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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Closing the AI skills gap requires a clear business strategy.
• Cross-team talks show employees the value of reskilling.
• Use practice groups and change agents to spread AI benefits.

Research suggests 88% of business leaders prioritize AI skills over other capabilities. However, finding and developing AI talent is a tough task.

This year’s Nash Squared/Harvey Nash Digital Leadership Report found almost twice as many technology leaders (51%) compared with last year (28%) said their business has an AI skills shortage, an 82% jump.

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Business leaders who want to fill this AI capability gap must be prepared. Here are five factors to consider.

1. Define your strategic requirements for AI

Ankur Anand, group CIO at global technology and talent solutions provider Nash Squared, said rapid adoption of AI tools is not necessarily matched with a strong awareness of how employees can use these technologies effectively.

“The gap is primarily because sometimes organizations think that just providing an AI tool like Microsoft Copilot is enabling an AI capability in the business. However, there’s often no coherence in the business strategy,” he said.

“What does that technology mean for the business? What does it mean for the employees, and what does it mean for customers? So, I feel there’s inconsistent AI adoption in many industries and companies.”

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Anand told ZDNET that business leaders must align their company’s strategic requirements for AI with the available talent pool.

Work out how the implementation of AI will help your business and ensure your organization has access to skilled individuals who will help turn the promise of AI into business value.

“There’s a fear of losing jobs, and it’s important that the AI strategy addresses employee mindset and educates people about how AI can help increase the human potential,” he said.

“People might be doing a job today, but they might be doing something better tomorrow. It’s important to get that comfort feeling that AI is not just about job losses, it’s also about gaining the skills, and that gaining skills is basically improving the work value as well.”

2. Have cross-organization conversations

“The skills gap is growing,” said Manish Jethwa, CTO at UK national mapping survey Ordnance Survey, who suggested organizations must help their staff develop the skills to use AI tools confidently and safely.

“The challenge is not one in terms of understanding what you can do,” he said. “I think it’s more about the fear factor and whether you’re allowed to do it or not within the organization.”

Jethwa told ZDNET that business leaders who don’t set guidelines for using AI could encounter people who bring their personal use of AI systems into their day-to-day working environment.

“There’s a danger from an organizational point of view that, if you’re too risk-averse, you’re going to push people to be more risky by using other mechanisms to share data in a way that is not within your domain,” he said.

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Cross-organization conversations about how people can use AI are critical to success, said Jethwa.

“Straight after this meeting, I’m meeting with our people team who want to use AI inside the recruitment mechanism, and they just want to learn how and find out what might be a good way of doing that,” he said.

“Creating the right channels for those people to have those conversations is super important. But you can only imagine that, as this tool keeps evolving and changing, it becomes more challenging for everybody to understand where the risks are, and where it’s safe to play and where it isn’t.”

3. Give employees a chance to reskill

Kirsty Roth, chief operations and technology officer at Thomson Reuters, said she’s a big believer in the power of AI, but not at the expense of skilled human professionals.

“I think this is fabulous tech,” she said. “I think this will probably be the most transformative tech evolution I’ve seen in my career. But I don’t think the humans are disappearing, let’s put it that way.”

Roth told ZDNET that claims about replacing workers with AI-enabled systems have a familiar ring and can be found throughout the history of IT.

“I’m old enough to remember when the desktops went into business and the headlines said, ‘All the jobs are going.’ And it’s the same trend with digital, and it was the same with cloud,” she said.

“The world will evolve. And, as a professional, it’s important to have some understanding of what’s happening in technology.”

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So, how will professionals stay ahead and keep their jobs? Roth said business leaders must ensure they allow employees to learn new capabilities.

“I think it’s important for everyone to reskill, and certainly as a leader in Thomson Reuters, it’s important to me that we give everyone that opportunity,” she said.

“And, obviously, some will take it more than others. But you must give everyone the chance to reskill and then see how it goes.”

4. Build communities of practice

Markus Schümmelfeder, global CIO at biopharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim, said one of the key lessons he’d pass on to other business leaders about using AI is the importance of creating communities of practice.

“We did a program with employees for employees, without management involvement, where we said, ‘How many skills in certain areas do we need?'”

Schümmelfeder gave ZDNET the example of key areas such as data science and robotic process automation, where the organization spread knowledge through what he called super masters.

“We took them as the head of the community of practice, and then we brought people in at the beginner stage. Through hands-on work, not reading guidebooks, but hands-on activities, we improved the skills of the people in the organization,” he said.

“But these communities of practice were from employees for employees. And we had about 2,000 people participate, which is more or less the entire IT team, in three years to upskill.”

5. Develop ambassadors for change

Satpal Chana, deputy director for data analytics at the national tourism agency Visit Britain, said change managers are the superpower for business leaders who want their teams to upskill for the AI age.

“You need businesspeople who understand and can interface between technology and business,” he said.

“Get them in early and get a lot of them. Many of the people I work with are involved in change management. If you can’t get people to buy into this change, you will never succeed. So, make them your allies.”

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Once change managers are identified, Chana said the organization spends a lot of time developing them.

“This approach takes a while, but at the end of the work, you’ve got this team with organic relationships across the organization that understands AI,” he said.

Chana told ZDNET that the key to success is people using generative AI because they want to, not because they’re told to.

“The approach means I don’t need to sell AI because I’ve got someone that gets it, who’s been an architect, who’s been a creator, and who’s also the ultimate voice of what this technology is,” he said.

“That status will carry with it a level of authenticity. And so that’s what we do — and crucially, we let the ambassadors take the credit for it.”