The Wibo Future Skills Research 2026 photographs a profound gap on artificial intelligence, leadership and adaptability. Within five years, 39% of today’s skills will be obsolete
Aware but not yet ready: this is the paradox of Italian companies faced with the evolution of the world of work. This is revealed by the Wibo Future Skills Research 2026. By interviewing HR, L&D and People & Culture leaders, the research measured the distance between the perception of tomorrow’s strategic skills and the actual preparation of companies to implement them.
The central data provides a clear picture: the average level of skills perceived in organizations today is equal to 5 out of 10well below the level deemed necessary to remain competitive (8.9 out of 10). A gap common to all the areas analyzed and which measures a daily tension experienced by companies. That is to say knowing where you should go but without yet having adequate tools, models and organizational cultures to get there.
What the future of the world of work looks like
The search fits into a context of accelerated transformation of work.
According to the Future of Jobs Report 2025 of the World Economic Forum, over the next five years 39% of the skills core of an average worker will become obsoletewhile the adoption of AI and automation will create around 170 million new roles, making 92 million of them obsolete. In practice, we can count on technological progress, but we lack the skills to manage it.
There Wibo Future Skills Research analyzed four key areas: leadership and communication, adaptability and entrepreneurial mindset, strategic and analytical thinking, AI and digital productivity. In all of them it emerges a strong disconnect between attributed importance and current preparation, with a transversal fact that unites the different areas. The human factor, which is still perceived as the true competitive advantage in the AI era.
The most requested skills in the AI and productivity area, in fact, they are not of a technical nature but of an application nature: 68% of HRs indicate improving process efficiency as a priority, while 50% considers the development of essential skills Of prompt engineeringor the ability to communicate effectively with AI. From the qualitative responses, a shared vision emerges: AI must act as a co-pilot of human intelligence, not as a substitute for it.
Artificial intelligence and the relationship with companies
«AI is recognized as the most disruptive transformative force, but it is also the area in which companies feel least prepared. The point is not the lack of technology, but rather the difficulty of integrating it into people’s daily processes and work”, he comments Tommaso Seita, cofounder of Wibo. «It clearly emerges from the research that the most lacking skills are not technical, but applicative: knowing how to use AI to improve efficiency, make better decisions and therefore support human work. Without real literacy and without an approach that puts people at the centre, the risk is that AI remains a promise, rather than becoming a real factor of competitiveness.”
As regards the leadership and communication area, in an increasingly hybrid and distributed world of work, the relational skills become central. Giving and receiving feedback is indicated as an urgent skill by 70% of the sample, followed by conflict management (55%).
«The data clearly indicates that the leadership model required of companies today is profoundly different from that of the past. The figure of the leader-coach emerges: less command and control, more listening, trust and psychological safety. The critical point, however, is that many organizations recognize this change on a theoretical level, but still struggle to support it in daily practice”, he continues Alessandro Bussoco-founder of Wibo. “Without a real evolution of organizational cultures, evaluation systems and decision-making models, the risk is that of asking people to change behavior without putting them in a position to actually do so.”
The limits to the inclusion of artificial intelligence
The data relating to the area of adaptability and entrepreneurial mentality also show a significant gap. 75% of HRs indicate the change management as a critical skill, followed by resilience (65%) and learnability, or the ability to learn continuously (60%). Companies recognize the need to be more agile, but they still discount it organizational cultures that penalize errors, discourage initiative and maintain rigid hierarchical structures. The result is constant reactivity, which leaves little room for strategic thinking.
Finally, on the strategic and analytical thinking front, the main difficulty noted is not so much access to data, but rather the ability to transform it into decisions. Not surprisingly, complex problem solving is the skill indicated as most relevant in the entire survey (80%)followed by critical thinking (70%). In a context of information overload, knowing how to “connect the dots” becomes a key and distinctive skill, in line with global trends that indicate analytical thinking as the skill most requested by companies worldwide.
«From the interviews, a tension emerges that companies experience every day: everyone knows that change is necessary, but few really manage to transform it into action. Operational urgency crushes the strategic vision and, paradoxically, slows down the very transformation that should accelerate”, say the founders of Wibo. «In this context, the real competitive advantage is not the technology itself, but the human factor: critical thinking, empathy and the ability to reflect they remain irreplaceable skills, especially in the age of AI. Closing the skill gap does not mean taking more courses, but building a continuous learning culture, treating soft skills as technical prerequisites and designing learning paths oriented towards measurable behavioral change, which allows people to govern the change instead of undergoing it”.
