Don’t Sleep on Human Training As a Growth Engine
There are a few unambiguous truths in the modern workplace experience, including these: first, AI will change how people work, and second, the pool of people looking for work and the pool of jobs available do not neatly overlap. Two new research findings may offer employees and workers a win-win solution: Upskill your current employees and offer training to news ones.
Omdia analyst Mila D’Antonio recently posted about five barriers hampering AI adoption in the enterprise. Among them, 38% of people surveyed cited limited employee training or adoption, while 37% cited a lack of skilled AI experts. Two out of the five biggest factors came down to a lack of adequately trained people.
And this week, McKinsey released its latest McKinsey American Opportunity Survey (AOS). It identifies a few big factors shaping the global workforce:
Prior McKinsey research has revealed that advanced economies around the world share the persistent problem of tight labor markets, including in infrastructure development and construction. Aging populations have put more pressure on labor pools, and even against a backdrop of uncertainty, there is persistent demand for workers in specific areas, such as healthcare. McKinsey Global Institute research suggests that by 2030, roughly 10 percent of the American workforce may need to switch occupations.
And notes that Americans are both more inclined to change jobs than their European counterparts, but they’ve identified a big obstacle to doing so:
Of employed respondents willing to change occupations and open to a new job, 45 percent say that their need for more or different work experience, relevant skills, credentials, or education was the top barrier to finding a new job. Of those employed respondents who are unwilling to change occupations but looking, planning to look, or open to looking for new jobs, 28 percent identify the same top barrier. This need for upskilling is far and away the top obstacle to occupational change that respondents cite.
The decline of workplace training has emerged as a handicap for the American workforce. In 2022, Politico reported that the country had historically spent less training its workers and done so less effectively than other developed nations:
Prior to the pandemic, the U.S. spent just 0.03 percent of its GDP on worker training, a POLITICO analysis of the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found. That’s less than a third of what OECD nations spent on average, or 0.10 percent.
As a result, post-pandemic, there are chronic skills gaps in the job market. And a decline in on-the-job training hurts workplace productivity and performance. As Business Insider reported in November 2024:
“Most companies want employees to ‘hit the ground running’ and use apps, AI, and training videos to avoid disrupting another employee’s flow or for the lack of staff to train someone new or help someone learn a new skill,” Ana Goehner, a career strategist and HR professional, said.
That may work in some instances, but in others, instead of hitting the ground running, workers find themselves perpetually zig-zagging, unable to break into a full sprint.
According to Gallup, the zig-zag leads to a lack of employee productivity that costs $8.8 trillion per year.
So employee training — whether to re- or upskill current employees or invest more time and training for new ones — could tackle two issues: employees wanting more skills and employers wanting people with the right skills. Spending real, human resources on time and training could reap tremendous savings — whether from AI-infused gains in productivity or engagement-empowered gains in productivity. And it leaves us with a better-trained and flexible workforce. Win-win.