AI and Skills for the Future

By 2030, the World Economic Forum predicts that 39% of workers’ core skills will need to change to keep pace with new pressures and technologies, this leaves organisations with five years to address this skills gap. If you’re working within HR you’re no stranger to the skills gap conversation. You hear it from line managers who can’t fill vacancies, from executives frustrated by stalled transformation projects, and from employees who feel stuck without development opportunities. But how can HR departments effectively engage employees to understand their potential career paths and clearly envision how acquiring new skills can support their journey? 

AI can be the solution. It offers a powerful way for organisations to future-proof themselves by re-skilling and up-skilling employees for the evolving workplace needs. 

The problem is that traditional, one-size-fits-all career development platforms are inadequate for navigating the evolving global job roles and emerging skills. The key areas they fail to provide in are: personalisation, forward thinking and strategic data insights.

Deep personalisation – 

• Offers generic pathways which ignore an individual’s past career experience and personal interests. 
• Provides standard, non-specific learning options instead of recommendations tailored to an employee’s specific skills gaps for future roles.
• Fails to identify transferable skills, trapping employees in traditional pathways and overlooking potential opportunities across business areas.

Dynamic and forward thinking guidance – 

• Unable to adapt to shifting business needs, market trends or an employee’s personal progress therefore the pathways remain static. 
• Cannot forecast emerging roles or skills, leaving both employees and the organisation unprepared for future demands.

Strategic Organisational Insight – 

• Lack the ability to provide data-driven insights into the skills landscape and employee progression across the organisation. 
• Cannot highlight critical skills gaps at a company wide level, making strategic workforce planning difficult to plan and execute.

In summary these platforms struggle to create new career paths and roles because they lack the nuanced, bespoke approach required. To succeed, a platform must consider diverse skill sets, non-linear career paths, and emerging roles that may not have previously existed. This requires a platform capable of both mapping existing skills and recommending pathways for acquiring new knowledge. 

How can AI fix this? 

AI-powered career pathways offer a powerful solution to help organisations and employees navigate the evolving landscape of skills gaps, new roles and responsibilities. Through leveraging AI algorithms highly personalised and effective career pathway options can be crafted for individual employees.

This approach prepares employees for evolving organisational needs by suggesting new skills they can learn in areas of high growth and demand while simultaneously building upon their existing strengths. The result is a blend of new knowledge integrated with and underpinned by existing experience and skills. As the algorithm can present an array of career paths which match personal strengths to organisational needs and roles which are seeing high levels of demand. 

Alongside suggesting career paths which may spark new opportunities employees hadn’t considered, the AI can also identify skills gaps to these potential roles. This provides employees with clear areas for improvement and structured options for development. 

AI significantly reduces the manual input required to produce a career pathway. Not only does this streamline the tired approach of individually entering data, but also instantly generates thousands of potential pathways far exceeding what was previously offered. These pathways draw on data from previous employees alongside global trends meaning the information stays relevant. 

The organisational impact

Providing employees with a career pathway they can buy into and envision for their future will organically promote engagement with development activities. Simultaneously it inspires them with the belief they can see a long-term future at the business. With AI generating an array of non-traditional career routes by expanding employees’ horizons it can ignite discussions with managers about further career development and new skill possibilities. 

Ultimately career pathway platforms exist to facilitate and inspire such in-person interactions where employees can fully engage with all the support and experience on offer to them. Having this proactive approach, preemptively suggesting progression opportunities, not only empowers individual growth but also strategically aligns employee development with organisational goals. 

AI systems empower HR and leadership teams with rapid access to data, offering insights into employee performance relative to future trends and skill gaps. This data enables organisations to strategically plan learning initiatives that align with their future vision. For example, if senior management decides the organisation needs to enhance its data focus or acquire specific skills, HR can swiftly evaluate current proficiency and recommend appropriate learning opportunities. This approach leads to more efficient and effective learning program deployments. 

AI can therefore help organisations provide the map for employees to develop their skills for the future and for organisations to become future-proof.

Find out more

We’ve already created engaging and interactive career pathways for organisations looking to highlight the range of opportunities available for their employees and support them in developing their skills and aspirations. Find out more about how we’ve created these experiences here.