- Analysis of 1,000 UK and US company reports finds skills and training are missing from the boardroom’s top priorities in the face of technology growth
- AI doubles in mentions but its importance is not reflected in training initiatives
- Yet technical reskilling and upskilling are on the rise in the wider workforce
LONDON, March 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Many of the largest listed companies in the UK and US are underprioritizing skills development in relation to technology, according to Multiverse analysis of FTSE 100 and S&P 100 company reports spanning the last 10 years.
Around seven in ten companies in the UK (69%) and US (76%) mention a strategic priority relating to technology in their latest reports. Yet only 7% (UK) and 8% (US) describe skills and training as a strategic priority.
This proportion has not improved since 2013, while technology has shot up in importance, suggesting that boardrooms are not yet recognizing its sweeping impact on workforce skills requirements. With Goldman Sachs predicting that AI investment will rocket to $200bn this year, companies who do not act are putting record levels of investment at risk.
To uncover this data, Multiverse’s data science team worked with expert data analyst David Abelman (ex-Meta, Bain & Company), to build a Large Language Model (LLM) system to analyze structured information from over 100,000 pages of company documents. The resulting Boardroom Skills Agenda report provides empirical evidence on how people and skills are missing from the boardroom’s top priority list based on findings from UK annual reports and US 10-K reports.1
The missing skills piece
According to the report, companies are also not targeting skills development relating to the most consequential technologies that will shape the future of work.
- While nearly half (49%) of the UK FTSE 100 mention AI as part of their strategy, only 34% of companies referenced Artificial Intelligence (AI) training.
- In S&P 100 10-K reports 48% reference AI in their strategy, while 18% mention AI training.
These findings follow the UK’s Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) reporting, which confirms that the average number of days of workplace training received each year has fallen over the last decade. Employer spending on training has decreased over the same period, and there has been a fall in both public and private investment in training. The US’ Training Industry report also reflects a fall in training expenditure among US companies in 2024 compared to years prior.
Euan Blair, CEO of Multiverse, said:
“Annual reports are a weathervane for the issues that are capturing the boardroom’s attention. What we can see in the data is that investment in technology is skyrocketing but skills and training has stagnated.
“Technology tools are only as powerful as the people who use them. Without prioritizing people, companies will be left with tech strategies that are missing a key piece of the puzzle. The tech revolution will not arrive until companies connect the dots between tools and talent.”
Further headline findings include:
Technology is impacting global workforce skills, despite absence from boardroom top priority list
The growing impact of technology on the workforce is starting to be signalled in some reports, with discussion of “reskilling” and technical “upskilling” on the rise. Yet overall the incidence and prioritisation of technical skills initiatives is still notably low.
- The proportion of FTSE 100 companies mentioning reskilling has nearly tripled in the last 10 years from 7% to 20%, while technical upskilling has more than doubled (23% to 51%)
- Similarly, in US 10-K reports, mentions of reskilling rose from 1% in 2013 to 13% in latest reports, while upskilling mentions grew nearly sixfold (5% to 29%).
- Yet in the most recent set of annual reports, only 10% of FTSE 100 companies and 4% of S&P 100 provided a sum for how much they were investing in training.
- When referenced, the average (median) spend was £600 per employee in the UK, and $1700 in the US.
Apprenticeships more prominent than graduate programs
The analysis also found that companies are delivering training via a number of different methods, and referencing these programs more than they were 10 years ago:
- 59% of FTSE 100 companies referenced an apprenticeship program (vs 48% 10 years ago), while 48% have a graduate program (vs 39% 10 years ago). Meanwhile, 32% said they had an internship program (vs 19% 10 years ago).
- US 10-K reports discuss training programs less overall, but mentions are still on the rise. 14% of latest reports mention apprenticeship programs (vs 1% a decade ago), while 3% reference graduate programs (vs. 0%) and 8% internship programs (vs 3%).
David Abelman, Data Science Consultant, added:
“When implemented carefully, LLMs provide a fantastic way to extract quantitative information from textual documents at scale. We were able to craft a workflow to make sense of over 100,000 pages of annual reports, giving us a unique understanding of how companies discuss their people development in relation to their increasingly strategic prioritisation of technology.
“It was clear that whilst technological focus has ramped up, strategic skill development is generally lagging behind. But it’s also promising to see signals of change in the tactical implementation of learning and development initiatives. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out in the coming years as the increasing impact of AI is felt.”
— Notes to editors —
1. The full Boardroom Skills Agenda report can be found here.
2. Research methodology
- The analysis was based on the hypothesis that if skills are critical to business strategy then you would expect them to play a prominent role in the annual reports of UK companies.
- This study analyzes the content of a sample of 700 FTSE 100 annual reports (both latest, and from previous years), using a large language model (GPT-4o), keyword-based methods, and a manual labelling process for verification. For clerical tasks such as page-labelling, GPT-4o-mini was used.
For more information, please visit the methodology section of the report.
About Multiverse
Multiverse is a tech company that identifies, closes and prevents skills gaps, through personalized, on-the-job learning. It partners with over 1,500 companies in the US & UK to deliver skills that enable business transformation, and economic opportunity for individuals.
Its focus areas include AI, tech and data skills, for people of any age and any career stage. Multiverse learners have driven $2bn + ROI for their employers, using the skills they’ve learnt to improve productivity and measurable performance.
In June 2022, it announced a $220 million Series D funding round co-led by StepStone Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners and General Catalyst. With a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion, the round makes the company the UK’s first EdTech unicorn.
For more information, please visit multiverse.io.
About David Abelman
David Abelman specializes in data science, analytics, and AI consultancy. With a particular interest in implementing AI to build novel datasets, David works with a variety of leading UK and global companies to drive strategy and insight on some of their most challenging data problems.
1 The top five strategic priorities were assessed based on their prominence and emphasis in report pages tagged by the LLM as ‘upfront strategic narrative’ of each annual report, which includes the opening remarks from the CEO and Chair. These were manually spot checked and verified.
SOURCE Multiverse