Name: Fortune Global Forum 2023: The Global Skills Gap: Scaling Human Potential
Uploaded: 2023-11-29
Duration: 15 min 19 s
Description: Taso Du Val, Chief Executive Officer, Toptal Renée McGowan, Chief Executive Officer, India, Middle East & Africa, Marsh McLennan In conversation with: Ruth Umoh, FORTUNE

Taso Du Val, Chief Executive Officer, Toptal Renée McGowan, Chief Executive Officer, India, Middle East & Africa, Marsh McLennan In conversation with: Ruth Umoh, FORTUNE

Fortune Global Forum 2023: The Global Skills Gap: Scaling Human Potential

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Changing subject. Over the past several years, there has been a massive change in the way we work triggered in large part by the pandemic and its after effects. Now there's another transformation underway. One prompted by rapid advancements in technology, including generative A I expectation for gen A I's impact among C Suite executives are high. According to a recent mckinsey and company survey, three quarters of all respondents expect generative A I to cause significant or disruptive change to their industries in the next three years. There's concern and some excitement about what these changes could mean for workers. While there is no replacement for some tasks that are considered uniquely human, there are functions that technology can enhance or replace, completely freeing up staffers for more important duties. So next, we're going to talk about the future of work and how business leaders can harness the power of innovative technologies while improving the experience and productivity of their workers. Tasso Duval is the founder and Ceo of Toptal and Renee mcgowan is CEO of Marsh mclennan, India, Middle East and Africa. They join fortune leadership editor Ruth UO for this conversation. Good morning, everyone. Thank you. So much for joining us and welcome to the both of you. Delighted to have you at Fortune Global Forum. Thank you for joining, quick reminder for the audience. We will be taking questions from you all. So do keep that in mind as we kick off today's conversation. Uh Renee lots to discuss. So let's kick things off with you A I will and already is fundamentally reshaping nearly every aspect of the way we work. How will artificial intelligence and related new technologies impact the future of work? What are you seeing at this point? Um So we do a lot of work. OK. What happened? Oh, and well, we didn't do the images because we didn't get on to that bit of a conversation. I think there is a microphone issue. Can you can you quickly? All right, they don't do well, a few technological issues, please bear with us. But do I? Apologies, I'll start again. So um A I is definitely changing jobs, but it's also changing work. So what we're talking about and what we're studying and working with clients at Mercer is how is that changing first up is that is changing the nature of work? Um And that's where we talk about jobs, skills processes, the w the work that we, we're doing every day, it changes the workforce. So starting to think about what's the workforce that you're going to need and in particular, what are the skills that you're going to need into the future. Um And that's something that is fairly embryonic for a lot of large organizations in particular. Um And then the third thing is that the future of work will change the organization. So these hierarchical structures that typify a lot of large organizations around the world will ultimately be replaced with a structures that will be far more agile work. There will be far more fluidity of people doing tasks and skills. Um And so that's gonna be this fundamental change that's actually going to materialize, not just the way that we work, but the way that our organizations are structured and prep social structures as well. Yeah, you have a front row seat. Given your role at top goal, you mentioned skills earlier, what skills have been elevated, given the premium due to A I and conversely what skills have been downgraded? Well, there are a variety of skills that relate to the new A I fields, I suppose you could label it as such and those are all still developing. And so the role of a chief A I officer or a similar type of role is a new role that didn't even exist two years ago. Now, companies are hiring C levels who are introducing A I strategy into the organization and those individuals are responsible for increasing the productivity of all the workers in the organization, particularly at the operational level. And so what we've done at top t just as one example is we worked with hurst to be able to help them with their operational strategy and how A I interp plays with that, even having them hire one of our talent to become one of their sea levels, to instantiate an A I strategy within that organization. And you're seeing that across all different types of large organizations globally. We're helping to lead that. But all, all of the other consulting companies are as well to be able to look at, where are the operational problems? Where are the A I opportunities and how do we actually ensure that those challenges are solved through A I? Yeah, we'll soon circled back on that. I do want to go back to you, Renee looking at the intersection between A I and human capital based on Marsh mclennan research. It seems to me as though hr leaders in particular are ill equipped and maybe much of the sea, we are ill equipped to navigate this new era of human collaboration with A I? Why is that what needs to change in the immediate short term? Yeah, it's um it's fascinating. So Mercer has done a, a number of studies in this case, CEO S are focused on, on A I. So in our later study, about 40% of CEO S are considering A I and considering how it will fundamentally change their business. Interestingly though uh the hr departments in those organizations are not as focused on it so less than uh 14% of hr departments have any specific dedicated focus on A I. Um And so what's standing up is this momentum around A I the impact on jobs, of course, employees are hearing that jobs will be eliminated and these types of things, organizations are starting to think about um where it impacts. Uh but the hr departments that will actually be important for helping to change that workforce um do not have as much focus on it. And that could be a big gap that's emerging. Yeah, let's talk about that job obsolete and, and whether it's warranted, you know, one thing that I hear a lot of people say in this space is that A I will remove a lot of those wrote tedious tasks. One thing I have noted and especially in the US is a number of corporations have this apprenticeship model where in entry level employees or interns really get their feet wet by doing some of those repetitive. Um And, and road task. And so do you see a future in which companies use A I to replace junior level employees? And what's the impact on future generations of professionals? I'd love to hear the both of your thoughts on that. So certainly a lot of Alama statistics out there about the number of jobs that will be eliminated. Um But the same sort of Alama statistics that have happened with every technological