Here's how talent leaders can blend the power of AI with uniquely human skills
This article was produced in partnership with LinkedIn
With more than 1 billion members worldwide, LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network in the world and a popular choice among professionals looking to advance their careers. LinkedIn APAC connects professionals across the region, empowering career growth through networking, insights, and job opportunities.
by Sumita Tandon, HR Director of APAC at LinkedIn
As the saying goes, change is the only constant. When I began my career over 30 years ago in hospitality, and later transitioned into Human Resources nearly two decades ago, I witnessed firsthand how industries and roles evolve. While core skills like communication and interpersonal abilities have remained vital, the landscape of HR has transformed significantly. Today, HR professionals must master a dynamic range of skills — from training and development to adaptability — to meet the demands of an ever-changing workplace, particularly as the roles of TA leaders continue to expand and evolve.
Today, this transformation is taking place at an even faster rate, accelerated by new technologies like Generative AI (GAI). To keep up and remain competitive, demand for new roles and skill sets are on the rise across organisations. In fact, more than 10% of workers hired today globally have job titles that didn’t exist in 2000. In Asia-Pacific, skills needed for a job are expected to change by a staggering 68% by 2023 due to the impact of AI. In Singapore, this shift is even more pronounced, with an expected change of 72%.
Today’s workforce is defined by its ability to learn, unlearn and relearn. Talent leaders play that critical role in facilitating this as experts in growing and tapping into human potential — here are three ways they can do so, to enable change within your organisation while building trust and partnership with employees.
According to Tan Su Shan, Deputy CEO of DBS, “GAI can help in both horizontal and vertical ways. Horizontally, it can help employees read lots of information, take out what’s relevant and come up with recommendations. Vertically, it can be used across different businesses and units, for example, to help answer ESG and climate-related questions for customers.”.
#1: Placing humans at the heart of AI strategies
The first step is to leverage AI to empower humans to focus on uniquely human tasks. Most organisations are excited about AI’s potential, with about 8 in 10 executives globally recognising at least one way GAI will help their employees — the top three benefits being reducing time spent on mundane but necessary job tasks, increasing productivity, and freeing up employees’ time for strategic and creative thinking. In fact, I encounter many HR professionals who are bogged down by routine tasks like synthesising job descriptions, searching for candidates, or doing basic screening. AI now enables us to focus on more meaningful tasks such as building relationships and driving strategic talent initiatives to support employee growth. At LinkedIn, for example, we announced the future launch of our first AI Hiring Assistant to help HR professionals dedicate more time to impactful work.
Beyond HR, AI is similarly being leveraged to enhance processes across the organisation. Take DBS Bank, for example, which views GAI as a co-pilot that enables its staff to be more productive, more relevant to the customer, and more efficient. For instance, their call center agents and bank relationship managers use GAI to read reams of data and synthesise it to help them find the answers they need more quickly. According to Tan Su Shan, Deputy CEO of DBS, “GAI can help in both horizontal and vertical ways. Horizontally, it can help employees read lots of information, take out what’s relevant and come up with recommendations. Vertically, it can be used across different businesses and units, for example, to help answer ESG and climate-related questions for customers.”.
For major appliance manufacturer Midea, AI is used to better anticipate demand, plan, and forecast new products and markets to enter. It is also used to analyse large pools of data to uncover consumer insights and the right candidates for hiring.
That said, we see that AI implementation remains a challenge for many organisations. The gap between companies embracing Generative AI (GAI) and those falling behind is widening. Globally, only 10% of executives report that their organizations are leading in AI adoption, while 40% say they have made limited progress. These figures are exactly the same among executives in India. Nearly two-thirds of professionals are overwhelmed by how quickly their job is changing and many are unsure of how to make AI’s potential a reality in the day-to-day of work.
We’re here to help leaders and professionals to continuously upskill with our free 250 AI courses in 7 languages which cover various topics from prompt engineering, to integrating AI into business strategy.
#2: Embedding soft skills into today’s talent playbooks
GAI doesn't just drive efficiency but also empowers employees to think differently, focus on higher-order skills, and connect more deeply with the human aspects of their roles. Our data shows that in Southeast Asia, employees who have GAI skills are also 7x more likely to develop skills like emotional intelligence and 5x more likely to develop skills like design thinking. In the region, the top LinkedIn Learning courses are focused on critical soft skills, including Problem-Solving Techniques, How to Think Strategically, and The Three Pillars of Effective Communication.
