As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform workplaces, it’s becoming essential for employees — and their companies — to quickly adopt new skills. A manufacturing worker might need to transition into marketing, for example, or a customer service representative retrain as a designer. Offering employees a way to do so in-house allows companies to shift their talent to new in-demand roles and offers staff a way to learn new abilities while remaining in their jobs.
IBM research estimates that 40% of workers will have to adopt new skillsets by 2026. If not, they risk becoming irrelevant and getting left behind. To get ahead of this shift and create a nimble workforce, firms are turning to AI to help them re-train, re-tool, and re-skill their staff, especially around new technologies.
Some companies are evolving their existing training programs into dynamic, technology-focused initiatives that use AI to mine employee profiles and records and then actively suggest courses to enhance knowledge. Others are partnering with academic institutions on new programs that teach staff new skills so they can level up. These initiatives are essential as automation could displace some 85 million jobs by 2025, according to The World Economic Forum. Around 22% of workers worry their jobs will become obsolete because of AI, according to a 2024 Gallup poll, up from 15% in 2021.
“Change is everything and constant,” says Lan Guan, chief AI officer at Accenture. “Leaders need to be prepared for the breadth and intensity, maintain their specialized skills, and adopt a learning mindset.” Meanwhile, organizations must think holistically and “develop a comprehensive strategy for skilling and training their workforce, enhancing their experience and expertise, and fostering a culture of continuous learning,” she adds.
“The world is going to be more tech-driven than ever by 2050 to 2070,” says Chaitra Vedullapalli, an AI and business expert who is also president of Women in Cloud, a networking group for female entrepreneurs. Workers need to know how to adopt new technologies, particularly AI, or get “left behind,” she says.
Here are four companies tapping into new technologies to retrain their staff and how they’re accomplishing the task.
Accenture
The management consulting company created a digital library of more than 8,000 skills that some 700,000 employees can tap into regularly to learn new tools at work. The technology, which serves as a talent retention strategy, uses a specialized algorithm to match employees with projects and career opportunities then tailors different opportunities based on their profile, and also includes a proximity skill. That means the company can identify people who may easily pivot to a new position based on an interest — or if their current spot is scaled down.
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet told the Signal audience in 2023 that she believes the future of human resources (HR) is all about skills and less about roles and positions. “Stop thinking about roles, start thinking about skills,” Sweet says.
Amazon
Amazon’s Machine Learning University (MLU) helps employees gain key skills in machine learning they can use at work, like building and deploying predictive models or optimizing algorithms. Amazon calls its tailor-made program “graduate-school-level training,” split into six-week modules.
Once enrolled, employees spend one day a week in the program, which is taught by more than 400 Amazon machine learning scientists.
Amazon has pointed to machine learning skills that staff learn through MLU as a way to uncover ways to speed up delivery times by optimizing routes and shipping items that are located closer to them so they arrive faster.
“What we’re doing is helping prepare our workforce for the next wave of technology that Amazon is investing in,” said Bree Al-Rashid, who manages the MLU team, in an Amazon blog.
DHL
International express shipper DHL Express created its Career Marketplace in part to make it easier for its 600,000 global employees to find their next role within DHL Express rather than choosing to join a competitor. The platform uses AI technology to match people to opportunities by mining their skillsets to find potential new gigs.
Through the marketplace, employees find open opportunities based on their abilities, which are added to the platform from the day they join the company. There are about 65,000 different skills they can choose from — including hobbies — and they’re promoted to update their profile each time they gain a new fluency.
“The idea was that if we could get people to share their skills, we could match those with jobs,” Meredith Wellard, vice president, group talent acquisition, learning and growth at DHL, told Great Place to Work.
When the platform launched, the tool first placed interested employees in “micro moments” rather than full-fledged new roles, allowing them to test drive a new job. By spending a few hours or days working in a different part of the business, an employee could see if the role might be a good fit for them — and their managers.
ServiceNow
Employees at ServiceNow use an AI platform, coined frED, to set goals, chart their career path, and pick up new skills. AI working behind the scenes suggests programs to help employees meet their goals, with more than 65% of employees using the program in the first four weeks of its launch.
The company says the platform has become an important way for managers to support staff development by recommending helpful real-time courses.
Both companies and their employees will continue to benefit from these types of AI-driven programs — and need to, believes Accenture’s Sweet.
“The only way we as companies can ensure that we bring our people along the journey is we have to be able to retrain them,” she says. “I really believe it’s a core responsibility as a company, and it’s your competitive edge.”
