EMEA leaders must invest in human talent to make most of AI

Business leaders in the UK and across the EMEA region are deploying AI to drive innovation. However, a lack of investment in workforce development could stunt the related growth, with only a third of organisations looking to upskill their staff for AI tools.

While confidence around the broader economic picture has plummeted, businesses across the EMEA, including in the UK, still retain heightened levels of self-belief in their own operations. In recent years, a growing part of that divorce has been the hype around artificial intelligence – as there does not seem to be an issue facing British corporates, which they do not feel could be remedied with more investment in AI.

A new report from IBM Consulting, titled ‘The Race for ROI’, has found that UK senior leaders say AI and automation are investing in AI to free up time for a wide range of high-impact work. A 41% chunk of the 500 surveyed said it would help to drive innovation and new ideas, while the same number hoped it would improve opportunities to engage in creative work, and 39% said it would improve strategic decision-making and planning.

This is mirrored across the EMEA region, where IBM’s broader poll of 3,500 business executives found that approximately one in five EMEA senior leaders believed their organisation was already achieving its current ROI goals from AI initiatives, with a total of 92% expecting to reach them within the following two years.

Amid this, 79% of senior leaders across EMEA claimed they were already using or planning to use AI to speed up innovation cycles, such as using AI to simulate scenarios, test hypotheses, and identify promising directions. However, those getting excited by these figures might want to take them with a pinch of salt.

Recent research has highlighted a significant divorce between UK firms’ perceptions of their innovation, and the real-world impacts of their investment. In fact, businesses were found to believe they were twice as innovative with technology as they actually are, while less than one in four had successfully sold even one technology as part of their products or services. With other papers finding that AI results in a return on investment for fewer than one-in-ten companies, and with limited impacts beyond highly specific cases for a number of niche start-ups.

The debate as to why that might be continues – with some claiming that the true value of AI has been greatly over-estimated, while others note that many investors are neglecting the human talent they need to get the most from what they mistake as a ‘miracle machine’. To that end, while 62% of organisations told IBM they were yet to tap into the full potential of AI, only 38% of organisations prioritising AI upskilling opportunities in relation to their AI transformations.

Meanwhile, in the UK, only 45% of UK enterprises currently offer company-wide or role-specific AI training. With so much discourse centring on the supposed ability of AI to simply take over roles from human workers, the purported cost benefits seem to have led leaders to widely shun the idea they need to train people to get AI to work properly. But highlighting a critical need for a greater focus on workforce transformation and AI skills training, that lack of investment in workforce development could be stalling further growth according to IBM.

Leon Butler, chief executive for IBM in the UK and Ireland, argued, “UK businesses are clearly seeing the productivity benefits of AI, but the real opportunity lies ahead – unlocking even greater value through workforce transformation and upskilling. By investing in AI skills training across all levels, organisations can not only outperform their peers but build a future-ready workforce that drives innovation and resilience.”