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Concerns about artificial intelligence taking jobs have so far come more from younger segments of the workforce. Part of this stems from the belief that AI will benefit workers with greater task-based responsibilities rather than the broader job responsibilities of more senior workers (many experts say AI is closer to the level of a top intern). Part of it stems from the fact that this demographic has more time left in the workforce. From their perspective, they have more to lose as technology develops over time.
Yet a recent report from online tutoring company Preply found that 30% of senior-level employees are worried they will be fired due to a lack of AI skills. But are these fears realistic?
“Even if people are eligible to leave, if the skills gap is significant, they may choose to leave or look for a completely different job,” says Steve Preston, president and CEO of Goodwill Industries International, a large nonprofit provider of education and workforce services. But not everyone in senior roles fits that description, and the companies that employ them don't want them to leave, he says.
“One of the most devastating forms of employee turnover is the loss of organizational knowledge and customer knowledge,” Preston says. “You definitely want to retain that talent and make it more productive.”
Experienced employees can master AI insights
While there's a common stereotype that older workers (who often make up senior management) have a harder time adapting to new technology, Preston recognizes that these are the very workers for whom AI offers unique advantages. “Where their work requires them to engage with AI, I believe they have a better ability to leverage AI to get insights,” he said. “Both in terms of increased efficiency in querying the AI, and also in their ability to take the results of the work that the AI is supporting and make decisions on it.”
In other words, people with a more complex understanding of the business can be more effective at applying inputs and evaluating outputs, using knowledge and skills that AI has not mastered (at least not yet).
Jeetu Patel, Cisco's executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration, said AI is still only replacing tasks, not entire complex jobs. “Will AI be able to do the job over time? Absolutely,” he said. “But who knows when that will be.”
Patel says the next few years will be about augmenting, not replacing or replacing, senior workers who are willing to compromise with their employers and enhance their hard and soft skills in the context of an AI-driven workplace.
According to a report by learning management system platform TalentLMS, 57% of industry experts predict a surge in demand for soft skills as technology continues to advance.
“At the end of the day, every business is a collection of employees, and they are all human beings, and you need to treat and motivate them in a very human way,” said Nikhil Arora, CEO, Epignosis (parent company of TalentLMS). This is something senior executives should keep in mind in the modern context, where day-to-day roles across the employment structure are changing.
There is a high demand for reverse mentoring
Another strategy that senior executives should consider, according to Arora, is reverse mentoring, a process in which senior executives seek out the perspective of less experienced employees. “For a lot of young people, who are basically growing up with AI, it's second nature, whereas a lot of senior executives are probably just learning AI. It's kind of the other way around,” says Arora. He's a big believer in always having two sets of mentors: “One who is probably more experienced than you, and the other who is much younger, because they're more familiar with disruptive technologies and new-age customer behavior.”
Because junior employees are nearly native AI users, creating seniority-agnostic mentorship programs could enable organizations to innovate at a much faster rate than a top-down strategy. According to TalentLMS and Workable's 2024 State of Upskilling and Reskilling report, nearly half of employees (47%) say they are not yet using AI skills in their jobs today. Meanwhile, half agree that AI will help them in their jobs. Some organizations are embarking on structured training journeys for their employees and customer members (Goodwill, for example, received a portion of Google's $75 million AI Opportunity Fund as a grant to spread AI training throughout the communities it serves).
Generative AI and automated work hours
The reality is that nearly one-third of work hours in the United States will be automated by generative AI, potentially changing the way many business professionals (including executives and senior managers) do their jobs. Leaders of companies like IBM and Duolingo have been vocal about replacing some of the human workforce with AI.
In the race to AI, firing the wrong people could have unintended consequences, such as losing institutional knowledge of operating in complex interpersonal environments.
“It's easy to give up on older workers and say this is too hard for them, they can't adapt,” Preston said. “Instead of thinking that older workers are somehow going to be left behind, let's rely on the value of AI to help them capitalize on the future of work.”
