The AI-Powered Workforce: A CEO’s Roadmap to Competitive Advantage

This article is the first in a series of AI-focused content for talent development leaders. Explore the rest of the series here.

Several factors determine successful implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) across an enterprise, and it’s critical for a business to formulate a clear AI strategy to ensure that their workforce can deliver sustained value from AI implementation. Before the workforce adopts AI, they need to understand its benefits, trust how it’s implemented and used, and receive the training and support to leverage it most efficiently and productively. In this article, we focus on the near-term impact of generative AI (GenAI) on the corporate learning and development (L&D) function and provide six actions that senior executives should consider as they prepare their organizations for human-machine collaboration and job augmentation with GenAI.

PWC forecasts that AI will add nearly $16 trillion to global economic output by 2030. And according to the World Economic Forum’s latest Future of Jobs survey, 39 percent of the workforce’s skills will be transformed or become outdated from 2025–2030. This skill instability brings a daunting paradox to companies: How can they maximize value from investment in AI while simultaneously preparing their workforce to execute the strategies that result from that investment?

Companies must strengthen their data systems and processes, develop workforce capability, and establish clear AI guardrails—all before implementation begins. Organizations that invest thoughtfully across these areas will be better positioned to realize AI’s long-term potential.

We must proactively develop our workforce’s AI skills to maximize the value we get from this technology. By harmonizing implementation of both smart technology decisions and strategic workforce skilling and development, companies will accelerate their long-term impact with AI and grow business value. Contrary to the many comparisons made with other disruptive technological innovations, AI is a workplace transformation rather than a technological transformation. Although still in its infancy, AI is the new productivity force that will fuel competitive advantage for the next decade, while bringing a complete overhaul of how work gets done. The first step is to recognize that the L&D function must become a key component in the overall business strategy and needs to evolve its operating model.

Corporate L&D is a critical component in ensuring a substantial return on AI investments.

Why does this matter now? From the perspective of work, the sheer power and promise of AI offers a transformative opportunity, moving from a landscape of manual processes and skills gaps to an era of enhanced productivity, innovation, and growth. However, with this transformation comes the responsibility to manage the workforce transition. As companies integrate AI and automation, they must focus on the efficiencies gained, and on repurposing talent and existing expertise. This requires a proactive approach to ensuring that workers are skilled for new roles within the organization or supported in their transition to external opportunities.

In no other era in modern history have companies faced the challenge of simultaneously blending smart technology investments with broad new skilling of their workforce. This means that L&D can’t exist in an operational silo; it must be woven into the fabric of the business. It’s not just about updating skills, it’s about determining how humans and AI effectively work together.

In no other era have companies faced the challenge of blending smart technology investments with broad workforce skilling.

We’ve identified six strategic actions that executive teams should take to prepare L&D for the age of AI. These actions help ensure organizations are ready as AI ushers in a new era of work:

1. Transform AI Understanding Into Strategic AI Literacy and Governance

Navigating the ongoing transformation of tools, roles, and work processes remains a central challenge. AI tools are continuously evolving, and the skills required to use them are in constant flux. L&D plays a crucial role in establishing governance structures and ensuring AI literacy becomes a fundamental component of workforce development.

AI literacy is the foundation for responsible AI adoption. It equips employees with the knowledge to understand AI fundamentals, recognize and mitigate risks like bias and privacy issues, and apply organizational policies and ethical guidelines. Without literacy, even well-intentioned employees can expose their organizations to unnecessary risks. A misplaced reliance on AI outputs, a misunderstanding of privacy settings, or an inability to spot bias can lead to breaches of trust. By making AI literacy an essential part of training, L&D can ensure all employees are equipped to navigate AI responsibly.

