Most organizations now agree on the “what”: AI fluency is a business requirement. A major disconnect is the “who.” Budgets are opening, pilots abound, and leaders are vocal about the stakes, yet execution stalls because AI upskilling has no clear owner. When responsibility is split across L&D, IT, HR, and line managers, momentum turns into meetings. Content duplicates, access varies by team, and dashboards fill with activity metrics that don’t reflect capability.

The structural gap

Our recent report identified a simple truth: urgency is widespread; ownership isn’t. Only a small minority – about 14% – report a robust learning strategy with defined governance and pathways. Everyone expects AI learning to happen, yet no one is explicitly accountable for making it real at scale.

Why ownership matters

Ownership is about clarity, not control. Clear owners set decision rights (tools, content standards, measurement), align with IT on safe use and knowledge sources, and establish a cadence that reviews one thing above all: what changed in the work. Without that spine, even well-funded programs drift toward content distribution rather than capability building.

Make governance real (and lightweight)

Skip the bureaucracy and focus on building a working model.

• Name accountable owners. Typically L&D in partnership with HR, with IT as co-sponsor.
• Define decision rights. Tooling, content standards, data/knowledge sources, and measurement.
• Adopt role-based depth. Foundation for all; applied skills for practitioners; governance for leaders.
• Measure behavior, not exposure. Time saved, quality improvements, error rates, and safe-use compliance.

What “good” looks like

High performers treat upskilling like product work. They pick a real task, define the job to be done and the metrics up front, and make the workflow observable so adoption and impact are visible. Assistants default to vetted internal and licensed sources, protecting trust at speed. Edge cases are captured and folded into playbooks, and only proven patterns scale.

The takeaway

Upskilling as a priority is a given. Governance – clear ownership, decision rights, and role-based depth – is what turns urgency into durable capability.

Read the full report from getAbstract: Urgency Without Ownership: AI Upskilling at Work 2025