Career cushioning: what it means for L&D strategy

What are managers doing about employee upskilling?

The survey data suggests managers are broadly aware of the shift. Of the 48% of respondents who hold management roles, 82% said they would rather retrain existing employees than hire externally. A further 87% said their organisation would help fund retraining in a new internal role. Of those, 52% said their employer would cover it entirely.

That appetite for employer-led development aligns with a broader industry shift. Two L&D experts have explained how the function is shifting from an admin task to a strategic growth lever in the AI era. The TripleTen findings suggest that the shift is already happening at the individual level.

Ana Riabova, AI Strategy and Enablement lead at TripleTen, describes the pattern as “quiet delegating.” Workers offload routine tasks to AI tools and retain the higher-judgment work for themselves. “The people moving fastest are learning from every direction — a course for the foundations, a colleague for the shortcuts, the AI itself for everyday work,” Riabova said.

How should HR respond to career cushioning?

The trend creates both a risk and an opening. If development opportunities inside an organisation feel inadequate, workers will build their skills elsewhere and may eventually leave to use them. Workers are already motivated to learn, and that motivation is an asset HR can channel.

The training gap is already measurable. A 2026 report on employer training efforts identified a significant gap in how organisations record and respond to workforce learning. This gap may be widening as informal, self-directed upskilling becomes more common.