In the Age of AI, speed to employee proficiency will emerge as the metric that sets the best teams apart. So why aren’t more people talking about it?

AI Enables Companies to Move Faster Than Ever

Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), entire global processes are being transformed. In life sciences, companies using AI for drug discovery (like BenevolentAI and Recursion Pharmaceuticals) began identifying promising compounds in months rather than years, leading to significant improvements in the speed to release new indications. In manufacturing, companies like GE Appliances are using AI to cut the time it takes to develop new products by a third or half, saving years in the process.

Companies are changing faster than ever, which means employees must learn faster too. For even the most complex and distributed global supply chains and GTM functions, this means employees now need to quickly:

• Learn to use new AI-powered tools
• Shift outdated processes and procedures
• Acquire new technical skills that may not have existed last year

Employees are being out-skilled at faster rates too. The half-life of technical skills has decreased significantly, and workers now need to completely refresh their technical skillset every 2-3 years, compared to 5-7 years in the pre-AI era.

Despite the demand for new skills, employees can barely keep up.

The Learning Gap Is Growing

• 71% of IT managers report a shortage of AI skills, making it the most significant skill gap today, ahead of cybersecurity, cloud, and Agile.
• 82% of employees feel that workplace demands are evolving faster than their skills.
• 82% of workers say their organizations have not provided training on using generative AI.

These statistics highlight the urgency for organizations to accelerate their learning and development initiatives to keep pace with rapid technological advancements.

Traditional Learning Timelines No Longer Work

Even in the age of AI, it still takes hundreds of hours to create an eLearning experience. AI may speed development, but delivery remains a key bottleneck: getting people to open their LMS, attend live sessions or complete certifications takes time — time companies no longer have.

To be fair to L&D teams, most are still evaluated by:

• Delivering a set learning experience (e.g., a workshop or video eLearning)
• Completion rates, or how many people finished the course
• Satisfaction rates, or how many employees enjoyed the learning experience

This creates an incentive problem, because as everything changes faster, learning is falling behind. If learning falls behind, so will employees and, by extension, the entire organization.

The Metric That Matters: Speed To Proficiency

Imagine a global organization that is:

• Rolling out a new product
• Upskilling everyone on AI
• Communicating shifting market changes

If it takes several weeks to build this training, and another month to actually deploy it, the core skills could become outdated. If a competitor can do this two or three times faster, they will outpace everyone else.

5    Ways to Accelerate Learning and Development

1.  Use AI to Build Core Content Faster

Instructional designers can now rapidly generate outlines, assessments and microlearning assets, significantly reducing the bottleneck between need and delivery. If your team is still taking months to produce learning experiences, it’s time to reassess.

2.  Focus on Function Over Fluff

Overemphasis on animations or aesthetics often delays delivery, as a lot of time is spent incorporating these elements. Moving away from hours-long eLearning length is critical. Prioritize utility and impact over perfection.

3.  Embed Learning Into Employees’ Flow-Of-Work

Employees have demanding schedules. Frame learning experiences around the employee, rather than making employees fit a learning experience into their day.

4.  Deliver Training in Existing Systems

If delivery is the cause of organizational slowness, that calls for a change. If employees spend all day in Salesforce, Email, or Microsoft Teams, deliver learning directly in these tools.

5. Focus on Real-Time Proficiency Measurement

When teams rely on a quarterly survey, the feedback loop is slow. Use quizzes, simulations, or performance metrics embedded into workflows to get immediate feedback on comprehension and application.

A Final Word: Fast Can Still Mean High Quality

A common concern is that doing things faster equates to poorer quality. The L&D and community needs to challenge this premise to fight irrelevancy. If pharmaceutical companies can create drugs faster that still save lives, learning teams can create programs faster that still give people the skills they need.

The impact of speed to proficiency doubling or tripling is a significant improvement in sales for a new product, improvement in production for a new supply chain, or organization-wide adoption for a new AI tool. Every company should fear the competitor that can train their people faster.

The question really isn’t if speed to proficiency a core metric for L&D teams should be, it’s if they can afford for it not to be.