evolution, I think along the way, no doubt. About it. A I will eliminate uh mundane routine type tasks. Um I think talking about sort of taking out a category of a workforce at early entry career level. Um, isn't the way that we'll be thinking about it though. I think we'll be thinking about as you're coming into your career in your early career. What are the skills that you're going to need to learn and how do we expose you to those skills throughout the organization? Um to map to, you know, either the leadership models or the the technical models that we need into the future. So I think it's about redeployment. Um and, and thinking about uh work differently, I'm sure everyone is familiar with the BC G study that was corroborated by Harvard where the consultants at BC G were greatly improved in terms of their productivity once they started using generative A I. And so the immediate impact I see is the reduction of workforce in areas that A I generative A I namely can actually impact directly and has proven track record in improving the efficiency in those areas. Consultants are one of those, but that doesn't mean consultants are going to go away. It means that they're just going to be made more efficient. And so you'll need less consultants to be able to do the types of work that a consultant does stay on you. Uh in a now, you know, widely viewed interview with uh British Prime Minister Rishi Soak. Elon Musk said that A I is the most disruptive force in human history. It's smarter than the smartest human. And as a result, he envisions a future where in people don't need jobs, um, they might have jobs just for personal satisfaction, but A I will be able to do everything so jobs will not be a necessity. Do you share those sentiments? Curious to hear your reaction to that? Well, if I could do my job, that was great. But I don't see a future any time too soon where A I is going to be able to do all the executive level functions and tasks that are needed. And it's currently in a state where it's still hallucinating on rather mundane tasks. And so I think we'll get there maybe eventually, but I'm not sure in my lifetime. Um I think it's an episode of Black Mirror for sure. Um But I'd have to agree. I don't think so in my lifetime. A I will just augment the work that we do um And executive functioning should also be also changing, evolving uh in there. So, um I think that we'll see a whole new range of jobs. We'll see a whole new range of jobs that will be augmented by, by A I. Um I don't see work if you like uh disappearing entirely. Yeah, quickly one question. Does anyone have a question in the audience? Raise your hand and then Mike handler will run to you anyone at all. All right, let's keep the conversation going. Then I wanna talk about the skills gap. Uh While most CEO S uh say that A I advancement is of utmost importance. They do acknowledge a significantly high share admit um that they do find those efforts hampered by a lack of suitable employees with the understanding, expertise in this field. What's the solution here to address the global skills gap? I'll hand over in in just a moment because um I think that you will be well placed to, to talk about this. Um No doubt organizations around um the world are grappling with, with skills. Um As we think about A I, there seems to be two camps of organization, those that are focused on it for productivity use. Um And they're looking at the skills that will uh deliver that immediate productivity improvement if you like. Um it's probably a smaller number of organizations that are looking more holistically at how this A I will actually impact their business, their business model, uh their distribution or their customer base. Um As you get into that second camp and more organizations will obviously need to uh the skill need increases enormously. M Mercer and and Marsh mclennan are doing some work with organizations at the moment to map those skills that they need in the future. Um But it's going to be a pathway to getting there and there is going to be um a specific demand for, for specific skills which I think certainly tass you can talk to at the moment. So a very interesting finding from doing a fair amount of sea level consulting work with large companies and their A I strategies and how they're working to implement A I in general is the finding that the new skill set is not really the issue. It's really teaching people who are within the organization how to leverage A I and taking the current folks who are either running operations or running different functions, how to make sure their function is leveraging A I most appropriately. And so that finding was a bit surprising to me because I think most like a lot of folks, you would think, OK, we need a new person or a new set of folks to create A I strategies and execute on them. In fact, it's a small group that enables everyone to leverage A I and those efficiencies from that strategy really in order to the benefit of the organization. And so not focusing so much on the new skill sets that need to be brought into the organization, but really how to augment folks who are currently working there and just enable them to have a sidekick or a generative A I component to their work that they can use fluidly, that really helps drive efficiency in their work. Yeah, to your point, I am seeing an enhanced focus on reskilling and upskilling employees. And I think one part of that is a financial aspect, it's considerably cheaper than finding new hires, but it does still require a sizable investment in driving some of those efforts. So what metrics should organizations use to measure the success of reskilling initiatives, upskilling initiatives and really the integration of A I in the workplace, adoption of sidekicks or these new types of tools and the outcomes from those. What you find in generative A I, especially within coding or some other areas that it's been heavily leveraged in is that there are certain folks who are really proficient at using it and certain folks who are not and the reasons underlying that are often quite surprising it has to do. In fact, in large part, as we've seen with the psychology of the user, if a user thinks they're more expert, they're actually likely to be less proficient at using the A I because they're not going to ask the relevant questions. And so teaching folks how to use A I in a way that inures to the benefit of the organization and having feedback loops to be able to know whether that's being successful or not is critical for the last 10 seconds. How do you incentivize the adoption of A I and get employees to explore its many possibilities? I think you've got to incentivize it with enthusiasm and with transparency around what the organizations were doing. People will be scared if the organization isn't being open and transparent and also enthusiastic about it. Um And so that has to be the critical piece. Ultimately, we'll get to pay for skills. Um And we're seeing some organizations move to there, but that's going to come over the next few years. Very well said Pao Renee, thank you so much for your time. Next up is Fortune Media, Ceo Alan Murray. Thank you.