Moving from experimentation to scale: getting your workforce GenAI ready

By Prasun Shah Marlene De Koning

The vast majority of leaders already recognise the huge impact that generative AI (GenAI) will have on their businesses. In fact, PwC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey 2024 has found that more than half of CEOs globally believe that failing to embrace GenAI in the next 18 to 24 months could imperil their entire business model. So it’s clear that for most businesses, adopting GenAI is not a question of if – but how soon.?

Pressure for the adoption of GenAI is also coming from employees. As their use of tech tools in their day-to-day lives continues to increase, they’re bringing to the workplace the expectations that those experiences create. Just as the iPhone drove the demand for enterprise tech to provide a consumer-like experience for employees, so too Gen AI’s impact on consumers is driving a similar desire to use it in the workplace.?

Growing urgency – and five actions to take

The combination of leaders recognizing how critical Gen AI is to their future business, and employees demanding it in the tools they use at work, is creating an urgency to move from experimentation to implementation at scale. So, what’s the best route forward?

It’s going to look different for each organisation. But we believe they will all need to consider the following five actions.?

1. Appreciate that Gen AI is new – but change is not

While Gen AI is certainly an exciting technology with huge possibilities, making the most of it in an organisation requires the same disciplined and inclusive approach to change management as other technologies that have come before. So it’s vital to understand what the aims and implications of implementing Gen AI are for the organisation and its people, and to communicate these effectively to everyone. And, as with any change journey, remember that everyone starts from a different place.?

With this in mind, organisations need to make sure that they understand what each person needs in order to get the most from the new tools and capabilities that Gen AI offers. This requires an assessment of each employee’s digital literacy, as well as a clearly-defined picture of how Gen AI will help them in their work. At PwC we are taking a unique approach that recognises this, using our AI Mindsets Tool to understand each persona and tailor their journey. That way, people will be on board quicker and the benefits of adoption will spread more quickly.?

2. Define success?

Adoption of Gen AI shouldn’t be an end in itself. There has to be a shared vision of what success looks like and how the AI will deliver it. So, when developing a proof of concept or a pilot, the organisation should consult and align all the relevant stakeholders so they can get behind a mutually agreed definition of success. With these parameters clearly understood, it becomes easier to move from experimentation to scale by demonstrating that a pilot or PoC has achieved the agreed results and is ready to move into mainstream adoption.

3. Identify how Gen AI will create real and distinct competitive advantage

Much like defining success, every organisation needs to understand precisely how Gen AI will bring it a competitive advantage. The LLMs underpinning applications like chatbots are available to everyone. So while they may help employees complete certain tasks faster, that same advantage is also available to every other business. It’s important, therefore, to understand the unique knowledge and skills that your organisation possesses. Bringing those together with Gen AI will create durable competitive advantage based on an organisation’s unique attributes.?

4. Build a Gen AI community?

Gen AI requires new ways of working. Employee attitudes to using it will vary, from the cautious to the extremely keen. This means there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to encouraging adoption. One way to address this issue is through building communities that can demonstrate the art of the possible and in doing so encourage others to explore the tools, experiment and learn in a safe environment. At PwC, we’re doing just that. People with access to Gen AI tools regularly come together to discuss the use cases they’ve been working on. They share their successes, challenges and lessons learned and, crucially, how their use of Gen AI contributes to achieving PwC’s goals.? and also act as inspiration and change agents within their respective teams to enable others to understand how they can benefit from this technology. This helps drive adoption, because people can connect how Gen AI will help their work specifically to how that contributes to the organisation’s performance overall.

5. Think skills for today – and skills for the future

Organisations are acutely aware of the need to upskill their workforce for the Gen AI era. And employees are just as keen to acquire those new skills. PwC’s 2023 Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey highlights the strong demand for reskilling: respondents cite the positive impacts of AI more frequently than they do the negative ones. The most common sentiment, expressed by 31% of respondents, is that “AI will help me increase my productivity/efficiency at work” – and many anticipate it will bring them opportunities to learn new skills and do new jobs. It’s crucial, though, that organisations also think carefully about precisely what new skills they’ll need for the future. Because if one thing is certain, it’s that Gen AI won’t simply change how today’s work is done, it will change the nature of work itself.

Human-led, tech-powered

No question, Gen AI’s real value springs from humans and technology working together. And leaders must utilise its power to transform their businesses in a way that delivers on their organisation’s purpose and values – while also bringing the best from its people. The inescapable conclusion? To successfully harness the full power of Gen AI it comes down to being human-led and tech-powered.?

Please feel free to reach out with any thoughts you may have. We’d love to hear from you. And stay tuned for more posts on Gen AI and the workforce.

? 2024 PwC. All rights reserved. PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

This content is for general information purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional advisors.