Why older workers are critical to AI adoption in the office

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Despite the stereotype that older workers have a harder time adapting to new technology, these are the workers for whom AI has unique advantages.

Still, 30% of senior-level employees fear they'll be fired for lacking AI skills, according to a recent report from online tutoring company Preply.

Someone with a more complex understanding of business is more effective at applying inputs and assessing outputs using knowledge and skills that AI has not mastered.

In other words, someone with a more complex understanding of the business is more effective at applying inputs and assessing outputs using knowledge and skills that AI has not mastered (at least not yet).

Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration at Cisco, says AI is not yet replacing whole, complex jobs, but rather tasks. "Over time, will it get good at doing jobs? Absolutely," he said. "But no one really knows what the timeframe for that will be."

For the senior-level workforce, Patel says the next few years will be more about augmentation versus any sort of displacement or replacement — given, of course, these workers are willing to meet their employers in the middle and enhance their hard and soft skills in the context of an AI-driven workplace.

As technology continues to advance, 57% of industry experts predict a surge in the demand for soft skills, according to a report from learning management system platform TalentLMS.

"Ultimately, every company is a collection of employees, which are all humans, and they need to be touched and motivated in a very human way," said Nikhil Arora, CEO of Epignosis (parent company of TalentLMS). This is something senior management will have to bear in mind under a modern context as day-to-day roles across the employment architecture change.

Reverse mentoring need is high

Another strategy for higher-level workers to take into consideration, Arora says, is reverse mentoring, a process in which senior management seeks the perspective of less experienced employees. "A lot of young people who are basically growing up on AI, for them it's second nature, where a lot of senior leaders perhaps are now learning AI. It's almost upside down," Arora said. He's a big believer in always having two sets of mentors, "one who's perhaps more seasoned than you, and one who's much younger, because they are closer to the disruptive technologies and how the new age customers are going to behave."