This article was originally published on The HR Director and is authored by Andrew Neal, Chief People Officer at Harvey Nash
As custodians of the people and skills agenda, HR has a key role to play – and must step up to the plate on one of the defining issues of our time: AI upskilling. Quite simply, it is vital that HR is in lockstep with its partners across the business, collaborating closely with the IT function and other key departments.
As the AI revolution continues, upskilling and reskilling staff so they can use it to full effect has become a key strategic priority for businesses across sectors. Without that, the investments being made won’t achieve the value and productivity boosts that are hoped for.
Yet research* shows that progress is patchy at best. While the majority of technologists (76%) have access to AI tools, far fewer feel they are being given structured support, time or clear frameworks to build capability (36%). Less than half (43%) are being given dedicated time to experiment and learn. A significant proportion report being expected to self‑learn (20%), while others are still waiting for formal training to be introduced (23%).
The picture is likely to be even less well-progressed in non-technology roles, meaning that employees in key functions are not being given the support and frameworks they need to maximise the use of AI.
HR at the table
As custodians of the people and skills agenda, HR has a key role to play – and must step up to the plate on one of the defining issues of our time. Quite simply, it is vital that HR is in lockstep with its partners across the business, collaborating closely with the IT function and other key departments.
Without this, the unintended consequence could be that the CIO inadvertently becomes head of workforce planning by default, with the business and the way people work being shaped around the tech stack and AI tools. This unintended consequential people displacement could lead to disillusionment and ineffective outcomes.
Defining the rules and parameters
In my view, from our own experience and from discussions on the topic at many conferences and industry events, there are a number of key steps for businesses (and HR leaders) to take.
Firstly, there needs to be real clarity around the purpose of AI and therefore the outcomes being sought. What will AI be used for (and what won’t it be used for), how will people interact with this, what governance and controls need to be in place, and where are the hand-offs from AI to people/people skills? To consider these questions, it is essential to have a cross-functional AI leadership team that includes key stakeholders from departments including HR, technology, finance and customer-facing teams (sales etc). The governance point is especially important. There must be clear mechanisms and structures in place, backed up by a published and widely communicated AI policy, that establish the process by which AI use cases are assessed, progressed and monitored.
‘Human-only’ skills
A crucial question within all this is: what are the human-only skills that will be needed? By this I mean the capabilities and attributes that AI can’t replicate. These are likely to include qualities such as empathy, in particular when dealing with customers. It may be fine – and expected – to deploy an AI bot to handle a routine customer enquiry or request – but what happens if something goes wrong, the order is misplaced or the customer has complex needs or circumstances? There needs to be a route to a human being built in so that customers can interact with a person who can apply the empathy, understanding and sensitivity needed. Other human skills include judgement in grey areas (whether those are service-related or market-related) and the ability to stand back from data to take account of the full picture: that human ability to draw on experience and even ‘gut feel’ to know what the data is actually showing.
From these steps, an inventory can be built of the skills staff need to utilise AI across different parts of the business – and training and support developed to enable it. This is almost certainly going to be a mixture of formal and informal/self-directed learning, with time to experiment and learn. Needless to say, this is an area where the HR team will have a particularly critical role, drawing on their experience and expertise in designing and procuring L&D programmes to apply best practice principles that work.
Realising the benefits
Finally, to actually realise the benefits of AI, organisations need to know what they will do with the extra capacity that will (hopefully) be created. How can this be utilised so that people get more done? If extra capacity is unmanaged or undirected, it could simply lead to wasted opportunity or reduced productivity as it is frittered away as downtime. Conversely, if staff are given increased targets due to the expected time savings, they could be overloaded and indeed resentful. The reality is that many teams across businesses are already working at 120%! Taking it down to 100% means they are still fully subscribed. Business leaders need to strike the right balance of sensitivity and support for their people on the one hand with the quest for a high-performance workforce on the other. Those that push too far could find the effects are counterproductive.
The first task, of course, is to get to that point of creating increased capacity. But if and when that is achieved, being very clear about how it will be used is the key to actually unlocking value and increased productivity from AI. HR leaders have a front seat role to play in mapping this out and making it a reality. It’s the quest that sits in front of all of us as HR practitioners right now.
