Employees need time to experiment, if AI implementations are to succeed

Companies struggling to make the most of AI tools might have neglected the human side of business for too long, according to a new report. While Slalom’s study finds employers find plenty of money to invest into the technology itself, almost half are not allocating time for employees to experiment with it.

So often in digital transformation, confidence exceeds capability. Business leaders are regularly found to overestimate the results their policies yield, and underestimate the importance of the skills their workforce bring to the table. This has been especially apparent throughout the on-going AI goldrush across the economy.

Since the technology went mainstream, multiple studies have shown that business leaders seldom understand how to measure ROI on their AI transformation. Meanwhile, a growing body of research also shows that CEOs have seldom supplied learning opportunities which workers feel would help them AI transformations succeed.

A new study from Slalom suggests that is still the case. And while many leaders feel prepared, but few are investing effectively in the skills, coaching, and organisational models needed to sustain change. To that end, 68% of leaders reported that their organisation was keeping pace with AI – however, 93% also report workforce barriers, including skill gaps, which are limiting the technology’s potential.

Growing gap

Slalom polled more than 400 businesses in the UK – and found that while 70% of them had given employees access to AI tools, only 48% were allowing time for them to experiment with the new systems. Throwing staff in at the deep end in this manner is not leading to results, either, with 54% of bosses now identifying workforce skills gap as their top barrier to ROI on AI spending.

Part of this also seems to be a resistance to engaging their workforce directly, and simply expecting that AI can now be an assistant bosses can abdicate their own duties to. A majority of 69% said AI had played some role in whatever reskilling efforts their companies had offered. But just one in five describe those initiatives as very effective.

This lack of serious training seems to be hamstringing AI roll outs. Even as 56% of companies claim to be redesigning workflows for automation, with 62% reporting less manual work, 41% faster decisions, and 38% higher-quality outputs, that impact remains limited. Without company-wide training, this success simply cannot be replicated across an organisation – and just 21% of use cases scale enterprise-wide. Meanwhile, just 39% of firms have achieved orchestrated multi-agent workflows across end-to-end processes.

Caroline Grant, Slalom’s UK senior managing director, commented, “This research showed movement in the market, as there is high investment in AI tools for the workforce. Businesses are clearly no longer waiting at the sidelines to see if AI is something they should spend on. Now they are facing a new problem: an AI skills gap. This research shows the UK has yet to do enough to fix this and give employees time to experiment with a technology that could transform the way they work. Once this adjustment has been made, allowing employees to feel engaged and in control of AI at work, the potential for UK businesses is huge.”