Future ready or falling behind: why Canadian organizations can’t wait on learning

Canadian organizations can’t wait on learning. Protect time, tailor upskilling, and build a future-ready workforce.

In brief

• In Canada, employees want to learn, but time constraints, unclear payoff and low visibility limit uptake; employer optimism often outpaces reality.
• Learning must be tailored by generation, role and sector; one-size-fits-all approaches can hide capability gaps and increase attrition risk.
• Make learning strategic: use data, protect time, embed learning in work, simplify navigation and measure confidence, capability and mobility for ROI.

Picture this: a Canadian employee logs in for another packed day, juggling deadlines and meetings. They know their skills need to evolve – the pace of change makes that clear. Yet many people feel that carving out time for learning is an extra effort they can’t realistically manage.

They’re not alone. Across Canada, employees show a desire to learn, yet time constraints, unclear payoff and a host of other factors are holding people back from pursuing development on the job. These barriers are not uniform. They vary significantly by generation, role and sector, meaning a one-size-fits-all approach to learning and development will fall short.

Meanwhile, our Work Reimagined surveys show employers may not know how to turn that tide.

Closing these gaps matters. Canadian organizations that get to the heart of their employees’ expectations and integrate learning into the flow of work can foster engagement, spark innovation and fend off attrition to build a meaningful talent advantage.

Learning and development: the new currency of resilience and growth

Across industries and sectors, skills obsolescence is no longer a future risk. It’s already here. Even so, there’s a growing disconnect between the way employees and employers view learning and development overall and the strategies needed to overcome these hurdles.

By the numbers, our survey shows that employers globally are 20% to 30% more optimistic about perceived access to learning than their employees. In fact, in Canada, only 52% of employees across all sectors agree they have access to learning opportunities. This gap underscores a critical point: communication, visibility and identifying the right training matter just as much as program quality.

Digging deeper into the numbers, employers often assume that simply offering learning will improve retention. Employees disagree. Learning and development are now table stakes: if employees are going to feel they matter, they must feel empowered to pursue it, rewarded for doing so and given real opportunities to apply it in ways that support growth in the total rewards framework.

This presents employers with an opportunity. Employers that reframe how learning and development are positioned and help employees succeed can carve out a talent advantage that can boost engagement and unleash the full lift of learning as a differentiator. Getting there requires deep understanding of the workforce itself and a personalized approach.

Abandon assumptions — design learning around your employees’ aspirations and constraints

Without intervention, skills could become obsolete faster than they’re refreshed. That’s bad for retention because employees tend to disengage when pathways and payoff are unclear. This can dramatically affect the organization’s ability to transform, compete and maintain brand with employees.

Taking action is crucial for any organization looking to reinforce learning and development as a true strategic lever — and carve out a competitive edge with a truly engaged workforce who are inspired to make the business stronger.

How can you get started and embark on this critical shift?

Make learning visible, integrated and rewarded — not an optional extra. Begin by keeping five leading practices in mind:

1. Anchor learning strategies in data and insight. Guesswork isn’t enough. To unlock learning as a driver of resilience and growth, you need to quantify perception gaps, identify root causes and draw on sector and generational benchmarks to guide strategy. This gives you a more informed starting point and helps design learning and development around your people’s needs and expectations.
   
   
2. Protect time for learning. Strong leadership support is the foundation for learning . That could mean baking learning discussions into regular touchpoints, layering learning into scorecards, focusing on coaching and on-the-job training connected to what folks are doing here and now, or even dedicating large-scale blocks of time for everyone to pursue learning of their choice. To sustain impact, you’ll need change enablement strategies and alignment across leadership, culture and systems.
   
   
3. Design learning for differences, not averages. Getting the right learning to the right people at the right time is key to achieving strong ROI. Rather than treating learning as a broad total rewards offering, deploy it for different strategic purposes. On way to do this is to embed skill-building into the flow of work. For example, bake experiential learning into job experience for sales roles, applied academies for knowledge workers and mentoring programs for Boomers. Reframing onsite training for essential workers as hands-on practice rather than generic lectures can also accelerate upskilling.
   
   
4. Make learning easier to navigate. People can be overwhelmed even by their everyday work. Adding in the need to figure out what to learn, when, where and how doesn’t help. You can strengthen employee engagement and learning success by helping them manage what’s on offer.
   
   For example, at EY, we launched a centralized “flight school,” bringing together AI learning in a single platform. Providing our people with a single point of entry to AI development and dedicated academies help them make more of their time and pursue the learning that’s most relevant to them.
   
   Across Canada, formal classes consistently rank low as a motivating top reward, whether by sector (13%-22%), employee type (11%-18%) or generation (14%-19%), prioritizing integrated, applied learning experiences over traditional classroom formats has the potential to engage your people much more effectively.
   
   
5. Measure what matters — and act on it. Tracking learning confidence, capability and mobility throughput is just as important as measuring course completion rates. This holistic view can help you understand how your people are engaging with learning, what ROI programs are generating and — critically — where to improve. The more data you have, the better positioned you’ll be to make learning the strategic lever it can and should be.

When these practices come together, learning stops being an afterthought and becomes a strategic advantage – one that fuels resilience, accelerates innovation and keeps your workforce future-ready in a world where skills expire faster than ever.

What’s the bottom line?

More learning options alone won’t move the needle. Your people need time, clarity on the benefits and opportunities to practice in ways that match their roles.

A good place to start is simple: pinpoint where employee and employer perceptions differ, then redesign learning experiences around constraints, such as protected time, guided choices and applied practice linked to growth.

As AI becomes more embedded in everyday work, getting these basics right will shape whether upskilling translates into transformative business results.

In an upcoming article, we’ll dig into the AI findings from the EY 2025 Work Reimagined Survey and what they suggest about impact. Stay tuned!

Summary

Canadian employees want to learn, but packed schedules, unclear payoff and low visibility often prevent them from engaging in development. Survey findings show employers are more optimistic than employees about access to learning; in Canada, only 52% of employees agree they have learning opportunities. Barriers and needs vary by generation, sector and role, so one-size-fits-all programs can mask capability gaps and increase attrition risk. To build a future-ready workforce, organizations should use data to pinpoint perception gaps, protect time for learning, tailor experiences to different segments, simplify navigation, and measure confidence, capability and mobility, not just course completion.