Acorn, the AI-powered performance enablement learning management platform, today released The 2026 State of Learning for AI Fluency Report, revealing a significant disconnect in organizational AI readiness across a survey of more than 1,200 professionals. While 77% of executives believe their managers are prepared to guide AI skills development, 91% of employees say their managers lack that preparation.
77% of executives believe managers are prepared to guide AI skills; 91% of employees disagree.
58% of organizations report development plans are ineffective at improving performance and building capability.
77% of organizations treat training completion as evidence of capability.
47% of companies have not included AI capability in formal performance reviews.
59% of individual contributors say AI has made them only slightly more efficient (<10% improvement).
61% of respondents are not confident their organization's approach will prepare workforce for AI-driven role changes.
“What this research makes clear is that there are two workforces experiencing the same AI deployment from fundamentally different positions,” said Blake Proberts, CEO and Founder of Acorn. “The deficiency in manager preparedness highlights a measurement infrastructure problem. Managers can't guide development conversations they have no evidence to anchor on, and without that evidence, employees default to skepticism.”
“It is clear AI adoption has outpaced enablement,” said Keith Metcalfe, President of Acorn. “We see companies throwing budget at AI without giving their employees the guidance and support required to effectively use it in their roles. The result is an overly confident C-suite and a directionless employee base that is struggling to make sense of AI directives.”
Nearly six in ten organizations are currently running development programs they consider insufficient: 58% report their development plans are somewhat, not very or not at all effective at improving performance and building capability. Organizations are tracking activity, not capability. 77% of organizations treat training completion as evidence of capability. 64% of respondents can't confidently say whether their company's approach to measuring learning can answer if employees are getting better at their jobs. 83% of respondents say there is a disparity between what employees report about their job capabilities and what they observe them demonstrating in practice.
Seventy-five percent of individual contributors report their managers are only somewhat prepared or not prepared to have meaningful conversations about traditional skills, and 54% of managers agree. Eighty percent of C-suite respondents say their managers are very prepared. With AI, 91% of individual contributors say their managers are not fully prepared to have meaningful conversations about their AI capabilities, while 77% of executives think their managers are very prepared for AI conversations, but only 34% of managers feel prepared, and just 9% of individual contributors agree.
Fifty-eight percent of individual contributors are slightly skeptical and 28% are scared or disillusioned about AI, contrasting sharply with 82% of executives who report being excited about AI. Nearly 60% of employees lack confidence applying AI in their role. 58% of companies report employees who are proficient with AI in general but struggle to apply it meaningfully to their specific job. 59% of individual contributors say AI has made them only slightly more efficient, with less than 10% improvement.
Acorn PLMS (Performance Learning Management System) is the AI-powered performance enablement learning management platform. Acorn maps skills to capabilities: skills are the inputs, capabilities are the outcomes and Acorn is the platform that connects them through evidence. With a proprietary library of over 1,600 capabilities and 4,800 proficiency levels, Acorn helps organizations define the capabilities that matter, map them to roles and learning content and build personalized development plans.
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