How business leaders can upskill their workforce for the age of AI

Guest post by Mark Cockerill, Senior Vice President, Legal at ServiceNow   

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) looms large over the business landscape this year.  Business leaders across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are preparing for an inflection point in the history of technology, similar to the birth of the internet or the dawn of the mobile phone era.

There is a growing consensus amongst business leaders that this new era will require a different mixture of skills and talent. Forward-thinking organisations are already working to make the right hires and upskill employees to move into the AI era. These endeavours include everything from AI learning events for employees, to ‘AI champions’ within the workforce, who can inspire other employees to reap the benefits of the technology.

Most EMEA organisations are still in the early stages of this journey. However, there is a clear sense of urgency when it comes to investing in AI, with 77% of organisations in EMEA saying that they plan to increase their investments in the coming year, according to ServiceNow’s Enterprise AI Maturity Index.

The research, which includes responses from 2,157 executives in various industries across the EMEA region, found a strong appetite for the business benefits of AI. Respondents are particularly hopeful that AI can deliver increased efficiency and productivity (76%) along with improved customer experience (75%) and revenue growth (73%).

For businesses that have yet to engage with AI, there is still time to implement an effective strategy. In fact, across EMEA, most organisations are still at the ‘experimenting’ stage of AI, the research found. Many are yet to embark on the journey of finding the right mix of skills and talent to power their AI approach.

Throughout the region, less than a third of organisations (31%) strongly agree that they currently have the right mixture of talent and skills to drive their AI strategy. More than half (53%) are still working out what skills are needed. At this relatively early stage, 42% believe they have made significant progress towards creating specialist teams for important AI issues such as policy drafting and responsible AI usage. But with each passing month, the urgency of finding the right AI skills and talent grows.

The right talent at the right time

Without the right human talent to guide AI deployments, attempts to integrate AI into work processes are all too likely to be a wasted effort. It’s key for company leadership to act now to build an AI-literate workforce. To do so requires a dual strategy, including external specialist hires to make an AI project a success, and internal training to ensure that business users are equipped with the skills needed to effectively integrate AI into operations.

Building AI skills is dependent on having a strong culture of innovation within the company—something that tends to flourish when employees feel free to experiment. In ServiceNow’s research, 58% of organisations in EMEA said that they were enabling autonomous problem solving in teams to build trust.

In terms of hiring, AI configurators are the most in-demand, with 51% of organisations planning to hire for such job roles, followed closely by experience developers (46%), data scientists (50%) and machine learning operators (43%).

With a high demand for certain roles, and not enough trained people to fulfil the positions, there is a significant opportunity for internal upskilling. Across EMEA, businesses are focusing on upskilling or reskilling initiatives to develop the necessary abilities to stay up to date and successfully adopt AI. In fact, 46% of businesses plan to upskill employees significantly to create a new cohort of AI configurators, while 42% are doing this for experience developers and 45% are focussing on data scientists.

Invest now, benefit later

For organisations looking to reap the benefits of AI, prioritising — and investing in — skills development is essential to integrating AI smoothly into an organisation. A two-pronged approach will deliver results: external hiring combined with an integrated, measurable approach to upskilling existing employees, including measures such as training courses to help build the right culture around AI.

Proactively engaging with this skills challenge will foster a workforce capable of integrating AI and experiencing its rewards, as well as a workforce prepared to navigate future challenges and drive innovation and growth. As EMEA becomes a more mature region in terms of AI adoption, those that were at the vanguard will shape the business landscape. Those that hesitate for too long risk quickly getting left behind.

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