Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT present major opportunities—and challenges—for HR professionals tasked with attracting, developing, and retaining talent. Employers are considering how they can best respond to potential skills gaps and prepare their workforce to navigate these new technologies. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, 42% of companies said they plan to prioritize training in AI and big data skills over the next five years.
These issues are top-of-mind for Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, which partners with universities and companies to provide online learning opportunities. He offered ideas on how HR can prepare to address these skills gaps, made the case for learning and development investments even amid downturns, and spoke about Coursera’s focus on skills-based hiring.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
HR departments are starting to think about skills gaps they might be seeing in the coming years with these new AI technologies. How are you having conversations with companies about this?
I’m one of the people who totally believes this is a very big deal. I don’t think people are overhyping this one.
As all this software that [employees] use today gets electrified with AI, they’re going to be way more productive. And then companies are going to probably ask themselves, “Do I need 10 times the productivity?”
What I think HR should be focused on is: How do we understand how AI will impact job roles and activities that people perform? And when certain jobs are substantially automated, how do we rescale and redeploy those folks into other roles?
I would say, start investing in your leaders, in your managers, because they're the ones who are gonna have to navigate change, and then try to create the support structures through learning and development, so people whose jobs are displaced will have pathways to new jobs and new careers.
HR…should really think, how do I build an agile talent organization? And then how do I create career pathways and learning pathways so I can get people into productive jobs, when current jobs are being so fundamentally changed?
How should HR departments and companies be thinking about learning and development investment right now? With downturns, companies might be looking to cut down on L&D spending.
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When I think about building organizational capacity for agility, I think that's fundamentally an HR function. Ultimately, the organization needs to change, but HR needs to put in place the programs and the supporting mechanisms to facilitate organizational agility.
The No. 1 reason people say they leave is lack of career development. If you can tie learning to career advancement, at least you're being responsive to the number one reason.
Interestingly, L&D budgets are getting cut. But I would say the need to have organizational agility is fundamentally a question of learning and development. So, like, how could this be happening?
In many cases, there's been a failure to either deliver or at least recognize the value that L&D can play…in developing the capacity for organizational agility. That's hard to measure.
If you [can] demonstrate career pathways through learning, increased retention, increased employee engagement, then you're a long way towards return-on-investment claims. I think retention, engagement are two really pretty easy-to-measure things.
I understand Coursera has launched a hiring solutions initiative in India to match employers with people who have the skills they’re seeking. You’re going to launch that in the US soon as well — can you talk a bit about it?
For skills-based hiring, if someone doesn't have a college degree or any prior work experience, my guess is that there's going to be a profound impact on jobs. And we're gonna have to rescale and redeploy people into new positions. And there's going to be a question of, “Well, did you learn the skills to do this job?” And you're not going to go look at a résumé.
So we built this skills profile…so a learner can show, “This is what I've learned,” and a recruiter can find people who have those skills and have learned those things, and built those projects.
Credentials are important, but seeing the work that people have done, and also using nontraditional credentials, I think is going to be a big part of the whole skills-based hiring trend.