Organizations are racing to set themselves ahead of the curve and lead with AI, however, employee AI training is a sorely underdiscussed subject at work. Hoping to right this and dominate the consulting scene with a comprehensive strategy in mind, PwC is now offering a more elaborate skill-focused training program to ensure that workers keep up with the changes dominating the workplace today. PwC recently unveiled plans to overhaul its workforce development strategy and bridge the gap between human talent and AI capabilities, announcing the “Learning Collective” initiative as the pathway to this goal.
Keeping up with the era of AI, PwC’s employee training program takes on a skill-focused approach, prioritizing human skills alongside technology. (Image: Pexels)
PwC Introduces New Training Programs to Tackle the AI Era and Help Employees Upgrade Their Skills
The Big Four consulting firms are all ramping up their AI expertise and public branding in their own way, and to that end, PwC’s training program upgrades offer a good entry point into skill-building for the AI era. Keeping up with the global shift towards skill-based hiring, the company rolled out its firm-wide “Learning Collective” initiative, introducing an “ecosystem for accelerated growth.” As part of this program, the company is set to prioritize daily learning for its junior employees, setting 30 key skills at the center of the program.
While AI training remains relevant to the PwC program, with 15 skills centered on navigating the technology, the company is also prioritizing 15 “human” skills to strengthen and preserve human capabilities. With the mission of adapting to the AI workplace at the center, the organization is rewriting “soft skills” into more grounded “human skills,” talking abilities like creative application and critical thinking. Helping workers navigate the gray areas of “AI-generated insights,” the training also helps to build empathy and relationship management into the training.
Earlier this year, PwC US Chief Executive Paul Griggs was heard explaining to employees that those who do not embrace AI will get left behind. “Our view is straightforward: AI raises the floor. Humans raise the ceiling,” he told his workforce in a post shared earlier in March. “Technology can accelerate routine analysis and connect information in powerful ways. But judgment — understanding context, interpreting signals, navigating ambiguity, and building trusted relationships — remains fundamentally human.“
Integrating AI Workplace Learning Agents Into the Mix
Training employees on human and AI skills only accounts for one part of the strategy. PwC told Business Insider that the company has also begun using AI agents in the learning process, recognizing that these agents are capable of providing key feedback in more brutal but straightforward ways. That doesn’t mark the end of the organization’s investments in technological support.
The organization also revealed that it is stepping away from traditional classroom environments for these trainings, and instead brings in hands-on challenges and technological support systems to get through the training by working through problems directly. The company also told HRD that AI coaches and assistants inside platforms like Microsoft Teams were being used to help employees practice their client-facing skills and gain confidence with such processes to ensure better performance outside of the trial environment.
Previous reports have also suggested that PwC is now offering its younger, entry-level hires resilience training and other key skills on the job, making it all the more apparent that the company is not willing to sit back and see how its workforce grows. Instead, with the AI training and other human skill beginning for employees at PwC, we see a more comprehensive pattern of support tools emerge.
A New Blueprint for Corporate Learning
The PwC model offers several takeaways for HR leaders in other industries who look to modernize their training functions as well.
- Reprioritizing human skills and capabilities, and ensuring these skills are developed
- Break down silos of tech training exclusively for IT and recognize that it is a company-wide need
- Focus on building employee capabilities as “translators” of tech potential who can shift knowledge and learnings into business values
- Start from the bottom, as junior-level employees may just benefit from the training far more than senior-level employees
Many business leaders have suggested that the future of employment isn’t exclusively tech-led or AI-led but instead involves a synergy between the two for ideal results. To future-proof a business, organizations must first future-proof their workforce, which is a key lesson to take away from the consulting firm’s AI training strategy.
What do you think about PwC’s training program updates and AI preparedness strategies? Share your thoughts with us. Subscribe to The HR Digest for more insights on workplace trends, layoffs, and what to expect with the advent of AI.
