Playbook: cite a 2026 benchmark without inventing your own number

This worksheet is for the slide that usually goes wrong: an external percentage used as if it were yours.

Two columns

External frame	Your evidence
Source, year, URL	Population (role, site, headcount)
What they measured	The metric you own
Their figure, quoted exactly	Baseline date and latest date
What they did not measure (country, your sector)	The decision you are asking for

Figures you may quote, if you quote them whole

From LinkedIn’s 2026 Talent Velocity Advantage report: 86% of companies in that research lack adequate talent velocity; 14% are leaders; 89% are concerned about skills agility; learning opportunities remain the top stated retention strategy.

From the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025: employers expect 39% of workers’ skill sets to change by 2030; 63% name skills gaps as the main transformation barrier; 85% expect to prioritise upskilling.

The sentence that is allowed

“LinkedIn finds that 86% of companies in its 2026 research lack adequate talent velocity. In our Eastern Province maintenance cohort, time-to-independent sign-off moved from 22 weeks in March 2025 to 16 weeks in August 2026.”

The sentence that is not

“86% of Gulf employers lack talent velocity, so our programme closes the gap.”

Fill the right-hand column before the nomination opens on 20 October 2026. An empty cell is a finding. Do not estimate it.