As we are early into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, advances in technology rapidly shift the tasks performed by people and those performed by automation and algorithms, both the nature of work and how it gets done are undergoing significant change.

i4cp, in coordination with USC business professor, author, and thought leader John Boudreau, recently released a major new study that explores how high-performance organizations are leveraging or preparing for automation, AI, and robotics in the workplace as well as in the HR function.

While expectations around job losses are often overstated, in contrast, the rising skill shortages are quietly increasing in importance. A significant number of study participants said that advanced work automation would more often augment human capabilities or transform roles rather than act as a substitute for workers, including for entry-level positions. Despite this:

•  Less than half of high-performance organizations reported taking actions beyond assessing capability gaps and identifying future skills.
•  Among all organizations, less than one in three are identifying upskilling or reskilling pathways for talent whose work is being reinvented by automation.
•  Only 22% of organizations have focused on upskilling/reskilling programs to close the capability gap, though high-performance organizations are 2x more likely to do so than lower performers.
•  More recently some progressive learning organizations, like Navistar, are creating Learning 4.0 Frameworks to better align to the rapid pace of business ()