IT and business professionals have unique, yet overlapping, motivations for pursuing new tech skills
People don’t upskill in a vacuum. They do it for real reasons tied directly to their priorities, whether those are personal, professional, or financial. What’s clear from the 2025 Tech Skills Report is that motivations vary by role. IT professionals typically have an internal drive. They want to master the latest tools, learn new platforms, and stay ahead in fast-moving environments. Their focus is often personal advancement, 53% of them said earning a higher salary was a key reason to learn, and 43% cited personal goals as a top driver.
Business professionals are moving in the same direction but have different fuel. Confidence, adaptability, and job security are more prominent motivators. Nearly half, 45%, want to feel more capable using tech tools in their daily workflow. Another 47% are focused squarely on career longevity and reducing risk. These are people who may not come from technical backgrounds but know their careers depend on technical fluency.
If you lead an organization, this matters. Don’t design one-size-fits-all upskilling programs. Tailoring learning opportunities to different motivations across departments amplifies results. For technical employees, prioritize mastery and certification. For business teams, focus on applied learning and building comfort with tech integration. Same tools. Different pathways.
This isn’t theoretical, these shifts are measurable. Teams that connect the dots between aspirations and skill-building are the ones that stay agile, creative, and faster than the market.
Aligning learning and development programs with individual goals increases employee engagement
If you want people to learn, give them a reason that makes sense to them, not just to you.
Too many companies roll out learning programs without linking those directly to outcomes employees care about. It’s a missed opportunity. When people see upskilling as a route to a raise, a promotion, or a more secure role, they actually commit. That’s not speculation, it’s backed by data. Among IT professionals, 42% said company-sponsored learning helped them land a better role. Business professionals? Similar story, 43% reported the same.
This tells us something obvious but often ignored: learning is adopted when the outcome is valued. Learning for learning’s sake isn’t enough. If the reward is invisible, attention fades fast.
Give employees visible stepping stones. If someone in a finance role takes a data science course, show them how that could lead to a new analytics leadership role. If your junior systems engineer deepens their AWS skill set, show them the track to a senior cloud architecture position. Help people connect what they’re learning today with the reality they want tomorrow.
For C-level leaders, this isn’t just about individual growth, it’s about business agility. When employees are deliberately building in alignment with your strategy, it’s a multiplier. Skills stay current. Motivation stays high. And your talent pipeline gets stronger from the inside.
Upskilling serves as a vital career advancement tool
People don’t just want to keep their jobs, they want to move forward. That’s where credible upskilling becomes a lever for mobility. When an engineer takes time to earn a certification in AWS or expands into GCP, they’re not doing it to tick a box. They’re lining up their next role. They’re building the leverage to move from operational tasks to design-level decisions. And when your company provides the tools to do this, it bridges talent development and retention in one move.
The data backs it. Close to half of both IT professionals and business professionals, 42% and 43%, respectively, attribute recent promotions or compensation increases to company-sponsored learning programs. That’s measurable progress tied directly to development investment.
The mistake many executives make is hoping ambition will fill the gap left by a vague learning structure. It won’t. If someone wants to become a senior cloud engineer, it should be obvious which skills and certifications will get them there, how long that road takes, and what that progression means for their compensation potential.
This transparency is strategic. When you make the path to advancement real, learning becomes strategic, not theoretical. As a leader, build your upskilling programs around specific next-step roles. Tie credentialing to promotions. Create a map people can follow. If you don’t, the ones who are driven will build that map somewhere else.
Upskilling is essential for maintaining job security amid rapid technological changes
You’re either adapting to change or getting left behind by it. That’s not dramatic, it’s just what the market does. AI agents are coming fast. Code is becoming more abstract and increasingly co-written with machines. These shifts aren’t on the horizon, they’re happening now. If your team doesn’t understand how to work with AI, or if they’re not updating their toolkit, they’re inviting risk.
This isn’t just a tech concern. It’s structural. People are uneasy, whether they talk about it in meetings or not. They know that the game is changing. The smartest companies don’t bury that; they address it. Train your people in prompt engineering so they control the tools, not the other way around. Teach them how to review AI-assisted outputs critically. Help them develop skills that reinforce their value, creativity, reasoning, communication, competencies that won’t be automated soon.
You can’t guarantee job security. No one can. But you can build a workforce that won’t be surprised by disruption. If you invest in continuous skill upgrades, you increase organizational resilience. And your people stay relevant.
