There may be a disconnect between the skills that human resource leaders believe are critical in the era of artificial intelligence and those which employees actually prioritize.
A study from the IBM Institute for Business Value found that two-thirds of identify the ability to supervise, validate, and override AI outputs as the workforce’s most essential skill.
Among Canadian employees, however, just 29% consider such judgement abilities as highly important.
“The sharpest divide between executives and employees concerns the skills required to evaluate AI outputs,” states the report, “Designing the Thinking Organization: focus areas for CHROs as AI reshapes work.”
As AI becomes “more deeply embedded in how work gets done,” Director of Human Resources for IBM Canada Brandon-Jo Mouna argues that “organizations have an opportunity to strengthen the human capabilities that matter most.”
“Critical thinking, judgement, and the ability to challenge AI-generated outputs will become increasingly important as employees work alongside AI,” Mouna believes. “Organizations that intentionally develop those capabilities will be better positioned to create value from AI while preparing their workforce for the future.”
There is also the concern of “skills erosion,” in which over-reliance on AI-powered tools dulls the independent capabilities of the user.
More than 60% of employees in Canada worry about skills erosion, according to IBM’s study—and, among those two do, more than two-thirds believe that some of their skills have already eroded in the face of AI.
This phenomenon is also a top concern for nearly half of Chief Human Resource Officers in Canada.
And it’s not the only way in which humanity and technology are getting caught in the middle of a Venn diagram.
According to IBM’s report, organizations creating the greatest value from AI are redesigning decision-making and workforce capabilities around the combination of people and technology—an increasingly overlapping intersection.
Indeed, 77% of CEOs believing that talent and technology leadership roles are converging.
One problem moving forward, however, is that work is “changing faster than organizations are redesigning it.”
The solution there may be not to redesign a workforce model once, but rather enable a model that can flex and adapt to evolving conditions.
Organizations that “manage recomposition as a continuous discipline rather than a one-off exercise” reported double the revenue uplift, according to IBM.
