LinkedIn: 74% believe AI literacy will boost career progression

AI is quickly changing the job landscape, meaning business leaders need to ensure employees have the right skills and resources to stay ahead of the curve.

Globally, jobs are projected to change by 51% (from 2016 to 2030), according to new research from LinkedIn, with generative AI accelerating this change by 68%.

As a result of this adoption, European hiring managers (69%) are expecting the skills gap to widen within the next five years, highlighting that businesses need to prioritize skills development to fully reap the benefits of AI.

Findings from Microsoft support this, showing that 82% of leaders believe their employees need to be prepared for the growth of AI. However, 60% admit to not having the right capabilities for employees to fulfil their role to the best of their ability. 

With this in mind, UNLEASH explores what senior leaders must do to close the skills gap, and how this varies across the globe.

Increasing AI literacy to fill global skills gaps

As the uptake of AI is steadily increasing, executives are keen to build AI literacy, with 74% of respondents believing it’ll help with career progression, according to LinkedIn research.

Germany and India were found to be ahead of the curve with 52% of businesses boosting AI literacy. Australia (47%), the UK (44%), and Spain (41%) are close behind, followed by Italy (39%), the US (38%), France (38%), and finally the Netherlands (37%). 

The world of work is continuously evolving and at an ever faster pace thanks to Gen AI,” says Anandi Shankar, Global Head of Learning at Unilever – a customer of LinkedIn. “This means the skills that people need for jobs are changing beyond what traditional learning methods can deliver.

“At Unilever, we believe in talent that stays curious and thrives to be fit for the future of work,” Shankar adds. “We do this through democratizing access to learning and encouraging our people to shape their own career adventures. 

“This begins with creating personalized future-fit development plans to enable their performance, deepen their experience and connect them to skills and leadership behaviors Unilever needs to continue to win. We also encourage them to leverage the most of online tools like LinkedIn Learning to develop the skills they need to succeed.”

What’s more, LinkedIn’s research found skills development to be crucial to internal mobility and talent retention, with nine out of ten organizations stating they’re concerned about employee retention. Additionally, 50% of European hiring managers in Europe predict an increase in employee turnover in 2024.

In fact, one of the most successful ways of retaining staff is with internal mobility, yet many company’s struggle to implement a solid structure.

And according to LinkedIn’s research, there are three main barriers: talent hoarding from managers (40%), insufficient learning and development opportunities prohibiting employees from pivoting to new careers (39%), and a shortage of effective processes for managing internal mobility (35%).

“Companies cannot afford to be slow on upskilling if they are to capture the opportunities presented by AI and succeed in an ever-changing world of work,” Janine Chamberlin, Vice President and UK Country Manager at LinkedIn concludes. 

“Upskilling employees on hard and soft skills will not only help companies to become more agile, but also improve retention and make it easier for people to pivot into new careers within the organization.

The businesses that get this right will benefit from having people with the right skills, in the right roles, at the right time.”

To better support this and to bridge the skills gap, LinkedIn offers more than 250 free learning courses in seven different languages, aiming to build general AI-fluency for any level.