Genetic AI once again appeared on the central stage of the world of technology in 2024. Wherever you were going, someone was talking about it and trying to understand their impact on the business. We can expect the same in 2025, but the conversation is evolving as many proofs of generation AI concepts move towards production or more organizations experiment with generation AI.
In fact, Deloitte’s research shows that two of the three organizations have increased their investment in generated AI due to early indications of business value. A greater investment in generative AI means that companies need more people with AI skills to implement their AI strategies and roadmap. This will require leaders to continue providing AI skills training to their employees in 2025. In 2024, AWS customers and partners wanted to acquire AI skills from partners who want to acquire AI trends. The demand for AI skill training continues to grow.
Dive into five other skill trends this year that you can expect to influence your and your employees’ talent strategy.
Generating AI skills are still important, but don’t ignore soft skills. There is no doubt that leaders will spend more time understanding the fundamentals of generative AI as more businesses adopt generative AI to drive innovation and improve workflows. However, it also refreshes soft skills such as effective communication, decision making, manager coaching, and change management. As change occurs, uncertainty arises and there is a lot of pressure to help leaders prepare their workforce and help them understand organizational perspectives on the evolution of generative AI. Employees need clear guidance and encouragement to become part of change, including psychological safety, to try new things and fail safely. Now is the time to explore your culture and support continuous learning, critical thinking and experimentation at all levels of your organization. Generic AI will do more than we could have imagined. And to accelerate your opportunities with Generated AI, it is important to equip your organization with both soft and hard skills.
There is an increase in learning that drives generative AI. Generation AI will transform your learning methods in 2025. Advances in technology have continuously reduced barriers that will help more people access quality education. Generic AI-driven learning opens up more opportunities to level the playing field in education. Not everyone can have a dedicated direct tutor, but generative AI allows more people to incorporate this type of experience into digital learning systems. Research shows that one-on-one instruction can significantly improve student performance. A generative AI-powered tutor will help you as you learn, understand your current knowledge and skill levels, and provide recommendations and coaching along a personalized learning path if you need additional support.
Digital learning assistants accelerate business outcomes. Students aren’t the only ones who benefit from AI tutors and learning assistants. For leaders, this means that investment in employee digital training modalities will generate even greater return on investment. Employees can increase their learning depth through digital training and quickly develop a workforce with key skillsets that contribute to business growth. Simply put, the faster and better the workforce can learn new concepts and skills through the power of generative AI, which will make your business innovate and improve your revenues faster.
Cohort-style training promotes long-term business impact. One of the best ways to keep up with the pace of technology is to invest in high-class initiatives across the organization that build an engaging culture of learning. However, it can be difficult to know how and where to invest to maximize your organization’s immediate innovation needs. In particular, more and more organizations are deploying short-term, advanced training initiatives for a specific topic, field, or team, due to their interest in generator AI. The key is to host collaborative cohort-style training, including dedicated ideas, hands-on learning and soft skills education. These sessions have several important benefits. First, employees acquire practical use cases that maximize newly developed skills, providing areas of priority that could not have been possible without collaborative practical learning. Second, with priority initiatives identified, leaders can make quick decisions about relocating newly skilled talent into new roles or investing in additional reskills. Third, the short-term and focused nature of training allows organizations to deliver faster results and enhance the business benefits of skill development. This leads to greater leadership buy-in for workforce skills initiatives. Given the success we saw in cohort-style generation AI training, we hope that more leaders will adopt this approach as they continue to increase their workforce from 2025 onwards. And given how quickly generative AI is evolving, speed is more important than ever in the world of technology and business.
Measure the business impact of training efforts. To help customers and partners begin generative AI training, we help them decide how to measure the value of their training efforts. Productivity is an important factor in assessing, but it’s more than that, it’s a long game. By ensuring that your team has the right skills to complete a project or initiative, there is no need to hire new talent, outsource the work, or, even worse, shelved the project completely. Measuring the business impact of continuous training comes down to things that could not have been achieved without skill development. This takes into account team engagement, retention, efficiency, collaboration and the confidence to take risks.
Given how quickly AI and its impact on businesses and people is evolving, we can’t know exactly what 2025 will bring. The only thing leaders can control is the environment they create, allowing their workforce to confidently take on new challenges and opportunities. What’s certain is that even if your roadmap is leading you, investing in your employees will build the skills that are paramount to your success in 2025.
Lonergan is the vice president of training and certification at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
