How strategic reskilling can help employees keep pace with AI

There's been a huge focus on how AI is changing the way people work, which has also led to increased fears around technology potentially replacing employees. 

AI solutions present opportunities to free up employees' valuable time and energy. A CBS News article highlights that coding and software jobs are most at risk of being replaced by AI because, as per a study from Indeed, 95% of the skills needed for these roles can be done by generative AI.

Naturally, most professionals take AI as a threat to their livelihoods, which has also caused a huge amount of resistance to adopting it in day-to-day worklife. That causes issues for employers looking to enhance their digital infrastructure, streamline workflows and make operations more efficient. 

Organizations integrating AI tools also have more to gain when their employees are well-versed in working with them. Gaining buy-in across teams leads to better use-cases of AI for stronger ROI and business outcomes. Even so, only 38% of organizations are training their employees on AI. 

Moreover, the U.S., the world's strongest economy, has recently undergone some shocking events in its labor market: Last year, one out of every four American employees in professional or business services lost their jobs. 

So, how can employers empower professionals to stay afloat amid the AI tsunami? They need to strategically reskill to keep pace with rapidly evolving technology. 

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Identify where reskilling makes sense

The 'U-curve' of value is a useful way of understanding how AI is disrupting the workforce. Manually-intensive jobs requiring lots of human dexterity sit at one end of the curve, and leadership roles that thrive off strategic insight and decision-making sit on the other. Both ends of the curve possess innately human-dependent skills like critical thinking and dexterity.

The jobs that sit in the middle of the curve that involve lots of analysis and repetitive tasks, are the ones where AI is most disruptive. These roles are widely viewed as the least conducive to profitability and innovation, two key ingredients for success in the age of AI. 

Moreover, a recent study using O*NET data found that white-collar jobs are most susceptible to being replaced by generative AI. Take middle-management roles that require a lot of number crunching in spreadsheets or customer care supervisors who handle basic support requests. These repetitive tasks are where it makes the most sense to introduce AI to help with automation. In a bid to protect profit margins and maximize productivity, business leaders are turning to AI to replace roles they're now deeming as 'obsolete.' 

According to an article from the World Economic Forum (WEF), we're reaching new levels of urgency when it comes to the reskilling revolution, and half of the workers who want to ride the AI wave and stay in their roles in the coming years will need to remaster their core skills.

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Specific skills to nurture

Rather than fighting AI, professionals should learn to embrace it. Employers are set to value AI aptitude over experience alone, with 66% of business leaders indicating they're not inclined to hire someone without AI skills. 

Building that much-needed aptitude involves improving skills like data literacy, strategic and responsible decision-making, and knowing how to prompt tools like generative AI. All of these skills are conducive to propelling innovation and synergy between man and machine. It's widely cited that the roles that leverage these skills are the safest amid the rise of AI. 

Let's look at how that reskilling would likely pan out in a desk job, like a marketing role, for instance. Marketers who have honed their data literacy skills know that they're not just able to read numbers, but act on them, too. Let's say they've also refined their ability to intelligently leverage AI tools, so when they're reading a campaign report, they can instruct AI to help them forecast trends. 

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Better yet, they've also improved their strategic thinking and are able to leverage those insights to create and execute stronger marketing strategies that not only align with wider business goals but also improve ROI.

Thriving in the age of AI is about adapting and shrewd reskilling. Strategic reskilling to empower employees to work with AI tools and make the most of them not only creates a more resilient workforce, but a more productive one. There's a unique opportunity to lean into the innately human strengths like critical thinking and strategic decision-making that machines can't replicate.