. And I know that's not specifically in the survey, but you can detect some of those things from the results.

Donald Taylor: For sure, and this is one of those things where people won't necessarily say it. But you can see what people are and are not doing, and you can say to yourself from the sidelines, [00:20:00] oh, for goodness sake, why are you doing that? You should be doing this. And one of the things that stands out is that the people who are more confident about taking.

By the way, I'm not sure if this is causal or correlation, but the people who are more confident about taking steps forward and doing new things are the people who are better networked in their organization and the people who can go elsewhere for advice and know that if something that goes wrong, they've got higher up people who've got their backs.

Now, as I say, I dunno if that's causal or, or correlation it. It might be that. If you are good at implementing stuff, you naturally form these networks. It might be that forming those networks provides you with a safety net and input of data, but either way, I think that it's crucial for learning leaders to get out there in their organization and outside it and build networks because that's what is gonna provide you support when you need it most.

And also, [00:21:00] by the way, sorry, networks are a two-way street. You can't go into a network just to take, you have to provide support for other people as part of it.

Luke Kempski: Absolutely. I think that's a, that's a really, um, not, not, might, maybe what people would've expected in, in terms of your interpretation of the data, but really, really smart. 

Donald Taylor: Thank you.

Luke Kempski: Uh, uh, I think last year we pressed you on a prediction for this year.

Susan Cort: This is Don's favorite part of the interview.

Donald Taylor: I was hoping, uh, the internet could go wrong or something at this stage.

Luke Kempski: Still might happen, but it sounds like, I think your prediction was that AI would go down, and I think you said it went down a

Donald Taylor: A tiny bit, so I got it right last year.

The concern I have is that if we don't change or the people who, for whatever reason, don't change a part, as part of L&D will be left behind. And I think that's a, a firm choice people have to make. I'm not gonna make that as [00:22:00] a prediction 'cause it's slightly negative and also there's no way of even testing it.

Um, I would say, so my prediction for this year, 2026. So if you are kind enough to have me back next year, you can say, Don, last year you predicted. All right. So what I predicted was the rise of new ways of using. AI to support learning beyond content production and provision. That sounds a bit vague, but it comes back to what we were talking about earlier, in particular simulation and practice.

I think that's an area which is gonna take off. I would love to say it's going to be implicit knowledge, but I'll save that for my prediction for 2027. I think that's something that will come down the line.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, I think it, it in the idea of content and course development becomes something very different and evolves into something very

Donald Taylor: Uh, a hundred percent. I think that the, um, [00:23:00] the idea of a course will still exist, but it's gonna be very different in the future and it will have embedded in it reactive content, adaptability, and. Practice, all of which can be created on the fly for you.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, that's, that's, that's fun. I, that really is, uh, that gets you excited as a content creator. Brings on, brings so many new possibilities. I know in your, LinkedIn it mentioned that you are now more involved with venture capital and startups, particularly in the L&D space these days. Um, so do, do you see any intersections between some of these new L&D ventures and how they're developing and what L&D leaders are saying about their challenges and opportunities?

Donald Taylor: There are at least two different types of startup. One is the one that's product led and somebody has an obsession with something and they go off and they produce it. Those ones can fail and succeed [00:24:00] spectacularly, um, depending on whether the, the product finds a niche. The other ones where people are producing something.

From a deep, either a deep need they've seen themselves or deep need that they've, they've spotted elsewhere are the ones which are more likely to succeed, even if they are dealing with something which is more short term. Um, and I've seen people do that with the simulation piece, produce simulation tools, which are great.

Um, my concern is always in that space that if you are doing it, somebody else is almost certainly doing it. So don't persuade yourself that you've created something unique. I almost never see anything that's completely unique. And then I, I always ask the people a handful of tough questions. Uh, one question is, what problem are you solving?

Next question is, does your client know they have that problem? And the [00:25:00] third question is, will they pay enough? To fix the problem. And too often the product led people who are very inspired by the technology haven't thought enough about the problem they're solving really, and whether people will pay for it.

And I think that tends to sort out the, uh, i, the goat from the sheep or whatever, whatever the phrase is. But that's where things come, are made, or, or broken, is whether they're really solving a problem.

Luke Kempski: Yes, that makes perfect sense and resonates with me as an entrepreneur and some things that I should have thought about a little deeper before venturing in some things.

Donald Taylor: Passion helps too though that that overcomes a lot of obstacles.

Susan Cort: Don, just some, uh, final thoughts to wrap things up. L&D professionals are looking at the survey, how do you hope that they'll use it and what do you want them to take away from it?

Donald Taylor: That's a really good question, and my answer is that I try not to provide. Too much direction. I try to provide data and insight, [00:26:00] but I also have questions on a lot of pages, and I know that a lot of people sit down with their team and this is what I'd suggest doing. Sit down with your team. See, do you agree with it?

Don't you agree with it? How would you answer those questions? What comes to your mind when you look at those charts? Stimulate a conversation. It's a bit like you go to a conference and you hear somebody talk and you have a cup of tea with somebody afterwards in the corridor, and you have a good chat about something.

Well, this is the same sort of stimulus that you can have with your team. I've been told that very often this provides. A useful way of people getting together and sparking conversations which they otherwise wouldn't necessarily have had. And maybe it starts with the report and goes elsewhere. That's fine.

Use it as a conversation starter and commit to challenging each other politely in, in a civil way about stuff, because we're in tough times, or we could be in tough times, and it's important to be honest and to work together to fix them.

Susan Cort: I think one other tip we could take is that in the [00:27:00] US we all need to chat over tea a little bit more. I think that would have a, calming effect on us all. Don Taylor, thank you so much for joining us and uh, check your calendar. We'd love to have you on next February to talk about next year's survey.

Donald Taylor: I will make sure I get it booked in. Thanks so much for having me.

Luke Kempski: Great to see you again. Thank you, Don.

Susan Cort: My thanks to d’Vinci's CEO Luke Kempski, and our guest Donald Taylor. Don, we will see you next year to talk about the 2027 report. If you have an idea for a topic or guest, please reach out to us at Powered by Learning at dvinci.com. And don't forget to subscribe to Powered By Learning wherever you get your podcasts.