Few disagree at this point that AI is a transformative technology that companies must adapt to. But who within a company is responsible for driving that adaptation?
“I do think more and more organizations, including Microsoft, are making it someone’s job,” said Stallbaumer, who is also cofounder of Microsoft’s research and thought-leadership platform WorkLab.
In the case of Indeed, the solution was to designate one primary person, an R&D leader, to drive AI change across the organization, Hyams said.
But Stallbaumer believes that while it’s important to have somebody assume such a role, “It’s about activating at every level of the organization.”
She added, “If you have not made your line of business leaders accountable for transforming their business units or their functions, you’re never going to have progress. You’re never going to see that massive scale in terms of upskilling.”
And there’s little doubt that upskilling will be required across departments and companies to adapt to the AI era.
With that in mind, she added, “What companies need to do is figure out how people change what they know how to do—because they’re going to need to do very different things going forward.”
And employers, she believes, are the ones who must drive the transformation.
“Work experience is actually the biggest school on the planet,” she said. “We learn skills by doing things in work with other people, and by changing what we do every few years—taking on a new challenge, a new role, working with a new team. That’s how we build knowledge and human capital.”
But employees, too, need to work on adapting themselves to the AI era, believes Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong, who also shared the stage. When people ask him who’s looking after their careers, he said, “I always tell them nobody cares about your career more than you do.”
“So I think, at the end of the day, employees as well have to take full responsibility here for retooling themselves,” he continued. “Otherwise, they’ll fall through the cracks if they’re going to simply rely on their employers to help them through this journey.”
