The future demands on data leadership and AI skills
What is to come...
According to our research, senior decision-makers recognise the benefits of having a workforce with strong data skills, with 40% believing it will increase operational efficiency and productivity and 37% expecting improvements in data-driven decision-making. Furthermore, 36% anticipate gaining a competitive advantage or achieving effective risk management and compliance.
As companies look ahead to the next decade, they must ask where a data-driven workforce will come from. McKinsey claims that "by 2025, smart workflows and seamless interactions among humans and machines will likely be as standard as the corporate balance sheet, and most employees will use data to optimise nearly every aspect of their work." Early adopters of data-driven skills development have already witnessed significant success; data-driven businesses are 20-plus times more likely to acquire new customers and six times more likely to retain them, highlighting the significant impact of data-driven leadership on an organisation's success in the UK market (McKinsey).
The demand for data-driven leadership is becoming more concentrated with the acceleration of AI usage in the workplace. By 2025, AI technology is anticipated to create 12 million more jobs that it replaces, with 97 million specialists needed in the AI industry (Gartner). AI adoption has led to a significant increase in productivity, with 64% of businesses reporting AI to boost their productivity levels, as companies seeing the highest financial returns from AI continue to pull ahead of competitors (McKinsey).
If the UK workforce continues to operate with a data skills deficiency, it can only be expected that they will fail to rise with the tide of AI use in the workplace. Making informed decisions based on data, coupled with AI tools' efficiencies, will allow companies agility when the digital landscape changes rapidly. Managing data change will become the responsibility of middle managers, who will be crucial to any organisation's digital transformation success in the next 2-3 years.
