PwC and Cisco Bet on AI to Train Their Teams

The Need for Structured AI Training

In the current context, employees need structured training to prepare for the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the workplace. Companies should prioritize skill development rather than resorting to layoffs. Entry-level employees remain crucial for organizational health, and their training is essential to maintain a positive dynamic within companies.

At a recent summit, moderators asked CEOs about the possibility of AI eliminating jobs. While most stated that AI helps workers accomplish more without replacing them, new jobs, particularly at the entry level, are becoming scarce. Furthermore, AI could competently perform many work tasks by 2029. In light of these prospects, developing workers' skills in AI appears to be a key solution to mitigate these economic impacts.

Political Initiatives and the Role of Companies

Without clear initiatives from companies, workers often have to navigate their skill development alone. On the political side, the AI Workforce Training Act, a bipartisan bill introduced in February, proposes tax credits for companies that train their employees in areas such as prompt engineering, data literacy, machine learning, and AI ethics. Additionally, the latest regulatory framework on AI from the Trump administration calls for training and apprenticeships in AI.

However, as long as politics remains unstable, companies themselves have the greatest potential for impact. A recent Gallup poll revealed that managerial support is the primary driver of successful AI adoption. Dan Priest, AI director at PwC, develops AI strategies with various clients and has observed a range of approaches to skill development within the companies he works with, from formal to informal. Regardless of the approach, he believes that effective leadership inherently includes skill development — it’s simply a good strategy.

Practical Cases of AI Training

For example, PwC helped the hotel company Wyndham create an agent-based system to manage customer requests, reducing call times by at least 30%. Employees learned to supervise these agents themselves, allowing managers to spend significantly more time training these employees in new skill areas, such as how to provide customers with a better and more engaging experience. The goal was not to replace these individuals but to reinvest in their development, which was key to the program's success.

Tailoring Training to Experience

Priest has also seen success in developing employee skills at PwC but noted that avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach makes a difference. "Different generations in the workforce will respond differently to AI," he said. "We created short explanatory videos to perform certain specific tasks with AI, and younger recruits respond very well to that; they like that format. But that doesn’t work for partners. For them, we gather them in a room and discuss how to develop their non-technical skills in new ways based on what AI is now handling."

Although Priest stated that most young recruits have shown enthusiasm for learning to use AI, leaders need to be sensitive to how this openness varies based on time spent in the workforce.

Prioritizing Talent and Innovation

Similar to other arguments in favor of AI's positive potential for work, Centoni stated that Cisco's AI skill development efforts have so far highlighted talents among employees with years of institutional knowledge that were otherwise buried in repetitive tasks. "The problems you can’t solve with prompts, that knowledge is just sitting in an engineer's head," she said. "When we used AI to automate everything that could be automated, it elevates those people."

Centoni does not yet know how this will change the type of talent the company seeks and how it will evaluate its success once employees are onboarded. While Centoni is not ready to say whether skill development mitigates layoffs at Cisco, her increased interest in the types of people she still needs to recruit was clear.

Shukla takes a similar approach. "Every employee needs to operate in an environment where you push a model to failure, and then you understand where your unique value lies," he said. "For us, AI skill development is directly tied to career growth: whether you stay with our company for decades or just a few years, we feel a responsibility to cultivate a mindset around leveraging AI and mastering its use."

Priest shared this emphasis on talent, which is why he does not believe that rapid layoffs are the solution for optimizing with AI. Companies that achieve results, he said, first turn to skill development. "It all comes down to talent," he said. "There’s a reason there’s a talent war in Silicon Valley right now."