The new power couple: AI and people

Whenever I meet HR leaders to discuss challenges and share solutions, the conversation inevitably lands on two major topics:

• How can we harness AI in HR to accelerate growth?
• How can we ensure our people have the right skills to help them—and our organizations—thrive in the future?

More often than not, these two complex issues come up together because the solutions around AI and skills are so intertwined.

AI has already been reshaping the workforce for years. Then, last year, generative AI (GenAI) adoption accelerated and started changing the way we did our daily work. Almost every role has some tasks that are repetitive or manual, and this is where GenAI shines. With the right approach, GenAI personalizes experiences and helps people focus more on the strategic, innovative, and creative work that’s fundamentally human, rather than the mundane. We also know that there are real concerns about AI adoption. That’s why we need to listen to our people, recognize the humanity of our workforce, and show how AI can create new opportunities for them.

The skills conversation has followed a similar arc. For decades, HR leaders have worried they couldn’t identify, find, and develop people with the skills to lead their businesses. But all too often, that conversation ended in frustration because the technology didn’t exist to fulfill our needs. Organizations might have been sitting on a treasure trove of people with amazing skills, but they didn’t have the maps to find them.

Today, however, we’re at an inflection point. I see optimism among HR leaders because AI and other emerging technologies are giving us new maps to do just that.

That’s one reason why ServiceNow partnered with Pearson last year to better understand the landscape, zeroing in on which tech skills are most needed for the workforce of the future. The results were eye-opening. 

This year we ran the research again—using an AI-driven algorithm that digs into publicly available data in the U.S., UK, Canada, Germany, India, Australia, Japan, and Singapore—this time with an even deeper dive into the impact AI will have on the jobs and skills of tomorrow.