Dive Brief:
- Organizations and employees are looking for more ways to build their artificial intelligence skills sets and demonstrate the value of those skills in the workplace, according to new research from AI skills management platform Skillsoft.
- The company’s platform saw a 994% year-over-year increase in AI-related skills benchmark completions, which evaluate workers’ ability to apply their understanding of AI and allow companies to gauge how ready employees are to use those skills in the workplace.
- In addition, the research showed a 261% increase in AI content completions as well as a 222% increase in AI learning journeys and a 241% increase in the number of AI achievement badges issued to learners.
Dive Insight:
The sharp rise in measurable, practice-based AI learning and skills validation suggests that workers “are increasingly focused on demonstrating AI proficiency,” per the report. This comes as organizations look to justify their investments in AI and show quantifiable business gains.
“As organizations accelerate AI adoption, determining which skills humans should develop versus those handled by AI has become paramount,” Michael Rochelle, chief strategy officer and principal analyst at research firm Brandon Hall Group, said in a statement. “Organizations also need clearer ways to identify talent who can apply AI in real business scenarios. That makes alignment across learning, assessment, and skills data essential to talent readiness and execution.”
Organizations have begun to transition from experimenting with AI to depending on it for daily tasks, the report added. As a result, the issue is no longer whether employees are learning to use AI, but whether they can consistently apply their AI skills and create value for their companies.
“As AI becomes part of how work gets done, the cost of low-quality output and misapplied tools is becoming more visible,” Bernard Barbour, chief technology and product officer at Skillsoft, said in a statement.
However, hiring employees with existing, practical AI skills isn’t easy. Recent research from Pearson and Amazon Web Services found that 53% of employers said their top challenge was finding graduates with the right AI skills. In addition, that report found that only 28% of employers said universities were keeping up with AI‑driven change, and only 14% of current graduates said their AI skills were proficient enough to be applied in a professional setting.
Another recent report, from ManpowerGroup, found that AI-related skills are now the most difficult for employers to find and have surpassed traditional IT and engineering in that regard. ManpowerGroup said the shift underscored “a new era in the persistent global talent crisis.”
