How HR Leaders Are Preparing for the AI-Enabled Workforce

By: Tom Davenport and George Westerman

The promise — and threat — of AI is real. But the impact on jobs has not yet arrived in most organizations. As recently as 2017, headlines such as “Bosses Believe Your Work Skills Will Soon Be Useless” (from the The Washington Post) were common. Oxford University researchers argued in 2013 that 47% of U.S. jobs were at risk of loss to automation. MIT launched its institute-wide task force on the future of work in 2018. Leaders around the world began to consider how their organizations would be different when thousands of their employees’ jobs are automated away.

Fast-forward a few years, and the story is different. As with many technologies, reality did not keep up with the hype — at least not right away. The analysts, managers, and industry gurus forgot the first law of digital innovation: Technology changes quickly, but organizations change much more slowly. Many people are working with smart machines in their daily work, but few have lost their jobs to them.

Job change, however, is more likely. A 2021 McKinsey study estimated that 6% of workers — particularly those in low-wage roles — may need to find new jobs because of automation and the pandemic. A 2018 Deloitte survey found that 82% of AI adopters expected moderate or substantial job changes for their employees in three years.

The experience of the past decade shows the difficulty of predicting the timing and effect of technology on workers and skills. In November 2020, the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future’s final report stated, “In the two-and-a-half years since the task force set to work, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and AI have advanced remarkably. But the world has not been turned on its head by automation, nor has the labor market.” The delay of the day when AI and robots eat jobs has toned down the level of hype in the media and reduced the level of concern for many managers and workers. But some leaders are still considering how to prepare their companies, and their workers, for changes that will come as organizational data feeds and machine learning algorithms mature.

Many people are working with smart machines in their daily work, but few have lost their jobs to them.

To understand how organizations are preparing for the future of their workforces, we reached out to HR and talent heads in several large companies. We asked them how they are getting ready for AI-enabled changes in the occupations and skills in their organizations. By far, the most common answer we heard was, “We’re not doing much to get ready for AI.” Some HR leaders and their companies, however, were taking steps to prepare for the time when the changes begin to happen. Few are yet actively using AI to change processes and jobs, but they are helping their workers get ready for a time when AI will be much more prevalent than it is today.

In this article, we explore four workforce strategies companies are pursuing. We start by describing the most common response from HR leaders. And although we don’t fully agree with it, it’s not irrational.

Strategy 1: Doing Nothing

There is a case to be made for doing nothing to prepare workers for AI-related changes to jobs. When we asked HR leaders at a defense contractor, for example, why they were doing nothing, they offered three logical reasons:

1. The company has many other competing priorities in the near term. Is it worth investing in something that is so long term and uncertain in its impact?
2. Job changes and automation are moving a lot more slowly than the experts predicted. We’ll be able to adjust as the changes come. When jobs do change, most of the time it’s task augmentation or new skills rather than layoffs. That kind of change is less difficult to accomplish and easier to plan for.
3. There’s so much uncertainty around the prognostication that we’re likely to be wrong. Then the company will need to do the more real-time adjusting anyway.

We would argue, however, that it is possible to predict some changes in jobs from AI, or at least to better equip employees to prepare for more generic job changes. Upgrading skills can be a time-consuming process, so we would also point to organizations that are taking action now. The next three workforce strategies describe the more proactive approaches some companies are taking to prepare for an uncertain future.

Bottom line: You may decide that it makes sense to wait to prepare your employees for AI but not to ignore it. Even if you are taking it slow, keep a close eye on trends so that you can act quickly when necessary.

Strategy 2: Building Digital Skills

Some companies that want to retrain or upskill workers aren’t sure what specific skills will be required for jobs of the future, but they are confident that those skills will be digitally oriented. Amazon, for instance, has committed to spend $700 million on retraining to ensure that its employees have the skills they will need to thrive in an increasingly digital job market. The company’s primary focus is the third of its workers in distribution centers, its transportation network, and nontechnical roles at headquarters. The examples it provides are retraining workers in fulfillment centers (which are more vulnerable to automation) for jobs as IT support technicians, and helping nontechnical corporate workers learn software engineering skills.

