As the global workforce continues to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) innovations, new data from Multiverse finds that business leaders name AI as their employees’ most significant skills gap

Amid rapid digital transformation across the workforce, nearly two-thirds of business leaders believe AI will spur the creation of new jobs, and 69% believe their organizations will require different skills in order to stay competitive over the next decade.

Findings from Multiverse’s report, Preparing for the AI revolution: How to build the future workforce of 2030, also reveal that while the majority of business leaders believe in the potential of growth, some do fear that AI has the greater potential to replace jobs.

As businesses continue to face skills-related challenges and the massive need to transform their workforces, Multiverse surveyed over 1,000 business leaders across the US and UK to uncover the key trends driving the pace of change in workforce transformation.

“Artificial intelligence is transforming businesses around the world, and it’s clear from our research that business leaders anticipate huge opportunities while also recognizing the risks,” said Gary Eimerman, Chief Learning Officer at Multiverse. “Both their bottom lines and the longevity of their staff’s careers will be negatively impacted if businesses don’t prioritize closing the AI skills gaps in a timely manner. If leaders lean into the massive upside that investing in talent now provides, they’ll reap the outsized benefits of an AI-empowered workforce for years to come.”

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Skills Transformation to Future Proof the Workforce

Amid continued rates of high turnover and deepening skills gaps across industries, business leaders point to learning and development as a core strategic priority for the remainder of 2023.

• 73% are likely to reskill employees into new roles,
• 76% of leaders say they are likely to invest in upskilling existing employees, and
• 77% say they plan to increase training and development budgets to prepare for 2030.

For employees ready for a career change, or for those with roles at risk of being displaced, a larger investment in upskilling opens opportunities to realize new career routes into tech, data and engineering.

Additional strategic priorities business leaders are focused on include: growth & expansion (42%), customer experience (40%) and financial performance (39%). Looking to 2030, most priorities remain, though cybersecurity (37%) replaces customer experience in the top three. With the Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipating that employment of information security analysts will grow 35% from 2021 to 2031, this data suggests that employers are fully aware of what skills they need to meet talent requirements and fill that future skills gap.

Investment in AI Skills is Key

Amid mounting concerns that AI will replace certain jobs, data points to growing plans for business leaders to invest in AI skills programs, with 72% likely to invest in AI skills programs and 70% likely to invest in data analytics skills programs. Additionally, the majority (83%) of business leaders say their organization is moving quickly to implement workforce skills development on AI.

“The skills gaps business leaders expect to face in 2030 highlight the importance of training that keeps pace with technology,” said Ujjwal Singh, CPTO of Multiverse. “Our apprentices are incredibly nimble and offerings through Multiverse, such as the AI Jumpstart module, will only make them more valuable as they continue their careers.”

Skills Development and a New Era of Recruitment Closes the Skills Gap

When it comes to building skills capabilities through alternative hiring and training methods, 42% of leaders say their organization plans to, or is currently, widening hiring criteria to consider candidates who have not gone to college, while over a third (37%) plan to adopt skills-first hiring. Encouragingly, almost three-quarters (74%) of business leaders endorse the idea of combining learning with on-the-job experience.

Data management, software engineering and development, and data analytics are the top three skills gaps business leaders expect their organizations to face in 2030 – all of which are areas that Multiverse’s on-the-job learning addresses.

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