Preparing for the Coming Skill Shifts

About 80% of U.S. and European CEOs surveyed by McKinsey say they worry about ensuring that their companies have the right skills mix to thrive in the age of AI and automation. Those leaders come from a variety of industries, and they’re smart to be thinking about talent at a strategic level.

Given the complexities of implementing the new technologies, companies will, of course, need people who can design the right algorithms and interpret the data. But they’ll also need so-called “softer” skills to do the work that machines aren’t capable of doing. Our research suggests that demand for social and emotional skills will grow by about one-quarter by 2030, and we also see a clear shift toward higher cognitive skills, including creativity and complex information processing.

An HR tool kit for shaping a workforce already exists: Companies can retrain people, redeploy them to make the best use of skills available, contract work out, hire new people, and release those who do not meet the organization’s needs. But the external labor market can do only so much to address the anticipated shifts in demand, the pace of which will accelerate over the next decade, according to our research. If the volume of companies seeking to hire for the necessary technical and soft skills rises too rapidly, full-time salaries and contractor rates will skyrocket, and most organizations will be unable to compete with global platforms and tech giants for the talent they seek.

Redeployment may help companies play to workers’ strengths, but skills gaps will inevitably remain. So in the AI era, companies should double down on retraining the people they have, with an emphasis on lifelong learning and adaptability.

Though reskilling (teaching employees new or qualitatively different skills) and upskilling (raising existing skill levels) have become hot topics, there seems to be more talk than large-scale action in these areas. A key choice is whether to use in-house training resources and programs tailored to the company or to partner with an educational institution to provide external learning opportunities for employees. AT&T has chosen the latter course: The company has developed a broad set of partnerships with 32 universities and multiple online education platforms to enable employees to earn the credentials needed for new digital roles.