Trend 1: AI, AI and more AI

Note: This post is part of our Special Report: Top 10 people & culture trends for 2024.

It’s everywhere and will be very disruptive to the labour market (the World Economic Forum predicts that AI may replace ~85 million jobs by 2025 and create ~97 million new roles).  

And yet, many leaders don’t exactly know what it is or how to prepare for it.  

AI will affect every aspect of the workplace in 2024—hiring and retention, onboarding and upskilling, communications and marketing, sales and business development, and more. So, it’s no wonder in a global survey by Accenture, the C-suite’s top concern for 2024 is adapting to advancements in AI and automation—even topping their concerns around cyberattacks and data breaches (55% vs. 48%).  

Tips for 2024

• Upskilling and reskilling: Everyone (leaders and team members at every level, in every seat) needs to learn about what AI is, what it can do for them, and what its limitations and risks are. In most cases, rather than eliminating jobs, generative AI will replace only certain tasks in certain fields. While some roles will be eliminated, 61% of leaders globally expect to hire more workers and re-skill current workers for AI roles (Accenture).
  • Tip: Develop an ongoing, mandatory training plan for all existing and new employees, and refresh it regularly. Altis is working with third-party experts to deliver a multi-part training plan for our entire team in 2024, covering all aspects of AI and recruitment. Contact us for info: hrtopics@altis.com. ‍

• Hiring: Experts predict that workers who don’t embrace AI will be replaced by those who do, and the data backs it up. Job postings mentioning either AI or generative AI more than doubled globally between July 2021 and July 2023 (LinkedIn), showing that the demand for AI skills is already growing. However, since AI isn’t magic—it makes mistakes—it will be critical to hire humans who are capable of fact-checking, proofreading and testing AI-generated work.
  • Tips: When interviewing, ask every candidate, regardless of role, “How do you use AI at work?”
  • When testing candidates for programming/marketing/writing/accounting roles, ensure you test their ability to review and correct writing/code/numbers generated by AI.

• Preparing for risks: With ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, it’s critical to be mindful of risks (privacy, copyright infringement, bias, inaccuracies, etc.).
  • Tips: Develop an AI Acceptable Use policy, including use cases, risks and more—update this policy regularly and train your workforce on it. When creating our policy, we consulted a lawyer to get tips on what to include, and summarized her thoughts in this blog post. To see a copy of our policy, contact us: hrtopics@altis.com.

• Stay up to date with legislation. If passed (expected in 2025), Canada’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), would mean employers must ensure that any third-party AI tools they use are safe, free from bias and cause no harm. To do so, employers will need to understand how these tools work and what data they were trained on, so they can mitigate the risk of harm or biased output from their use.

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Read our next trend to watch in 2024: Trend 2: ChatGPT and recruitment: Be on the lookout for fakes in 2024.