This is particularly important for executive teams to understand. The quicker you enable adaptation, the less time you spend firefighting skills gaps. And the more likely you are to lead in a market that puts a premium on speed, innovation, and execution.
Personal passion motivates IT professionals to pursue continuous learning
Some of the best talent in tech doesn’t wait for permission to learn. They’re driven by curiosity, personal challenge, and a desire for mastery. This is particularly true in IT. These are people who go after certifications, explore new frameworks, and dive into the latest platforms, not because they have to, but because they want to. The numbers prove it: 43% of IT professionals say personal goals are a primary reason they build new skills. That’s not a small signal, it’s a strong indicator of intrinsic motivation at scale.
From a leadership perspective, if you don’t tap into this energy, you’re not using the full potential of your team. When employees express interest in particular technologies, whether it’s a new programming language, an advanced security framework, or hands-on cloud architecture, you don’t need to over-engineer the incentive. You just need to create space and give access. Make it easy for them to learn, then show them where they can apply what they’ve gained.
Practical application is important. A certification that doesn’t feed into real work quickly loses meaning. So if people are learning independently, create projects that let them use what they’ve built. Internal initiatives, cross-functional sprints, infrastructure updates, there are always places to plug in talent that’s leveling up.
With this approach, you’re aligning personal momentum with business direction. You’re not mandating development, you’re multiplying it.
Overcoming time constraints is critical for successful upskilling
Time is the most consistent barrier to learning in the workplace. For four years running, it’s been at the top of the list. No surprise there, people are busy, meetings are back-to-back, and deadlines are real. The problem is, if you don’t explicitly protect time for learning, it doesn’t happen. And if your people don’t make progress, neither does your company.
The solution is simple: create dedicated time blocks during working hours and make sure managers respect them. That’s how you drive lasting change. Not by recommending courses or sending out links, but by backing learning with time and attention.
We’ve already seen the results. At FIS, a global FinTech company, employees were given two hours per week for learning. The result? The number of novice-level staff dropped from 47% to 13%. That’s not incremental, that’s systemic shift, triggered by a small operational change.
Executives need to stop treating upskilling as an afterthought. It’s a workload issue, not a motivation issue. People want to learn, but if your organization isn’t actively clearing space for it, you’re signaling that performance in the present matters more than capability in the future.
Culturally, this means making learning part of the workday, not an extra task to squeeze in after everything else. Operationally, it means baking it into schedules, not just strategies. If you do, you move out of talent maintenance and into capability expansion.
Reframing the narrative around upskilling can significantly boost employee engagement
Most companies don’t have a learning and development problem, they have a messaging problem. The programs exist. The tools are there. But the way they’re presented makes them feel disconnected from individual outcomes. That’s where engagement breaks down. If people don’t see how upskilling improves their professional life, they don’t prioritize it, no matter how advanced the platform or how many resources you roll out.
The fix doesn’t require a structural overhaul. It requires clarity and relevance. Shift the focus of your conversation from organizational goals to personal gain. Show how upskilling drives career momentum. Make that connection direct and visible. If employees know that developing a new skill can influence their future, better role, better compensation, more mobility, they’ll move faster and with more ownership.
This also means your leadership team needs to speak in real terms. Vague encouragement isn’t enough. Be specific. Say what kinds of roles will benefit from what kind of skills. Lay out the roadmap from learning to application to advancement. The more concrete the vision, the more participation you’ll get, because people don’t commit to general ideas, they commit to tangible outcomes.
From the C-suite, it comes down to execution and credibility. People follow leaders who give them meaningful direction and back it up with opportunity. If you want your teams to care about learning, don’t just promote the idea, explain its impact. When you do that, you don’t just drive engagement. You anchor it.
In conclusion
Upskilling isn’t a side project, it’s a leadership decision. If you want stronger teams, faster execution, and long-term retention, start by making learning practical, personal, and protected. Most employees already want to grow; your job is to remove the friction and make the path clear.
This isn’t about bigger budgets or flashier platforms. It’s about aligning development with actual outcomes, mobility, mastery, and security. When people see the value, they invest. When you make time for it, they focus. And when learning becomes a core part of how your organization operates, the gaps close, quietly and efficiently.
For leadership, the opportunity is simple: treat upskilling as a system, not a perk. Do it right, and you don’t just build skills. You build a workforce ready for what’s next.
