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There’s no “all for one” approach to AI adoption, but many HR leaders seem to be trying to take one.
Just 7% of the 80 CHROs surveyed by The Conference Board last autumn said they’re implementing reskilling strategies for roles that are expected to be most impacted by AI. The top AI priority for HR leaders, according to 62% of the CHROs surveyed, is experimenting with pilots and use cases for the tech to assist in human capital management. While this is a small sample size for a survey, the findings may represent the priorities of employers in the US at large, as respondents came from a wide range of industries—including technology, healthcare and agriculture.
“We were actually surprised that CHROs were not as focused on the upskilling, reskilling aspects of [AI],” Diana Scott, center leader of the US Human Capital Center at The Conference Board, told HR Brew, noting prior research found reskilling to be critical in successfully engaging employees in AI usage and bridging AI literacy gaps. “It becomes sort of an ‘us versus them’ [mentality], and it creates a lack of equity in terms of adoption.”
HR leaders’ other priorities were advocating for policies to help reduce risks associated with AI (36%), developing and implementing AI literacy programs for workers (21%), mitigating concerns about AI (21%), and creating and hiring for new roles for AI experts (20%).
It seems HR leaders are trying to understand what changes the novel technology will bring to their workplace before taking firm-wide action, Scott noted. But failing to address these other key priorities could ultimately backfire for CHROs.
“You can’t boil the ocean, you can’t do it all at once. But you really need to think about, fundamentally, what are the things we can do today [so everyone in the organization is] prepared?” Scott said.
HR leaders can start by creating a secure space where employees can experiment with and be properly trained on work-related AI tools (in other words, an AI sandbox). That way, they can get comfortable with the tools and more easily integrate them into their work.
“HR leaders really have an opportunity to step up and lead in terms of, how do we reskill and upskill,” Scott said. “Otherwise, you’re just falling further behind, and it’s going to take you a lot longer to catch up.”