Carrol Chang:
Future-proofing the tech workforce in the AI era
Andela’s CEO says nurturing existing talent is more essential than ever
How is this approach resonating with clients?
We’re finding that companies are really looking for help with their talent strategy in the age of AI. They’re getting pressure from boards and CEOs to either downsize their teams because AI should be making them more effective, or to hire a bunch of newly skilled people. That’s just not practical or sustainable. If you lay off half of your team, the remaining half of your team needs to double its productivity. And if you try to fill that gap by hiring AI-fluent engineers, you’ll be fishing in this extremely scarce, expensive talent pool.
Leaders have to build the capability for AI fluency from within their existing workforce. It’s the only way that large companies are going to scalably address this problem, and that’s exactly what our learning solutions are designed to address.
AI has created a lot of anxiety in the workforce. As someone who is deeply involved in helping organizations manage through this AI-driven disruption, what insights have you gleaned about what works?
Leading through this change requires a lot of emotional intelligence. The companies that are succeeding in implementing AI are the ones that get the human side right. They understand the importance of change management. The power of LLMs is indisputable, and it’s only going to get better. And yet, that’s not where the most value will be unlocked in the next 5 to 10 years. The value is going to be unlocked in the human side of the change.
The anxiety people are feeling is real and valid. We have to understand how to get people out of that pit of despair to a point of acceptance, and then to a place where they can thrive. That’s the change journey. As leaders, we should be trained to understand what our employees are experiencing and to give them the tools they need to succeed. That means upskilling and reskilling, and providing opportunities to learn and make mistakes with the new tools, so that they can become fluent in them.