As employees become AI-literate, L&D should cultivate AI fluency, the ability to leverage AI to innovate and solve problems. Fluency transforms employees from merely being established and effective users of AI to exploring new ways of utilizing these tools, and ultimately innovating. AI-fluent employees are empowered to experiment with AI tools, find innovative ways to integrate them into workflows, and align their efforts with organizational goals. L&D should provide opportunities for hands-on learning, encourage cross-functional collaboration between AI experts and business teams, and position fluency as a leadership competency. The journey from AI literacy to AI fluency is a critical one that organizations must navigate to fully harness the potential of AI. It requires a structured approach from L&D—one that establishes a strong foundation of responsible AI use through literacy, and then systematically cultivates the skills and mindset needed for fluency. With this two-pronged approach to AI skills development, organizations can not only mitigate the risks of AI adoption, but truly optimize its benefits.

2. Integrate Fragmented Training Into a Cohesive AI and Workforce Development Approach

The imperative for integrating AI with workforce capability building cannot be overstated, and to be clear, a series of AI use cases alone does not constitute an enterprise AI strategy. Companies should ensure that technological investments are directly paired with efforts to build workforce capabilities, enabling the workforce to effectively utilize AI tools and strategies.

Consider a company that invests heavily in AI tools without a parallel investment in workforce capability building. This fragmentation results in inefficiencies and possibly employee resistance. Integrating effective change management alongside workforce development with technology adoption leads to smoother transitions, greater AI tool acceptance, and more sustained value. One of GenAI’s strengths is to increase worker productivity and efficiency through freeing up time spent on lower-value tasks so the worker can focus on higher-value-added activities. However, to fully realize this potential, employees need two key competencies: AI literacy, the ability to use AI responsibly and mitigate risks; and AI fluency, the capacity to experiment with AI and to start leveraging it to innovate and solve problems. L&D plays a critical role in developing both.

3. Align Training Solutions With Business Development Strategy

Traditionally, L&D has been responsible for unleashing strategic capability across the enterprise. With AI’s rapid evolution, L&D is uniquely positioned to drive business performance by simultaneously addressing both immediate and future capability needs. This goes far beyond traditional training programs, as this is about directly affecting business outcomes through a combination of performance support and strategic talent development.

A dual revolution in AI adoption makes this especially critical: from the top, organizations are implementing strategic vision and governance, while from the bottom, AI-literate employees are discovering innovative applications in their daily work. L&D serves as the crucial bridge between these forces, translating strategic vision into practical capability while elevating ground-level innovation into enterprise-wide value.

This dynamic environment demands that L&D evolves from managing training programs to orchestrating continuous performance improvement. By aligning performance support with strategic upskilling and reskilling initiatives, L&D becomes a key driver of both current productivity and future capability. This transformation positions L&D as an essential business function that directly affects operational excellence while building the workforce capabilities needed for sustained success in the AI era.

4. Consolidate Scattered AI Initiatives Under Strategic Alignment and Governance

AI’s rapid adoption is outpacing the establishment of effective governance structures, leading to a proliferation of scattered initiatives that may not align with the organization’s overarching strategy. To realize the full potential of AI, companies need to shift from this fragmented approach to one characterized by strong strategic alignment and robust governance.

Effective governance and oversight are essential to ensuring that AI efforts across the organization are coordinated, strategically aligned, and ethically sound. This involves establishing clear decision-making protocols, defining roles and responsibilities, and implementing mechanisms for monitoring and control.

A key aspect of this action is the strategic management of AI use cases. Each AI initiative should be rigorously evaluated to ensure it aligns with and contributes to the organization’s strategic objectives. As training is key here, this requires close collaboration between L&D and business units to identify, develop, and implement AI use cases that drive business value. Without this strategic alignment and governance, organizations risk wasting resources on duplicative or misaligned efforts, inconsistent application of AI technologies, and potential ethical or reputational hazards. To make this shift, L&D can:

• Partner across business functions to establish AI governance structures and processes.

• Develop criteria and workflows for evaluating the strategic fit and value of proposed AI use cases.

• Provide training on AI governance, ethics, and compliance to all involved in AI initiatives.

