Generative AI has raised numerous questions about its impact on the workforce. Despite its growing prevalence in businesses, people remain a key competitive advantage. However, a recent global study conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) has revealed talent-related challenges that business leaders must address. These challenges range from the skills gap to shifting employee expectations to the need for new operating models.
The global skills gap is a real and growing concern. According to executives surveyed, 40% of their workforce will need to reskill due to the implementation of AI and automation within the next three years. This could affect 1.4 billion out of the 3.4 billion people in the global workforce, according to World Bank statistics. Respondents also identified building new skills for existing employees as a top talent issue.
Generative AI will impact employee groups differently. While workers at all levels could be affected by this technology, entry-level employees are expected to experience the most significant shift. According to 77% of executive respondents, entry-level positions are already experiencing the effects of generative AI, and this trend is expected to intensify in the next few years. Only 22% of respondents reported the same for executive or senior management roles.
AI can open up more possibilities for employees by enhancing their capabilities. In fact, 87% of executives surveyed believe employees are more likely to be augmented than replaced by generative AI. That varies across functions – 97% of executives think employees in procurement are more likely to be augmented than replaced, compared to 93% for employees in risk and compliance, 93% for finance, 77% for customer service and 73% for marketing.
Employees value meaningful work over flexibility and growth opportunities, according to a survey. This is more important to them than flexible work arrangements, growth opportunities, and equity. Additionally, nearly half of surveyed employees believe that the work they do is more important than who they work for or with.
However, executives seem to prioritize different factors. In the same survey, they ranked flexible work arrangements as the most important attribute beyond compensation and job security, and viewed impactful work as the least important factor for their employees.
The world of work has undergone significant changes in the past six months. Leaders are realizing that yesterday’s talent may not be suitable for tomorrow’s enterprise, and tomorrow’s talent may not be able to rely on yesterday’s ways of working.
HR leaders can take a critical role in helping organizations adapt to the changes brought about by generative AI. They can guide their organizations into the future by redesigning work and operating models. Here are some actions to consider:
- Redesign the work, leading with the operating model. Automating bad processes won’t make them better. Rather than automating the same activities you’ve always done, go back to the drawing board to find a better way forward. Process mining can analyze how work is done and where bottlenecks or other inefficiencies exist. From there, you can re-think and re-engineer how work gets done, identifying tasks where AI or automation can be applied to free up employee time for higher value tasks where their touch is critical. For example, IBM’s HR team re-examined the highly manual and data-intensive quarterly promotions process, applying a custom Watson Orchestrate solution to automate data gathering and thereby empowering human staff to devote more time to high-value tasks.
- Invest in talent as much as technology, preparing the workforce for AI and other technology disruption. This is a pivotal moment for HR leaders to step up to help define the organization’s transformation strategy and how people—and AI—will combine to deliver it. HR leaders will drive workforce planning, design and strategy like defining higher-value work, identifying the critical roles and skills of the future and managing hiring, shifting people into new roles, retention and more. That can include reviewing roles, identifying and eliminating repetitive tasks that can be handled by AI, merging roles to create new roles, expanding roles to include tasks like applying or managing AI tools, and creating targeted skill development for the higher-level tasks driven by people.
- Put skills at the center of workforce strategy—for today and for tomorrow. Leaders should be thinking about how to increase the overall technical acumen of the workforce. That can serve as a broad foundation upon which employees build new skills, such as how to work creatively and responsibly with AI. That doesn’t mean every employee will have to learn how to code–but most will have to familiarize themselves with new AI solutions. It’s very important for employees to have a basic understanding of AI and its capabilities so they can be both critical thinkers and users of the technology. Everyone should be empowered to ask questions about models’ training data, how it came to its predictions, potential biases and more. Technology can help with skills and career development too. Interactive career roadmaps with dynamic prompts can help employees see what’s expected for them to progress. At Delta Airlines, IBM Consulting implemented a skills foundation and a talent platform that enabled their IT workforce to upskill into critical new technologies. The future pipeline of talent is an important consideration too. The global AI skills gap is an urgent need facing many companies today across industries, and this will require strategic investments.
- Give jobs more meaning by putting the employee in the driver’s seat. AI has the potential to transform the employee experience. It can automate repetitive tasks, letting people focus on what they are passionate about, freeing up their time for skills development or work-life balance, and potentially create exciting new job roles and career paths. It’s important to engage employees in this process. For example, give teams a forum to recommend tasks that could be automated to make their jobs easier and more fulfilling, leveraging digital channels for a continuous and open feedback loop. This kind of openness to feedback and company-wide growth mindset can also help develop your next generation of leaders. Cultivate an environment where leaders at all levels are encouraged to bring new ideas and creatively apply technology within their roles.
We’re at a pivotal point in the world of work and there’s a massive opportunity in front of HR leaders, but there are risks as well. As businesses further embrace AI, successful change will only come if organizations—by way of HR leaders—prioritize a new approach to talent and operating models where people and technology come together to boost productivity and drive business value.
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