Employers have a short window of opportunity to build the skills needed for an AI-powered future.
While companies embracing AI have the potential to quickly become more efficient and profitable, the true value of AI isn’t just in the systems themselves but in how companies use those systems to advance and support humans.
We sat down with KimLoan Tran, PhD, VP and Head of Talent Management at Allstate, and Megan O'Connor, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Chegg Skills, to explore how — with the right training and support — AI technologies are opening doors to new opportunities for companies and employees.
Read on for four takeaways from the conversation — or watch the full webinar on demand.
1. Most people know they need to develop new skills around AI. They just don’t think their employers will be the ones to help them.
Employees know that AI will have a huge impact on the labor market and jobs landscape. Guild research has shown that a meaningful percentage of our members across industries already recognize that they will need to develop new skills to remain competitive as AI advances.
But where will employees get those skills? We know they aren’t looking to their employers for support or guidance — partly because less than half of leaders aren’t trained on AI yet. And that trend is even worse for the frontline.
- 88% of employees aren’t confident their employer will support them in understanding AI
- 44% of leaders say they’ve received training to sharpen their skills in the age of AI and stay relevant,
- 14% of frontline employees say they’ve received training on AI
That may be disheartening for HR and L&D professionals to hear, but it presents an opportunity to differentiate your offerings and employer brand.
Organizations that lead the way to an AI-powered future will be the ones that don’t just provide these skills to their workforce, but work to blend employer needs with employee goals.
Megan O'Connor, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Chegg Skills, talked about how they’re doing just that. The skills provider understands the power of opening the conversation with managers and empowering employees to experiment and share what they learn — enabling a bottoms-up approach to understanding and innovating with AI.
As O’Connor points out, "Some of our research showed early on that over 70% of the general US population was leveraging this technology day to day, but didn't know how to talk about it with their managers. And so we started internally by squashing that immediately…Dan, our CEO, in an all hands said — 'Use the technology, talk about how you're using it with your teams,' and it's instrumentally changed the way that we've developed new learning programs for the public as a result.”
“Our CEO, in an all hands said — ‘Use the technology! Talk about how you’re using it with your teams,’ and it’s instrumentally changed the way that we’ve developed new learning programs for the public as a result.”
Megan O'Connor, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Chegg Skills
2. Now is the time to lean in and focus on skilling for AI.
When it comes to generative AI, we are most likely entering the “Trough of Disillusionment” phase of the Gartner Hype Cycle. The innovation has broken through, and early trials and failures — along with media oversaturation — have dampened the initial excitement.
But as the technology becomes established and enters the mainstream, businesses will see the resulting productivity ensue.
To get ahead of the competition — or even to keep pace — organizations must skill for that AI-powered future today.
KimLoan Tran, PhD, VP and Head of Talent Management at Allstate, talked about how the insurance company started an AI Center of Excellence five years ago to enable use of AI-powered tools and drive innovation in a responsible and intentional way. That group seeks to understand trends and how they will affect the business and customers in the future so the company can invest in the right people, systems, and tools today.
As Tran puts it, “while the role of Center of Excellence is to evaluate emerging technology and its implications, applications, risk profiles, the company also recognizes AI is not a standalone capability.”
The AI Center of Excellence is part of a broader team, the Emerging Technology working group, which is a multidisciplinary, cross-functional team with leaders from:
- Tech and innovation
- HR
- Cybersecurity
- Legal
- Risk
They review ongoing opportunities and create responsible use policies and processes while providing guidance for all employees on how they can best innovate and use these tools.
3. To combat the widening equity gap, offer a range of AI training — including fundamentals and ethics — to skill up the whole workforce.
Guild research has found that the groups most likely to use AI tools include members and learners who are:
- Highly educated
- Male
- White
- Younger
The people more likely to use AI tools are the ones who will reap the benefits, such as improved productivity.
What’s more, these workers are also already aware that they will need to learn new skills to position themselves to remain competitive as AI tools become more integrated in workplaces, and they have some understanding of how these tools can help them navigate the job market.
That means gaps in equity are set to get wider.
But everyone in your workforce should believe AI is for them — because it is. AI is expected to impact the majority of employees, and demand for AI skilling is high.
Learning leaders should launch AI programs that build durable skills for a quickly evolving future. That includes skilling for technical and non-technical roles alike.
Guild’s approach breaks it down into four buckets, which range from low tech to high tech proficiency.
- AI fundamentals (literacy, ethics, and implications): Approachable programming that builds awareness of what AI is and how it works — along with its implications for the future of work and the workforce
- AI in practice (understand and use AI tools): Fundamental programming that focuses on practicability, enables learners on AI tools and their applications in their current roles
- AI expertise (build and scale AI in business): Technical programming that explores how to build AI tools and algorithms, focusing on content designed for software engineers and data scientists (high tech proficiency)
- AI for leaders (strategy for AI in business): Executive programming that addresses best practices and enabling an AI-driven strategy and organization
You can learn more about this approach by reading our equitable AI training framework.
4. HR should not wait and defer to the business on AI strategy. They can and should lead the way.
All panelists agreed: This isn’t a time to wait for someone else to set the course. It’s time for HR and L&D to step forward and help the company define what an AI-powered future will look like.
Matthew Daniel, Sr Principal, Talent Strategy at Guild, shared a story from early in his career when he worked at CapitalOne.
In 2014, the CEO boldly proclaimed that the organization was “going digital.” Many in HR looked around and asked – “What does that mean?” But instead of waiting to defer to the business, Matthew helped lead a team that charged ahead in defining what digital skills were and how it would impact the organization. Today, CapitalOne is still an industry leader when it comes to digital technology.
Similarly, Allstate’s HR and L&D team is crucial to the organization’s AI strategy. As Tran pointed out, “upskilling employees should be a strategic imperative, not an operational necessity.”
“Upskilling employees should be a strategic imperative, not an operational necessity.”
KimLoan Tran, PhD, VP and Head of Talent Management at Allstate
She explains further, “In the era of rapidly advancing technology, the proactive cultivation of skills is becoming the cornerstone of organizational resilience of growth. If you imagine your workforce as the architect of tomorrow's intelligence, your learning and development team needs to serve as a blueprint and equip employees and our leaders with the tools to both construct and navigate the evolving landscape of AI because it's already reshaping industries and job functions.”
In short, equipping employees with these skills helps your organization lead, let alone stay relevant.
Allstate is also currently building a talent and learning operating model that will leverage AI to enable a talent engine starting at the top of the recruiting funnel. That model will be supported by an internal talent marketplace that offers AI-powered:
- Personalized learning
- Internal mobility opportunities
- Connections to mentors
- And more
It will give the organization visibility into skills, especially transferable or adjacent skills to help people move into different parts of the organization — supercharging career growth and mobility.
Want more insights on upskilling for an AI-powered future?
Our equitable training framework for skilling employees — from the frontline to the C-suite — covers:
- Trends in the AI training landscape today
- New employee survey data on AI usage and sentiments
- How to get ahead of the crucial “hype cycle”
- Real-world examples of how AI can streamline frontline work across industries