AI is changing what it means to be good at your job

AI touches almost every part of the average person’s working day. It can draft the email you didn’t want to write in the time it takes you to pour your morning coffee, or analyse in seconds a spreadsheet that once would have taken an entire afternoon. But as organisations focus on what AI can do, there’s another question they need to consider. What does that make more valuable in people?

 

The answer isn’t technical expertise.

 

As AI takes on more routine tasks, the skills employees need are changing too. When technology can process information, analyse data and produce content in seconds, the value people bring increasingly lies in what they do around that output. Questioning it. Shaping it. Communicating it. Knowing when not to trust it.

 

That means organisations need to think differently about AI readiness. Giving employees access to the technology and teaching them how to use it is only part of the picture. They also need to develop the human capabilities that help people get better results from AI – the critical thinkers, the editors and the storytellers.

 

And while many businesses claim to understand this, workforce transformation still lags behind AI investment. This article outlines the five skills employers need to keep in their workforce. 

 

Critical thinking: don’t outsource judgement

AI can provide answers in seconds. And when output is immediate, well-written and appears to be evidence-based, it’s easy to give it more authority than it deserves. But a convincing answer isn’t necessarily a good one.

 

That makes critical thinking more important, not less. Employees need to be able to interrogate what AI gives them. They need to question its assumptions and decide whether its conclusions actually make sense. The risk of not doing this isn’t just that mistakes slip through. It’s that people become accustomed to accepting answers rather than forming their own judgement.

 

Employers need to make that judgement a deliberate part of AI training. Give employees AI-generated recommendations and ask them to identify what’s missing, question the evidence and explain where they disagree. Managers can reinforce the habit by asking teams to show the reasoning behind their decisions, not just the outputs they produce.

 

Scoping: know what problem you’re solving

Prompt engineering has long featured in AI training programmes. Yet the ideal prompt will change as the technology does. A more valuable and lasting skill is knowing how to define the problem you’re trying to solve.

 

Business challenges are rarely delivered as perfect instructions. They’re often ambiguous, ambitious or contradictory. Employees need to be able to take that ambiguity and create clarity: defining the outcome they’re trying to achieve, identifying the information that matters, separating symptoms from underlying problems and understanding the constraints that should shape a decision.

 

Organisations can develop this skill by making problem definition, rather than prompt engineering, a core part of AI training. Rather than giving employees pre-defined tasks, give them ambiguous business challenges and ask them to scope the problem before touching the technology. Managers can also make problem definition an explicit part of project planning, asking questions like, “What are we trying to change?” or “How will we know if we’ve succeeded?”.

 

Writing: invest in editors, not generators

AI has made producing written content easier than ever. The valuable skill is increasingly not generating the first draft but knowing what deserves to survive the cutting room floor.

 

Employees need editorial judgement. The ability to recognise what’s important, remove what isn’t, adapt information to the right audience and spot text that sounds polished but says very little. People are also becoming adept at recognising content that feels AI-generated, which can quickly become disengaging. As AI-generated content becomes even more common, the ability to decide what’s actually worth saying becomes more valuable.

 

Writing training should evolve accordingly. It’s no longer about just teaching employees how to write to spec, but also how to edit previously drafted content. Training programmes should give employees AI-generated drafts and ask them to sharpen them, rewrite the same information for different audiences or align with a company’s specific tone of voice.

 

Storytelling: turn information into influence

AI has made information and analysis more accessible, but more insight doesn’t mean better decisions. Employees still need to establish what matters, why it matters and what should happen next.

 

That requires more than presenting what AI has produced. Employees need to turn information into a clear and compelling story, shaped around what they’re audience needs to know.

 

The best way to develop this skill is through practice. Give employees opportunities to present AI-assisted analysis rather than simply submit it. Ask them to make a recommendation, defend their reasoning and respond to questions in real time. Teams can also practise communicating the same insight to different audiences, forcing them to think about what each person needs to know.

 

Emotional intelligence: practise the one skill AI can’t

AI can learn many skills, but emotional intelligence currently isn’t one of them. Interpersonal skills are fundamentally human. It’s employees who build relationships, navigate disagreement, give difficult feedback and earn trust – not machines. After all, as the saying goes, people buy from people.

 

And it’s a skill that becomes more important during periods of rapid change. We’re living through one of those periods now. As AI adoption accelerates, employees will want their questions about the tech’s impact on their roles, expectations and future answered. The quality of those responses will decide whether people engage with change or resist it.

 

Organisations shouldn’t assume emotional intelligence develops naturally with seniority. It takes practice. Managers can and should rehearse difficult conversations through role-play and coaching, receive peer feedback and develop strong listening habits. Teams also need space for genuine human discussion when subjects are complex or sensitive.

 

AI skills are nothing without human skills

AI capability has understandably focused on technology up until now, giving employees access and teaching them to use new tools. But adoption alone won’t determine the value organisations get from AI. What people do with it will.

 

The organisations that benefit most won’t simply be those with the best technology. They’ll be the ones that invest just as deliberately in the human capabilities surrounding it.

 

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Toby Hough is VP of People and Culture at HiBob

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and Thinkhubstudio