Generative AI is on its way to changing the workplace forever. For some it’s a disruptor, for others a saving grace.
The truth is it’s going to be both, and it will require employers to rethink how they recruit their teams and train their employees.
There’s plenty of worrying coverage about how AI is going to steal jobs and leave thousands of workers out of jobs. No doubt, there are many things AI will be able to do better, and more quickly, than a human. You can explore some of these in our post ‘5 Ways Intelligent Automation is Transforming the Workplace’.
But there are also plenty of tasks AI is simply not equipped to do – at least not alone – and the areas that it can outperform humans provide opportunities for upskilling and retraining.
To make sure your organization can take advantage of generative AI, it’s important to properly understand the technology. To help with this MongoDB posted a guide to generative AI here.
But it’s vital to consider the skills your organization needs to succeed and which of them might be impacted by generative AI. This will allow you to craft an effective reskilling strategy to carry your workforce into the future.
To effectively identify how the arrival of generative AI will affect your workforce in the future, you need to understand how it will be used.
By categorizing the jobs required for your business to be successful, you can identify which could potentially be filled by AI, which will require some collaboration with AI, and which will always remain firmly human tasks.
This can then allow you to prioritize your hiring strategy.
Once you’ve categorized the different types of jobs your business needs to fill, you can start thinking about the skills involved.
CIO recently blogged about the benefits of a skills-based approach to hiring, and this can be vital in both hiring the right people and upskilling current employees.
With some routine cognitive tasks, like data entry and customer service, likely to be significantly taken over by AI applications, people in those roles are great candidates for upskilling as they will have a lot more time.
Furniture giant Ikea has found great success with exactly this, turning thousands of call center staff into things like interior design advisors, and generating new revenue streams for the company.
Other roles will require collaboration with AI applications, like creative roles. While AI can generate text and images very quickly this process requires careful guidance from a human – and that’s likely to be a new skill you need to add to your workforce.
Generative AI can help recruiters turn this skills breakdown into simplified hiring documents.
Armed with a clear set of target skills, AI can help recruiters write job descriptions and identify competitive skills to list so new candidates fully understand what will be required of them.
AI can also help ensure the hiring process is fair and you don’t miss out on great candidates due to unseen biases, as detailed in USC Annenberg’s review of AI’s impact on hiring.
Once you have identified the roles you need to hire for, and the skills necessary for success in those roles, AI can help with candidate identification.
Leveraging the incredible search skills of generative AI, powered by semantic search, you can find candidates who either have the skills you need or have a combination of other related skills that will make them quick learners in the role.
This skills matching can also help bring the right candidates to you, showing them how their current skills and interests will fit well with your organization.
Finally, AI can help to clarify what success looks like in each role.
This is likely to change significantly in the coming years as a focus on hours worked or revenue generated is less meaningful when AI can significantly outperform in certain contexts.
If you’d like to learn more about how AI can get you ready to join the workforce, check out our post on the best AI powered homework helpers.