(Re)Calibrate Your IT Workforce for AI

Identifying and securing the appropriate AI competencies is cumbersome.
Business is implementing AI faster than you can access the skills needed.
You need a clear AI talent strategy today, but you feel like you keep hitting a wall.
There’s no time to begin your AI workforce recalibration from scratch.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

AI integration is not just about adopting cutting-edge technologies; it’s about deliberately aligning your workforce with technological advancements. Through strategic workforce planning, IT teams can navigate the dynamic landscape of AI implementation and ensure a workforce that is adept and adaptable to the evolving environment.
Emerging best practices are still being identified, putting your organization in a reactive state.
Proactive planning is crucial to aligning talent with strategic business objectives and technology changes in the dynamic AI landscape.

Impact and Result

Simplify the AI workforce planning process with help from Info-Tech’s AI Competency Library and skills gap analysis tool.
Define the AI competencies needed by breaking down your AI use cases and strategy.
Assess the high-level AI proficiency gap in your workforce to pin-point key competencies of focus.
Identify initiatives to address the proficiency gap and acquire the skills needed to deliver.
Rather than anticipating jobs determine what mix of AI skills is needed.

(Re)Calibrate Your IT Workforce for AI Research & Tools

1. (Re)Calibrate Your IT Workforce for AI Deck – Use this step-by-step document to assist you with determining the workforce competencies you need to deliver on the AI strategy and business outcomes.

This research provides a guide to help organizations determine the AI workforce competencies they need and build a prioritized plan to close their AI skills gap.

2. AI Competency Gap Analysis tool – Use this tool to determine the AI competency gap and to prioritize and plan gap mitigation initiatives.

This tool will help IT leaders uncover what AI competencies they need in their workforce and how they plan to get them so they can deliver on AI and business goals.

3. AI Competency Library – Use this library to identify, define, and determine the level of proficiency of the AI competencies you need in your workforce. Competencies by use case and role are mapped so you don’t have to start from a blank page.

The AI Competency Library will help you select and develop AI competencies. It provides AI use cases and roles mapped to the complimentary competencies needed.

4. Individual Competency Assessment Workbook – A workbook that extends your team-level assessment to individuals, enabling targeted development planning.

This is a supplementary workbook that helps you bridge your AI workforce gap analysis with your employees’ individual development plans. It guides you through recording role-related competencies as well as individual employees’ proficiency against them.

(Re)Calibrate Your IT Workforce for AI

Align your workforce with the evolving landscape of AI technology.

Analyst perspective

Align your workforce with the evolving landscape of AI technology.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of IT, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) has become a strategic imperative for organizational competitiveness. The introduction of AI not only brings technological advancements but also necessitates new workforce skills. The benefit of streamlining processes through automation will necessitate a demand for new skill sets. Using your AI strategy and use cases as inputs to identify the competencies required for a smooth transition to an AI-enhanced workforce allows the organization to proactively address any gaps through upskilling or reskilling existing employees or strategically hiring new talent if necessary.

AI integration is not just about adopting cutting-edge technologies; it's about strategically aligning your workforce with technological advancements. Through strategic workforce planning, IT teams can navigate the dynamic landscape of AI implementation and ensure a workforce that is adept and adaptable to the evolving environment.

Heather, Leier-Murray, Research Director, CIO - People & Leadership

Heather Leier-Murray
Research Director, CIO – People & Leadership
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive summary

Your Challenge

Common Obstacles

Info-Tech's Approach

The rapid technological evolution and introduction of AI has created gaps between the required and available skills needed to smoothly implement and maintain AI. Some critical challenges organizations might face include:

Identifying and securing the appropriate AI competencies.
Business is implementing AI faster than you can access the skills needed.
You need a clear AI talent strategy today, but you feel like you keep hitting a wall.

The rapid evolution of AI in the workplace makes it difficult to identify how IT skills must shift to support AI introduction into an organization smoothly.

The speed of change required to adopt AI is faster than workers can develop skills.
Emerging best practices for AI are still being identified, putting your organization in a reactive state.

Despite this, proactive planning is crucial for aligning talent with strategic business objectives and technology changes in the dynamic AI landscape.

Simplify the AI workforce planning process with help from Info-Tech's AI Competency Library and workforce planning tools.

Define the AI competencies needed by breaking down your AI use cases and strategy.
Assess the AI proficiency gap in your workforce at a high-level to pinpoint key competencies of focus.
Identify initiatives to address the proficiency gaps.

Rather than anticipating jobs, determine what mix of AI skills is needed.

Info-Tech Insight
AI integration is not just about adopting cutting-edge technologies; it's about deliberately aligning your workforce with technological advancements. Through strategic workforce planning, IT teams can navigate the dynamic landscape of AI implementation and ensure a workforce that is adept and adaptable to the evolving environment.

The AI talent landscape is difficult to navigate

Demand for AI talent is at an all-time high, but supply is extremely limited.

Identifying your AI workforce needs is cumbersome.
No organization has the time to begin their AI workforce recalibration from scratch.
Most organizations are not sure what they need to succeed in the era of autonomization.
Once you've identified your AI workforce needs, the supply of suitable candidates is minimal.
Most organizations are going to be forced to develop their AI workforce from within.

The introduction of AI technologies requires a realignment of the workforce to effectively leverage the benefits and opportunities that AI can offer.

85% of organizations are using AI in some way, with 20% conducting proof of concepts, 8% integrating them into processes, and 2.5% believing AI is core to the business (Info-Tech Tech Trends 2023).

34% of companies say that limited AI skills, expertise, or knowledge are a barrier to AI adoption (IBM, 2022).

The AI skills gap is real

AI's fast development challenges IT's skills and smooth AI integration.

The exponential speed at which AI is being adopted by organizations is a challenge to IT's ability to integrate and deliver:

Organizations are reacting and must constantly consider which technologies are emerging next.
Organizational strategic objectives are tied to maturing and delivering AI-specific competencies.
Those who only see the next few steps will miss out on the demand for evolving skills and put them in a reactive state.
An AI strategy that does not also consider the workforce strategy will create internal tensions.

Rapid technological evolution makes it difficult to keep your workforce aligned.

In 2023, the World Economic Forum estimated that 44% of core skills will change within 5 years.

Source: WEF, 2023.

(Re)Calibrate Your IT Workforce for AI visualization

Align your workforce with the evolving landscape of AI technology.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 4 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Define your AI competency need

Call 1: Understand common AI roles, competencies, and your specific objectives and challenges.

Guided Implementation 2: Assess the AI skills gap

Call 1: Assess the current AI competency proficiency level and skill sets. Identify the skills gap.

Guided Implementation 3: Address the AI skills gap

Call 1: Identify the relationship between current initiatives and capabilities. Initialize the corresponding initiatives plan for AI skills development.
Call 2: Touch base to follow through and ensure that benefits have been received.