• Monitor AI initiatives post-implementation to ensure ongoing strategic alignment and identify lessons learned.

5. Enhance Traditional Training Through Augmented Performance Support

The shift from traditional training to augmented performance support is becoming increasingly important as AI-driven workflows demand real-time, contextual assistance in the flow of the work. L&D has the opportunity to integrate augmented support as a core component of the learning experience.

AI can be integrated into support systems to provide real-time assistance to employees as they interact with new technologies. For example, in call centers, AI-driven systems analyze conversations in real time, offering suggestions to agents on handling queries more effectively, improving performance, and reducing overall time to proficiency. To foster a culture that embraces augmented support, L&D should focus on metrics or KPIs that measure AI’s effectiveness in enhancing performance support.

6. Distribute Centralized Control to Enable Departmental Learning Autonomy

As AI transforms the workplace, there is a growing argument for decentralizing certain L&D functions to give departments more autonomy. For example, sales teams might take ownership of their training needs, particularly for highly specialized areas like sales AI tools. However, this decentralization must be balanced with a cohesive central strategy that ensures alignment with broader organizational goals.

A concrete example could be an organization where sales and manufacturing have distinct AI-driven needs—each requires specific tools and training programs, but these efforts must align with the company’s overall L&D operating model to ensure cohesion and quality. To mitigate challenges, L&D should establish clear guidelines for decentralized initiatives to align with the company’s objectives.

A Foundation for Transforming L&D

These six strategic actions provide the foundation for transforming L&D in the age of AI. Implementing them demands a fundamental shift in how organizations view both L&D and AI itself. In a world where AI and automation are transforming every aspect of business, L&D’s role should be reconsidered, rethought, and re-architected to more effectively guide organizations through this workplace transformation.

A critical nuance over the next several years will require L&D to focus deeply on human-specific skills. Clear communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving will become the primary skills that humans use to interact with AI in the flow of the work.

Currently, AI serves as a tool for people to solve problems and augment their intelligence, but AI is not just a tool, it’s also a skill. The paradigm shift we’re experiencing is moving people away from a tools focus to a skills focus where they work directly with AI. People need new skills to effectively utilize AI models to solve problems.

As AI matures, it will take over routine tasks and even create its own tools to get work done as it becomes our coworker rather than our assistant. People will need to focus more on developing deep, specialized knowledge in their fields. We see this currently happening in software coding. More than half of all code submitted to GitHub last year was written by AI.

The paradigm shift is moving people away from a tools focus to a skills focus working with AI.

As L&D departments lead their companies toward skills-powered development, they must bridge two worlds, developing human talent through thoughtful AI integration to help organizations thrive both today and tomorrow. The re-architected role of L&D places them in a unique position to drive organizational transformation in our new AI-enabled world of work. Learning leadership must be elevated to the highest organizational level, recognizing performance support as a strategic priority. Here's how organizations can strengthen L&D’s impact:

• Prioritize AI literacy development across all employee levels.

• Position L&D as an integral voice in business planning and workforce strategy discussions.

• Build enterprise-wide partnerships to create a data ecosystem that captures skills development, learning progress, and business outcomes.

• Establish L&D as a strategic partner in shaping the organization’s transition to an AI-augmented workforce where humans and intelligent systems collaborate effectively.

In six subsequent articles, we will explore each of the recommended strategic actions we have outlined to provide an actionable playbook for you to customize to your specific context and begin transitioning your function for our AI present and future.

The question for every organization is: “How will you ensure your workforce is not just prepared for, but thriving, in the AI-driven future?” Companies must urgently recalibrate their L&D functions as AI significantly reshapes the workplace and redefines the very meaning of work itself. These six strategic actions provide the foundation for this transformation, enabling organizations to shift from traditional training to augmented performance support where AI literacy and fluency become core competencies.

The future of work relies on collaboration between humans and AI, and those who embrace this transformation will unlock unprecedented business value. Now is the time for decisive action. How will you help your organization succeed in this new era of work?