It’s clear that artificial intelligence (AI) is not a passing technology trend, but an integral part of transforming how businesses operate and achieve success. Companies are making significant investments in AI with the intention of helping teams increase efficiencies, drive productivity and focus on more strategic tasks. AI is no longer a nice-to-have but a need-to-have, and companies not using AI–or at least planning to–will end up falling behind.
While most employers are all-in on AI, the same can’t be said for many employees. The transition to an AI-driven workplace doesn’t happen overnight–employees need time to get trained on the technology and develop their AI skills. According to Slingshot’s 2024 Digital Work Trends Report, 77% of employees don’t feel confident in their ability to use AI because they don’t feel adequately educated and trained on the technology.
The disconnect between employers’ AI ambitions and employees’ readiness to adopt the technology is holding back companies from leveraging AI’s full potential. But rather than placing the burden on employees, employers need to create a culture that empowers teams to feel confident working with AI and enables them to fully benefit from it.
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Here are three ways employers can help employees unlock the full potential of AI in the workplace.
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Set Clear Expectations About AI in the Workplace
Much of employees’ hesitancy around AI comes from their lack of education around it. With movies like The Terminator and The Matrix and a recurring narrative in the media about AI replacing jobs, it’s understandable why many employees are slow to fully embrace the technology.
Before getting started with AI, employers need to first be transparent with employees about AI’s role in the workplace. This means educating employees on how AI will be used within the organization and what departments and positions it will support. Once employees are aware that AI will not replace their role, but instead enable them to focus on more strategic work, they’ll be more likely to lean into the technology.
As part of this transparent communication, employers need to also align with employees about their AI expectations. This means sharing why they implemented the technology in the first place and the role it should play in employees’ work.
Currently, there’s a misalignment between employees and employers on AI’s role in the workplace. Employers are primarily implementing AI to assist employees with productivity-driving tasks like initial research, workflow management and data analysis, but employees aren’t aligned. Instead, employees are choosing precision over productivity, with 63% of them primarily using AI to double-check their work.
This disconnect can be solved with clear communication between employers and employees, as well as increased employee AI training.
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Offer AI Training Specific to Individual Roles
Once employees understand why AI is important to their role, employers need to empower them to use it. This means implementing the proper AI education and training. This education, however, shouldn’t be part of a one-size-fits-all program. Positions and departments across the organization will use different AI tools and have varying use cases for the technology.
Employers should provide training that is tailored to the specific needs of individual employees and teams. Marketing teams, for example, may focus on utilizing AI to analyze consumer behavior data, while customer service teams may focus on integrating chatbots and automated support. This will ensure that teams receive in-depth education on the AI tools that are supporting their daily workflows and decisions, instead of getting an overview of every single tool the company supports that they’ll likely never use. Of course, employees should understand all of what’s available to them–but their time is better spent training on the tools they’ll be using for the majority of their work.
Employers should offer ongoing training on a yearly basis at minimum –if not more frequently–to ensure employees stay up-to-date with their skills and the technology’s latest features and capabilities. This will allow employees to continue to leverage the full potential of what AI can do, ultimately leading to more valuable and significant business results.
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Ensure Company Data is AI-Ready
Even if employees are ready to use AI, their skills won’t prove too helpful if their company data isn’t ready. AI relies on data—or anything that organizations use to track performance, process, people, platforms and profitability—to learn, adapt and continuously improve the insights it provides and the decisions it supports.
While every company is a data company, not everyone has their data ready to support AI. And employers are well aware, with nearly 45% of them saying that they haven’t implemented AI because their company’s data is not ready.
To ensure data is AI-ready, companies need to centralize their data and conduct a thorough data assessment. Currently, most companies have their data scattered across many different platforms and systems, instead of having it exist all in one place. In fact, 43% of employees and managers say their company would feel ready to support AI if their data was combed through for accuracy, and 41% of employees and managers say the same about their data being accessible in a single spot.
By focusing efforts on cleaning and centralizing data, companies can ensure AI is always working with consistent and accurate information. This will improve the quality of AI-driven insights and also empower employees to make more informed decisions.
By setting clear expectations around AI, providing comprehensive training and ensuring data is AI-ready, employers can create a workplace where employees feel confident to unlock the power of the AI to its fullest potential in the workplace.
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