Similarly, leaders at DBS Bank in Singapore provided employees with seven digital skills, including digital communications, digital business models, digital technologies, and data-driven thinking. Deloitte has focused on making its professionals “tech savvy” — assuming that in an AI-oriented business environment, virtually every employee will need to understand how technology works and fits with their jobs. All three companies believe that, whatever changes happen to future jobs, employees — and their employers — will be better off if they are more skilled at digital technologies.

Bottom line: Regardless of how quickly or extensively AI will change jobs, nearly all jobs will do more with technology over time. Giving people role-based training to attain the right level of digital skills can help better prepare them to accept change and even innovate.

Strategy 3: Predicting Job Trends

Predicting the nature of future jobs is, of course, difficult or impossible to do with precision. And even if predictions are possible, they will probably differ substantially from job to job. Nevertheless, some companies are embarking on approaches that predict the future of either all jobs in the organization, those that are particularly likely to be affected by AI, or jobs that are closely tied to future strategies.

JPMorgan Chase has announced a $350 million investment in reskilling related to AI-related job changes, and the bank is being both predictive and granular about the initiative. It’s working with researchers from MIT and elsewhere to understand — based on a “suitability for machine learning” (SML) assessment — which skills and jobs are most likely to be replaced by AI. This will help the bank plan for changes in those jobs, and help workers gain the skills they need to succeed in their modified jobs or transition to new ones.

Some companies are making specific job predictions based on their strategies or products. In Europe, a consortium of microelectronics companies is devoting 2 billion euros to train current and future employees on electronic components and systems. General Motors is focused on training its employees to manufacture electric and autonomous vehicles. Verizon is focused on hiring and training data scientists and marketers to expand its 5G wireless technology. SAP is focused on growing employees’ skills in cloud computing, artificial intelligence development, blockchain, and the internet of things. These industry-specific changes are easier predictions to make than for business in general, although they, too, could go awry.

Bottom line: Predicting the occupational impacts of AI is difficult, but there are methods that can help, including the SML rubric developed by our colleagues in the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. The goal should not be predicting change for every job, but rather identifying the jobs most likely to change so you can proactively drive change at the pace that’s right for you.

Strategy 4: Helping Workers Choose Their Own Futures

Unilever is taking a different approach to preparing workers for future jobs. Instead of trying to predict which jobs will change, the company is helping workers take more ownership of their own paths. Employees are empowered to make the changes they want to make in their jobs and careers rather than having to wait to react to changes imposed upon them. Unilever is facilitating this process by describing alternative career progressions. The company is helping workers choose target occupations and understanding the skills needed to attain them. Then the company is providing a wide range of options — both internal and external training — to gain those skills.

One of the most popular HR tools at GE Digital shows workers which jobs in the company are natural next steps from the ones they have now. Employees can look privately at the tool to see possible paths they can follow, skills they may need to acquire, or even positions that are open. This helps employees feel less “stuck” in their current roles and feel that they have more control over their positions in the company.

Bottom line: Change is happening rapidly to all jobs, whether or not it’s driven by AI. By helping workers own their career progressions, you can make them more productive now and more likely to stay with you for the long term.

Taking the Bull by the Horns

The raging bull of machine learning has turned out to be slower and calmer than many people predicted a few years ago. But any rancher knows you should never turn your back on a bull, no matter how docile it seems. While the slow pace of AI has caused some leaders to relax, others are taking the bull by the horns. We highlighted three ways they are actively preparing for the future rather than waiting for the future to spear them.

The interesting thing is that most of these HR leaders and general managers are not focusing on AI, even when they are considering the effects that AI might have on occupations. They are helping their workers get ready for the future of the company. The changes are not about AI or COVID-19 or any specific new technology. They’re about understanding that companies need to be more agile in skilling and staffing, and their ability to adjust to change. This is a mindset that all HR and talent leaders should have, regardless of whether major threats are coming soon.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Thomas H. Davenport (@tdav) is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, a visiting professor at Oxford University’s Säid School of Business, a fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a senior adviser to Deloitte’s AI and Analytics practice. George Westerman (@gwesterman) is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and principal research scientist for workforce learning in MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab.

*This article was originally published by MIT Sloan Management Review on March 17, 2021.