6 essential workplace skills in the age of AI
With AI becoming a bigger part of our working lives, it’s natural to feel concerned about how it might affect your career. While AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can take on some tasks – writing emails, drafting reports, and so on – there are still plenty of things it can’t do.
“We should try and think about how AI can help us, rather than replace us,” says SEEK’s Director of AI product, Carolyn Bennett. “Yes, it is able to perform some tasks on our behalf, but this can also give us more time to work on other areas that require more human judgement or specific skillset that only we have.”
Bennett advises that AI tools are valuable in providing a starting point, but that it’s up to the individual to build on that with the knowledge and skills we’ve learned through experience.
“It can review our starting point and help us improve our work,” she says.
AI is evolving so fast that it can be hard to predict exactly how it will affect workplaces – and industries. That’s why it’s increasingly important to focus on the skills that are harder to automate.
Key skills to sharpen
Focusing on the skills AI doesn’t offer is key to bringing value to any workplace. Many of these skills and attributes are soft skills –and enhancing them not only makes you a more adaptable and effective team member, but a more intuitive and resilient person overall.
Here are some of the traits to sharpen to help you work side-by-side with AI.
Empathy
As humans, we almost instinctively seek to find and understand human connection.
“Emotional intelligence, like being able to walk into a room and sense that someone's not feeling very happy, is something that AI simply can’t replicate,” says Jane Jackson, Career Coach.
Empathy is an innate human feeling that can be developed over time, through social interaction. It’s something you can improve on by actively engaging with those around you, listening to their experiences, and being curious about their perspectives.
By focusing on practicing empathy at work, you’re able to relate to and engage with those around you on a human level – whether that's a customer or a colleague – which is something AI is unable to do.
The ability to feel compassion for those around us becomes even more vital in roles where you are managing and leading other people.
Innovation
While AI is great at working with data that’s already out there, it’s humans who bring fresh ideas and big-picture thinking, says Jackson.
AI works by using information it was trained on, rather than creating something new. “AI can be helpful, but it relies on what already exists,” she explains. “It might look like something new, but it’s a remix of what’s come before.”
By contrast, people have the ability to think creatively, imagine new possibilities and explore ideas that haven’t been implemented yet –and that’s where real innovation happens.
Creative problem solving
AI may be good at generating solutions that have already been solved, but humans are able to creatively solve less common problems.
While you can give AI information and prompts to solve a problem, it doesn’t really “think” – it rehashes solutions that it has already been trained with. It doesn’t come up with solutions that have not been tried before. It is also limited in how it can assess the impact of a solution on the impact of a solution on in a specific situation.
Humans have the capacity to stress test a solution to a problem to see how it may affect others, or how it would be received. People are also able to combine elements of different solutions to see what works best – nuance that often escapes AI.
Critical thinking
Critical thinking has always been an essential skill for workers, but in the age of AI and misinformation it has become even more important.
AI can sometimes 'hallucinate' and produce inaccurate or made-up information, says Jackson. It’s up to employees to interrogate information and identify when details aren't quite adding up.
“That’s why it’s important to approach AI with a healthy dose of scepticism,” she explains. “Too many people take AI-generated content at face value. For example, studies show that students using AI for essays have included incorrect statistics or references that don’t actually exist.”
Even beyond using AI, critical thinking is a powerful skill to help you dig deeper and think strategically across all your work. To sharpen your critical-thinking skills, be curious about things you don’t understand or haven’t learned yet, do extra research to fact check AI’s claims, and trust your intuition about when something doesn’t sound right.
How to develop future-proof workplace skills
Navigating change in any workplace can be daunting. But by developing a positive mindset and focusing on the right skills you can feel confident and capable of adapting to changes as they happen.
Work on being adaptable
This is all about your ability to adjust in an uncertain climate, says Shelley Johnson, HR Consultant at Boldside Consulting. “These days, you have to adapt if you want to be successful in your career, and get comfortable with a level of uncertainty.”
Building a tolerance for moving out of your comfort zone takes practice, but it’s a skill you can learn just like any other. It doesn’t have to be limited to work situations, Johnson advises, but could include pushing yourself to pick up a new hobby, going to more networking events, or travelling. Over time, becoming more adaptable becomes like muscle memory and can have benefits all areas of your life.
Stay curious
Maintaining curiosity can reduce the level of fear and anxiety around AI, says Johnson. “Rather than framing it as ‘how is AI going to threaten my job security?’, instead get curious and ask: ‘how could this be useful for me?’”
Johnson explains that fear can sometimes cause people to freeze, especially when things are moving quickly. “I often see people feeling so overwhelmed by the pace of change that they don’t take any action at all,” she says.
Instead, she suggests overcoming this fear by gradually trying new things. This could mean experimenting with AI tools a little bit at a time, such as 10 minutes per day, to dip your toes in the water.
Embrace change
Across the board, the most helpful trait to develop is leaning into change. “To be honest, change is the only constant in our lives. Whenever you get comfortable, there will be change,” says Jackson.
Change is something she has seen many times over the course of her career. “When I started working, we still used manual typewriters, then it became the IBM Selectric and moved on to desktop computers,” she says.
“There’ll always be technological advancements. Each generation has had to adapt and, if we resist, we’ll be left behind. Embrace the changes and think of them as opportunities for you to grow as an individual.”
No one knows exactly how AI will change the workforce over time, so it’s important to be equipped with the skills and mindset that can help you navigate change in general.
By focusing on sharpening essential “human” traits and skills, you can use AI to complement and enhance your work instead of competing against it – an ability every employer is looking for.
