New report warns of a fragile workforce in the future
Employers have been advised to "reinvest" in their workforce as a new report warned that organisations may be losing important skills or expertise due to artificial intelligence (AI) without realising it.
A new Dayforce report, which surveyed nearly 7,000 respondents in six countries, is warning organisations of "experience debt" that can lead to the fragility of the workforce in the future.
This experience debt stems from the adoption of AI tools in the workplace, where the technology takes over tasks that have traditionally helped employees build work experience.
The report noted that while AI can remove repetitive work, it can also take away the repetition, context, and exposure that employees need to learn how complex work gets done.
"We call this experience debt: the future capability cost created when people lose opportunities to learn by doing," the report read.
"Experience debt accumulates when workloads repeatedly crowd out development, when expertise becomes centralised rather than shared, and when AI takes on tasks that once gave people a way to learn through experience," the report read.
Nearly two in three respondents (65%) are already reporting this experience, saying their people are losing the ability to perform some tasks that AI is doing for them.
As a result, 68% said organisations are losing important skills or expertise without fully realising it, with another 73% warning that such workforce capabilities are harder to rebuild.
Making the workforce fragile
Experience debt due to AI is just one of the drivers that can contribute to the fragility of the workforce in the future.
According to the report, 60% of the respondents believe understaffing has been normalised in their workplace, while 54% said important knowledge is becoming concentrated among fewer people.
Half of the respondents also said they are expected to develop new skills while maintaining the same workload, with only 27% saying they have enough time during work hours to do so.
"When teams are stretched, development is often one of the first things pushed aside... But repeatedly putting off development isn't simply a scheduling problem. It's a prioritisation decision, and employees recognise it as one," said Dayforce chief people officer Amy Cappellanti-Wolf in the report.
"The skills and leaders organisations will need tomorrow don't appear overnight. They have to be built while we're delivering today."
Avoiding a fragile workforce
Cappellanti-Wolf has underscored the need for organisations to reinvest in their workforce to avoid fragility in the future.
According to the report, 40% of employees expect their bosses to give them more work if they are able to save time using AI, while 39% believe their employers will reduce headcount or slow hiring.
This is despite the respondents wanting to use the time saved from using AI tools on reducing bunout burnout and workload (64%), as well as improving work quality (51%).
"AI can help create a new productivity dividend for organisations and their employees," said Cappellanti-Wolf in a statement.
"But leaders need to look beyond near-term efficiency and think carefully about what AI changes for workloads, career opportunities, and how people gain experience. The goal shouldn't be to do more with less, but to reinvest some of that capacity to build a workforce that can adapt as work changes."
