Dive Brief:
- The generative AI talent gap is weighing down enterprise adoption plans, according to Accenture data. The firm compiled several surveys with workers and executives over the past year and conducted expert interviews for the report, published Monday.
- Nearly two-thirds of executives said a lack of in-house skills is threatening their generative AI rollout efforts. Nearly all leaders perceive generative AI as a transformative technology for their industries.
- Despite C-suite concerns, more than 4 in 5 workers said they sufficiently understand generative AI technology, with 94% of employees expressing confidence they can develop the skills their organization needs.
Dive Insight:
To combat the mismatch between available skills and the know-how needed to adopt AI, leaders are turning to upskilling efforts.
Accenture deployed reskilling as part of a broader overhaul of its marketing and communications department, setting up a structured training program to help employees collaborate with AI agents.
The effort helped the unit improve its external brand value by 25% and trimmed manual tasks by nearly one-third, according to the report. “We have improved speed-to-market in the range of 25-55%,” the company said in the report.
Accenture expanded its data and AI workforce to 57,000 practitioners last year, CEO and Chair Julie Sweet said during the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call in September. AI upskilling efforts helped boost training hours to 44 million across the company, up 10% year-over-year. The company plans to expand its AI talent pool to 80,000 practitioners by the end of its 2026 fiscal year.
Like Accenture, more than half of businesses plan to upskill and reskill their existing workers in response to the capabilities AI can bring, according to a Revature report published in February.
The rush to acquire AI-savvy talent can be attributed in part to the technology’s transformative power and its potential for value creation, according to Sarah Elk, leader of Bain & Company’s AI, Insights and Solutions practice in the Americas.
“That demand is, I think, a bit unprecedented relative to what we’ve seen in other cycles,” said Elk.
To succeed in upskilling, leaders must think beyond training, she added.
“I think training is an important aspect of upskilling,” Elk said. “But we also need to consider apprenticeship and team-based learning, having exposure to gain new experiences, in addition to what might have been traditional classroom or online equivalent.”