These are also the skills that truly unlock our potential, and spur organisational agility. In challenging times, it’s heartening to know that your talent within the organisation can think outside the box, know how to solve problems, and develop forward-looking strategies.
As underscored by Tan, “you can organise for success by having a culture of innovation, experimentation and change, and you also need to organise for resiliency. It means getting the workforce ready to pivot quickly for when the unexpected happens. I think that makes a company more agile and more able to pivot very quickly.”
For global professional services and solutions firm, Genpact, this is about being able to look around the corner into the future of skills. Piyush Mehta, CHRO and Country Manager for India at Genpact, shared: “Our perspective on the skills our workforce needs centers around becoming ‘trilingual’. First, individuals must be experts in their domain, whether it’s finance, risk, supply chain, insurance, or any other. Second, they must be fluent in technology, particularly data and AI, which are increasingly integral to every field. Lastly, they need to excel in professional skills like storytelling, interpersonal relationship management, and communication — all crucial for thriving in their roles.”.
Developing these skills requires close collaboration between Talent Acquisition (TA) and Learning & Development (L&D) teams. Taking a holistic view of the organisation’s existing skills landscape is crucial—identifying strengths, addressing gaps, and aligning hiring strategies with targeted upskilling efforts. Not just with hard skills like AI know-how, but also soft skills that unlock human potential. By integrating recruitment and development initiatives, companies can build a more agile workforce where human abilities shine through.
Lewis Fu, President of Midea International Business, shared that “a ‘winning’ culture is one that we promote inside our organisation, because we believe that even with people from different cultural backgrounds, good professionals will need to adopt an attitude of wanting to ‘win’ and succeed in this competitive world.”.
#3: Providing learning pathways for your talent to unlock their full potential
Fostering a culture where employees can learn new skills and move across roles will not only enable professional growth, but also help organisations build agility and resilience, without losing out on great talent. This is something I can attest to firsthand — having been given the opportunity to grow in diverse HR roles throughout my career, from managing HR programmes, to L&D roles, and now honing my business acumen by acting as a business partner to sales teams.
Internal mobility rates globally have increased by 6% globally year-over-year, and we expect this trend to continue, particularly across APAC, where internal mobility is up higher versus the global average at 21% in Singapore, 15% in India, 8% in the Philippines and 6% in Indonesia.
“Learning to unlearn and then relearn” will become a critical approach for organisations developing talent that can thrive in a fast-evolving workplace. For instance, Genpact has 60,000 active users on their learning platform, Genome, which provides an opportunity for employees to upskill to develop their careers and get promoted internally. “Last year, we moved about 30,000 people internally into other opportunities. Therefore the ability to match profiles of our existing people based on what they've learned with the open opportunities is a huge enhancer of careers within Genpact,” stated Mehta.
To bring out the best in their people, organisations also need to constantly instill energy and drive to pursue opportunities within employees. Essentially, employees want to work for a company with purpose, and they want to feel like they’re positively contributing. Taking this stance when it comes to talent strategies will not only help unlock employees’ potential, but also with retaining good talent.
Lewis Fu, President of Midea International Business, shared that “a ‘winning’ culture is one that we promote inside our organisation, because we believe that even with people from different cultural backgrounds, good professionals will need to adopt an attitude of wanting to ‘win’ and succeed in this competitive world.”.
Fundamentally, the talent and job landscape is ever-evolving, and change is the constant we can expect. Today’s talent leaders understand that companies that succeed do so because they have the best talent, not simply the best technology. Just as we’d upgrade our tech stack, companies will need to upgrade talent playbooks to stay ahead and unleash all that’s possible — while paving the way to more fulfilling and more meaningful work for us all.
To support this shift, LinkedIn is leading the charge with innovative solutions, including a new AI-powered coaching feature in LinkedIn Learning to help professionals develop their interpersonal skills through interactive scenarios. Additionally, LinkedIn has expanded its LinkedIn Learning library to over 1,000 AI-focused courses, and is rolling out an AI assistant within LinkedIn Jobs to help small businesses post jobs and hire qualified candidates more efficiently.
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