Reskilling the UK in the face of AI growth

The need for reskilling and retraining due to the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technology will be massive, affecting more than 120 million workers across the world's 12 largest economies, according to IBM's Institute for Business Value. In a report entitled The enterprise guide to closing the skills gap, the institute indicated that while only 41% of employers have the required people, skills and resources in place to execute their business strategies effectively today, the situation will only get worse as demand for new – particularly soft – skills continues and expertise focused around repetitive, rules-based activities becomes progressively obsolete. "By 2030, the global talent shortage could reach more than 85 million people," the study says. "To be clear, the issue is not a shortage of workers, but a shortage of workers with the right skills." To make matters worse, although the so-called "half-life" of professional skills was formerly estimated at between 10 and 15 years, the half-life of a learned skill today is estimated to be a mere five years, and is potentially even less for technical expertise. So skills learned now will only be half as valuable in five years' time, which means that finding ways to continually update and refresh them will become an increasing imperative.