Ikea might not be the first company that springs to mind when you think about digital transformation – especially a large-scale initiative such as educating employees on generative AI. But in April the furniture giant announced a plan to provide AI literacy training to around 30,000 workers and 500 managers.
The programme offers a range of learning materials for understanding and using AI. It has already surpassed internal expectations. Training has been offered to some 40,000 employees (out of roughly 165,000 in total) through August, according to figures from the company.
Ikea isn’t alone in its AI training ambitions. Large companies such as MasterCard, JPMorgan Chase and S&P Global are rolling out programmes to help prepare employees across the organisation for the AI era, not just technical staff.
Behind these efforts is the assumption that many workers, from entry-level to CEO, will need to gain at least some proficiency with GenAI tools to meet future job demands.
Consider recent Accenture research, which found that more than 40% of all US work activity can be augmented, automated or changed with GenAI. A World Economic Forum report in January revealed that 58% of employees expect their job skills to change significantly in the next five years owing to AI and big data.
What’s stopping AI training?
Despite the big success stories, progress by major companies in equipping employees for the AI-centric workplace has been slow. Less than half of companies in the US (38%) and the UK (44%) are taking steps to train workers to use AI tools, according to a LinkedIn survey of 3,000 senior executives in December 2023.
Moreover, a KPMG report in May found that 61% of desk-based workers in the UK want training in GenAI. More than half of 18- to 24-year-olds are already using the technology to learn professional skills, but only a fifth of UK employees can find learning resources quickly at their job.
Gina Smith is research director – IT skills for digital business at technology research firm IDC. She highlights challenges to providing training amid rapid technological change. “Organisations have to train everybody on GenAI, but they still have to keep everybody up to speed on cybersecurity, data security and all the things that are changing with cloud computing every day.”
After the initial surge of enthusiasm accompanying the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, a more sober assessment of the technology’s risks and limitations began, says Smith. More scrutiny was applied to its reliability, arising from LLMs tendency to ‘hallucinate’ – or present false or misleading information as fact – as well as security risks stemming from use of confidential company data or intellectual property in AI prompts or model training.
Reflecting on the corporate policies and procedures needed to govern the use of AI, Smith says that even getting the guardrails in place takes a lot of time.
Spreading AI literacy
It appears, however, that many companies have decided that now is the time to ramp up AI training. Take JPMorgan Chase, for instance. “This year, everyone coming in here will have prompt engineering training to get them ready for the AI of the future,” according to Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of the bank’s Asset & Wealth Management business line, who was speaking at its ‘Investor Day’ in May.
Instruction in such foundational skills is part of the AI literacy that companies seek to give employees as a baseline for AI training. Training also typically covers issues in AI ethics and company policy governing the use of AI.
The uses and limitations of GenAI are often highly task-specific, so firms should give teams the autonomy to experiment and share knowledge
Ikea’s initiative, for instance, includes training on responsible AI and AI ethics, which the company says is meant to reflect its values in how the technology is applied. Likewise, MasterCard offers eight hours of video training on key responsible AI principles such as fairness and transparency; this is delivered through a new intranet hub for company-wide AI learning launched in August.
Arvind Narayanan is a computer science professor at Princeton University and author of the forthcoming book AI Snake Oil. While conceding the importance of AI literacy, he suggests that upskilling workers requires more than just literacy. “The uses and limitations of GenAI are often highly task-specific, so firms should give teams the autonomy to experiment and share knowledge,” he says.
Companies are also offering more specialised instruction beyond the basics. Ikea, for instance, runs an accelerator programme for new digital hires with AI-related degrees to help them get up to speed in their jobs.
Meanwhile, financial services provider USAA, which has 37,000 employees, relies on hackathons to give technical and other staff the chance to get hands-on experience with AI software and try to find novel use cases for the technology.
Advertising behemoth WPP, which has long championed the use of AI technology, has developed various strategies for training staff at all levels. These range from providing ‘future readiness academies’ – online courses in various tech disciplines including data and AI – to sponsoring a group of senior executives for a postgraduate diploma in AI at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School in 2023.
Teaming up for AI education
A range of organisations are assisting companies with AI training. These include consultancies such as Accenture, which has a proprietary skills learning platform; major tech providers including Microsoft, Adobe and Meta; LinkedIn, through its LinkedIn Learning service; and online learning specialists such as Pearson, which in September is introducing a certificate for GenAI to meet the rising demand for AI-related skills.
To address the significant skills gaps, roughly half of organisations say they’re relying on professional certifications from big tech firms; about the same proportion are providing internal upskilling training, according to a July IDC survey of 1,269 organisations globally.
But fewer – roughly 40% – are doing the kind of immersive, hands-on training Narayanan says is most useful.
Smith says that large organisations are also experimenting with multiple GenAI platforms, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini or Anthropic’s Claude, rather than focusing on just one. This approach not only reduces the possibility of bias, she says, but also gives employees the opportunity to learn more broadly across different AI systems.
Too soon to measure results
Whether they’re hiring outside experts or finding purely internal solutions, most firms will need to up their investments to provide AI training to staff.
Just how much these efforts cost is difficult to pin down. WPP, for instance, says in its 2024 Strategic Report that it plans to spend £250m this year to support its AI strategy, but it’s not clear if that includes AI development skills.
IDC projects worldwide IT training and educational services spending to increase 5% annually in the coming years, from just over £16bn this year to almost £19bn in 2027. The Americas will account for almost half that total, at £8.7bn.
What about the return on investment from the recent AI training push? Because most AI training programmes are still in the early stages, it’s difficult for companies to tout any measurable results yet. A LinkedIn report released in March found that just 4% of large-scale upskilling programmes had reached the measurement stage, based on a global survey of more than 1,600 learning and development and HR staff in September 2023.
But new skills are not learnt overnight. AI is likely to be central to future business models, so more firms may well bet that the returns they generate for training staff now will be seen in the success of the organisation in the future.
