Most corporations are adopting AI as quick as they will discover makes use of for it. They’re writing emails and different enterprise paperwork shortly, conducting environment friendly market analysis and discovering different methods to spice up productiveness. Sadly, some are utilizing it to scale back or exchange junior positions, working underneath the idea that present workers will fill the productiveness hole with AI — and that’s a mistake.
AI can be utilized as a tremendous productiveness instrument throughout all ranges of a enterprise. Giving all workers entry to this powerhouse know-how can have important advantages, nevertheless it’s not a alternative for workers. It may be tempting to interchange junior employees with AI, and which may assist in the short-term, however it might probably have dire long-term penalties. With out junior employees who prepare, study and transfer up, we may very well be severely depleting our expertise pool.
Expertise over know-how
As a real-world illustration, let me let you know about one among my firm’s present vice presidents, in our gross sales group. He possesses a strong mixture of technical experience and eloquence. He understands work together with prospects at any stage of the client’s journey. He can expertly talk a couple of area of interest technical topic. And he didn’t achieve these expertise by asking an AI chatbot.
After graduating from faculty, he grew to become a enterprise improvement consultant (BDR) at a tech firm. That is an entry-level place that entails establishing conferences for account executives and constructing a gross sales pipeline.
This is likely one of the jobs that has been impacted by AI. 6sense’s State of the BDR 2025 Research Report revealed that 70% of BDRs who’re utilizing AI at work imagine this makes them extra productive. BDRs have to do loads of groundwork, reminiscent of chilly outreach, researching accounts, following up on inbound leads, qualifying new prospects and interacting with prospects who attend occasions. Many of those duties could be automated.
After 11 months as BDR, this vp was promoted to account govt after which moved as much as a director-level position. He’s now a vp in control of the industrial and enterprise gross sales workforce. His expertise on the entrance strains from his first, entry-level job has formed his present position. He is aware of firsthand what it takes to achieve these junior gross sales positions and work together with prospects and construct a pipeline. He’s additionally been an account govt, so he understands construct buyer relationships no matter a enterprise’s dimension. The idea of on-the-job studying applies to anybody holding a senior place; attending to the higher rungs of the ladder requires first getting your fingers soiled within the particulars of the position, failing and succeeding.
Staff in any place and at any stage can enhance their productiveness by utilizing AI. Organizations ought to discover methods to allow their staff to be extra productive, but when they use it to interchange junior positions with AI, they’re forfeiting their future expertise pool in alternate for short-term monetary positive factors.
To additional illustrate this level, let’s have a look at an actual instance based mostly on a fairly boring however needed subject: spreadsheets.
Expertise enhanced by expertise
For many corporations at this time, reaching their objectives requires profiting from their assets, and essentially the most invaluable of these is time.
I just lately requested our head of individuals and tradition to create a company map that outlines how workers at totally different ranges of every group ought to allocate their time. This consists of readability about how workers at totally different ranges of our organizational hierarchy ought to spend their time — e.g., how a lot time particular person contributors, managers, administrators and VPs ought to spend on tactical tasks versus strategic tasks.
Relatively than creating this spreadsheet from scratch, we used AI. I gave ChatGPT a three-sentence immediate, and it created a desk that was 80% excellent. Then the magic occurred: our skilled drew on her deep HR experience to make it 100% excellent. Her story is similar because the aforementioned gross sales chief — having labored in HR for properly over a decade, she had the talents to adapt ChatGPT’s basic framework to my firm’s particular context and make the desk immediately usable. The following day, I used this desk to reply an worker’s query about what he wanted to do to get a promotion.
Earlier than the arrival of generative AI, creating this sort of desk would have taken days, with a number of iterations and deprioritizing different tasks. With AI, it took minutes. AI created a desk that was 80% usable, nevertheless it was our skilled head of individuals and tradition’s real-world experience that took it the ultimate 20% of the way in which. That looks like a minority place, however that remaining 20% is what took the mission from good to nice.
AI to reinforce, not exchange, workers
The talents and data wanted to take that desk to the end line are gained by way of expertise and dealing one’s approach up by way of the ranks. Junior roles offer you important problem-solving expertise — in addition to the prospect to make errors that form your imaginative and prescient and pursuit of success.
If corporations exchange junior positions with AI, how will individuals ever grow to be consultants? What’s going to occur when the present crop of leaders takes jobs with different corporations, grow to be consultants or retire? Who’s subsequent up with all of your institutional data and tradition? You want a pipeline of expertise ready within the wings when the inevitable occurs.
AI is now out there for staff in any respect ranges to learn from – however there’ll by no means be an alternative choice to experience-based studying. As an alternative of questioning how AI can scale back employees numbers, enterprise leaders ought to take into consideration use AI to extra shortly develop their expertise pool. It’s not people vs. AI — it’s people plus AI.