Dragos Condrea | Stock | Getty Images
Most of the concerns about artificial intelligence displacing jobs so far have come from people on the receiving end of the job. Some of this is due to the belief that AI is helping workers with greater job responsibilities versus the broader job responsibilities of higher-level workers (with many experts saying that AI is almost at the human level efficient). Some are due to the fact that these citizens have a lot of time left at work – and from that point of view, they are losing more and more as technology advances over time.
However, 30% of senior employees fear they will be fired due to lack of AI skills, according to a recent report from online training company Preply. But is that concern justified?
“To the extent that people have to retire, if there’s a big skills gap, you can get people who choose to retire or find a completely different job,” said Steve Preston, president and CEO. at Goodwill Industries International, a leading non-profit donor. of education and related personnel services. But not all senior executives fall into that camp, he says — nor do the companies that employ these people want them to quit.
“One of the worst types of employee attrition is when you lose agency knowledge and customer knowledge,” Preston said. “You really want to keep those people, and you want to help them succeed.”
Experienced workers can master the details of AI
Despite the common perception that older workers (who often make up the senior echelon) have difficulty adapting to new technology, Preston recognizes that these are the workers for whom AI has unique benefits. . “If the job requires interacting with AI, I think some of the older workers will be able to use it better to gain insight,” he said, “both in terms of asking AI about success and about finding AI-supported work and being able to apply judgment to it.”
In other words, a person with a sophisticated understanding of business is very good at using inputs and evaluating results using knowledge and skills that AI has not mastered (at least not yet).
Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration at Cisco, says AI has not replaced full, complex jobs, but jobs. “Over time, will it succeed in doing jobs? Indeed,” he said. But no one really knows when that time will be.
For high-level workers, Patel says the next few years will be more about growth versus any kind of migration or relocation — given that these workers are willing to meet employers. see the center and improve their hard and soft skills. the essence of the AI-driven workplace.
As technology advances, 57% of industry experts predict an increase in demand for soft skills, according to a report from learning management platform TalentLMS.
“Ultimately, every company is a collection of employees, all of whom are human, and need to be touched and motivated in a personal way,” said Nikhil Arora, CEO of Epignosis (k’ the parent company of TalentLMS). This is something that senior managers will have to keep in mind in today’s environment as day-to-day activities across career structures change.
The return on demand for advice is high
Another strategy that senior employees should consider, Arora says, is mentoring, a process in which senior managers seek the perspective of less experienced employees. “A lot of young people who are growing up in AI, for them it’s second nature, where a lot of big leaders are probably now learning AI. It’s a little bit higher,” said Arora. He’s a big believer in always having two sets of advisors, “one who’s probably more experienced than you, and one who’s a lot younger, because they’re closer to disruptive technology and what new-age consumers are.” how will he behave.”
With a small workforce as near-native AI users, creating an agnostic consultancy can help an organization improve at a faster pace than an overarching strategy. At this point, nearly half (47%) of workers say they still aren’t using AI skills in their jobs, according to the 2024 State of Upskilling and Reskilling Report from TalentLMS and Workable. Meanwhile, half of them believe that their work would benefit from it. Some organizations engage in organized training trips for staff members and clients (For example, admissions received a share of Google’s $75 million AI Opportunity Fund to help spread AI training throughout the community what they work for).
Introducing AI and autonomous hours
The fact is that about a third of the hours worked in the US can be done by artificial intelligence, which can change the way many business professionals – managers and senior managers included – do their work. Leaders at companies like IBM and Duolingo have been talking about replacing humans with AI.
In the race to AI, dropping the wrong people can have unintended consequences, such as the loss of institutional knowledge that can work in complex, human-centered situations.
“It would be easy to let go of senior staff and say this is going to be very difficult for them, they won’t adapt,” Preston said. “Let’s rely on the value of AI to help raise the jobs of the future for older workers, instead of assuming that for some reason, it will leave them behind.”
#senior #staff #essential #adoption #office