Feeling pressure to pretend you know more than you do? You’re not alone, so are your team. The act of hiding or downplaying skill gaps, known as skills masking, is a widespread issue in the workplace.
2,000 employees across the UK and US were surveyed and found that 58% admitted to masking their skill gaps. Of those, nearly half have pretended to understand a task when they didn’t, and 40% have avoided asking for help when they were unsure how to proceed.
This isn’t just a matter of individual anxiety; it’s a major business risk. When employees are afraid to admit what they don’t know, they can’t learn, grow, or improve. This creates a workforce that lacks the expertise needed to truly succeed, ultimately hindering both individual and organisational performance.
The data shows a clear mismatch between how organisations evaluate onboarding and what employees actually experience,” Too often, success is measured by checklists, not mastery and confidence. And when employees don’t feel safe learning in person, they mask their gaps rather than close them.
This phenomenon, rooted in what the study terms skill-set anxiety, is especially pronounced among younger workers. Over half of employees aged 18-44 report frequent worries about being under qualified, and 29% say this anxiety strongly reflects their experience on the job. Importantly, these feelings take root early: the most common reported consequence of poor onboarding isn’t churn or performance — but diminished confidence (55%).
Yet the report offers hope. Despite the stigma, most employees (58%) say they would feel comfortable admitting skill gaps to a manager. Even more strikingly, two-thirds (67%) express willingness to use confidential, AI-powered role-play tools to practice and strengthen job-critical skills privately.
The good news is that technology is catching up to human psychology. AI-powered simulations now allow people to rehearse tough conversations, practice decision-making, and close real skill gaps without fear of embarrassment. For organisations serious about performance, the key is creating environments where people can safely stop pretending and start progressing.
The full findings offer organisations rich insight into how confidence, safety, and digital tools intersect to shape onboarding and up skilling outcomes.
Skill masking is what happens when people don’t feel safe learning in front of others. They hide uncertainty, perform surface competence, and miss the chance to truly master their roles.” Digital Transformation is leaving older generations behind, but it doesn’t have too.
As onboarding tools become more digital, data-driven, and AI-enhanced, organisations are accelerating their investments in scalable learning solutions. But the survey reveals a blind spot: older generations are less likely to feel included in this evolution. They’re more skeptical of gamification, less confident in analytics, and less likely to find value in feedback systems and mentorship models.
This isn’t resistance for the sake of it—it’s a signal. While younger employees embrace fast, tech-enabled onboarding ecosystems, older employees are often operating with outdated support structures and little say in how new systems are designed. The result? A growing equity gap between digital natives and digital migrants.
If the goal of onboarding is to build confident, competent, and committed employees, then organisations can’t afford to treat older generations as edge cases. Instead, the next wave of onboarding strategy should ask: How do we create systems that meet everyone where they are—and bring everyone forward? This means designing with multiple learning styles in mind, offering alternate paths to competence, and building cultures that normalise asking for help at any age.
Digital transformation is inevitable. Generational inclusivity isn’t. It has to be intentional. Metrics are everywhere. Strategy is nowhere.
