Artificial intelligence is supposed to make workers more productive, eliminate tedious tasks, and help businesses operate with fewer people. But there could be an ugly long-term consequence hiding behind all that efficiency.
AI might be wiping out the training ground for tomorrow’s business leaders. You see, new research from talent management company Talogy finds that 78 percent of surveyed HR and talent professionals are concerned about the long-term loss of critical leadership skills as AI takes over work traditionally performed by people in entry-level positions.
That creates an interesting problem. Companies can use AI to automate junior-level work today, but those jobs have historically given inexperienced employees opportunities to learn how businesses actually operate. Remove enough of those opportunities, and organizations could eventually discover that they don’t have enough experienced people ready to move into more demanding roles.
Talogy surveyed 207 senior HR leaders, talent acquisition managers, and learning and development professionals. That’s a relatively small and specialized group, so the 78 percent figure shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning that nearly eight in 10 companies believe their leadership pipelines are doomed.
Still, the concern itself makes sense.
Think about all the boring work people do early in their careers. They write basic reports, research information, prepare presentations, sit in meetings, answer questions, fix mistakes, and watch more experienced colleagues make decisions. Some of that work isn’t particularly exciting, but doing it can teach people how to think, communicate, solve problems, and deal with responsibility.
Generative AI can already perform portions of that work in seconds. Talogy argues that companies will therefore need to become more deliberate about developing employees rather than assuming experience will naturally accumulate as people move through their careers.
The company identifies four areas it believes will become particularly important, grouping them under the acronym RISE: responsiveness, insight, sustainability, and effectiveness. In simpler terms, workers need to remain adaptable, think critically, handle change, communicate well, and turn ideas into useful results.
Those aren’t exactly surprising qualities for future leaders. The more interesting question is whether companies will actually invest in teaching them.
AI creates a tempting economic equation. If a company once needed five junior employees and can accomplish the same work with two employees using AI, hiring three fewer people may look great on a spreadsheet. Multiply that across departments and years, however, and there are fewer people gaining the experience needed to become tomorrow’s managers, directors, and executives.
There’s another possibility too. AI could change what early-career development looks like rather than simply destroying it. Junior employees might spend less time on repetitive work and get exposure to higher-level responsibilities sooner. Used that way, AI could potentially accelerate development instead of undermining it.
But that won’t happen automatically. Companies racing to replace entry-level work with AI should probably think beyond the next quarterly earnings report. The inexperienced employee doing tedious work today might have been the executive making important decisions 15 years from now.
If businesses automate away the bottom rung of the ladder, they shouldn’t be surprised when fewer people can climb to the top.
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