AI Adoptability vs Adaptability: Who Should Pay for Keeping the Employee Employable when the Job Description Changes?
AI is rapidly reshaping the workforce, and employees must now prepare for job descriptions that are constantly evolving. Imagine having a job you’ve done well for over ten years, and suddenly, your company decides to automate part of it. With this change comes new skills you never needed before, while some of your responsibilities disappear overnight. Between the technology announcement and your next performance review, you might find yourself counting down your days before you’re laid off and replaced.
This raises an important question: if the company changes what makes you valuable, how much responsibility do they have to help you stay valuable?
Employees cannot expect their jobs to remain the same forever, and employers cannot promise a lifetime of work. However, this does not explain why the cost of adaptation should fall on the person with the least control over the changes.
The case for owning your career
The truth is, job skills evolve over time, and as an employee, it is your responsibility to take charge of your career. This means constantly staying ahead of what's new in the market and within your industry. An enhanced skill can open doors to promotions or even several opportunities in other companies. Someone who understands their industry, seeks feedback, and learns beyond their immediate responsibilities has more options when circumstances change.
Another point is that employers can offer ongoing training to their staff to retain valuable workers. But employers also have limits. A small business cannot fund every certification or prepare every employee for every possible career. Training budgets must compete with other expenses, and the return is uncertain, especially if an employee leaves shortly after completing an expensive program.
From that perspective, personal responsibility is practical. When employees continue to seek advancement, they gain long-term advantages, which can aid their growth. The challenge comes when this “reasonable expectation” is applied to justify every gap in skills, no matter how it was created or who might benefit from addressing it.
When a business decision becomes an individual shortcoming
We often discuss skills gaps as though employees have fallen behind through a lack of effort. Sometimes people do avoid learning, while some are reluctant to change a process they’ve used for years. But a skill gap can also emerge due to the decisions business leaders make.
Take, for instance, an employee hired to manage customer accounts. The company introduces an AI-enabled system to reduce workload and improve efficiency. Before then, her responsibilities were limited to basic account management tasks, such as responding to customer inquiries, processing orders, and updating account information. The introduction of the AI-enabled system significantly altered her role, as she now needed to interpret data insights, understand the rationale behind the AI's recommendations, and have the technical expertise to navigate the AI system's errors, all new skills she has to acquire. When her performance falls short because she hasn’t mastered the skills, is it a fair judgment to conclude that she’s no longer capable of her job?
Her years of experience haven’t disappeared, but the requirements have changed. If the company provides a brief demonstration and expects immediate proficiency, the resulting performance gap tells us something about the transition as well as the employee. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates, based on surveyed employers’ expectations, that 59 out of every 100 workers will need training by 2030. Eleven of those 100 are expected to miss out on the training they need.
These projections expose a contradiction: businesses anticipate needing substantial workforce development while also anticipating that some workers will go without it. We should be cautious about calling those workers unprepared without asking how preparation was made available to them.
Responsibility should reflect who controls the change
Employers need to take on more of the costs when they significantly change the skills required for a job. There's a big difference between an employee learning a completely new career and someone updating their skills to meet new demands for their current job. In Reskilling in the Age of AI, Raffaella Sadun, Jorge Tamayo, and their collaborators share insights from interviews with leaders from roughly 40 organizations focused on reskilling their workforce. They argue that reskilling is crucial and the responsibility of leaders and managers throughout the organization. This means the people responsible for changing the work should also be involved in preparing people to perform it.
The International Labour Organization also highlights that everyone: employers, employees, governments, and training providers, should share the responsibility for learning and development, including employers investing in education. We believe that this shared responsibility should reflect the influence each party has. Organizations choose the technology they use, set the timeline for its implementation, and determine performance standards. This gives them a lot of control over how challenging the transition will be.
When leaders decide to invest in a new system, they need to consider the costs of developing the skills of the employees who will use it. If a system seems affordable just because employees are expected to cover their own learning, it might be worth reevaluating the investment.
Time is part of the investment
Now you might be quick to say, “I pay for courses.” But paying for the training is just part of the training efforts needed. The other part employers need to be aware of is access to the training.
Take, for instance, an employee who has a full 40-hour workload. When training is introduced without changing deadlines or workload, exactly when is the learning supposed to happen? If the answer is "evenings and weekends," then the employee is using their personal time in addition to their work responsibilities. Some employees can manage this, but others cannot. It would be a mistake to think that the ability to do so is simply a matter of ambition.
In Trends in Adult Learning, the OECD finds that employer financial support is linked to higher participation in adult learning. It also highlights that the workplace and working hours are important places for learning. While funding alone doesn't guarantee participation, it shows how crucial employer support is. Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer also raises a related concern in his discussion of research with Magnus Finnström and Derek Schrader. They argue that company culture can stop employees from using what they learn, even if the training is good. This means that managers need to make decisions about work tasks. They must decide what can wait, be reassigned, or be reduced while someone is learning a new skill. They also need to create chances for employees to use their new skills. If not, telling employees to “take ownership” may just mean they have to use their personal time to deal with competing company priorities.
Employers cannot promise every employee a future role
During a major change, some roles will disappear, some transitions require more time or money than an organization can reasonably provide, and some employees may struggle despite substantial support, or choose to leave afterward. So it would be unrealistic to ask businesses to make promises they cannot guarantee.
Some roles will disappear. Some transitions require more time or money than an organization can reasonably provide. Employees may decline relevant training, struggle despite substantial support, or choose to leave afterward.
But a further problem arises when employers judge readiness before providing a reasonable opportunity to learn. Someone who has already used a new tool may initially outperform someone encountering it for the first time, but it does not, by itself, tell us which person could become more capable with instruction and practice.
The World Economic Forum suggests that employers should train workers for their current jobs and also help some move to new roles within the company. A job might become obsolete, but the person doing that job could still bring value in another position. In their report, BCG’s Sagar Goel and Orsolya Kovács-Ondrejkovic discuss reskilling as a process of change. They emphasize the need to evaluate employees, support their on-the-job learning, and match them with new roles.
So yes, an employers cannot promise every employee a future role. But before replacing an employee, employers should consider what the employee could learn, where that learning could lead, and if the transition is possible. While hiring new staff may still be necessary, it should come after assessing existing employees, not in place of that assessment.
Before calling someone obsolete
We propose a simple principle: when a business changes the skills a job requires, its plan should explain how affected employees will have a fair opportunity to meet those requirements. What does this mean for business owners and leaders?:
Leaders would need to explain what is changing, which capabilities employees will need, and how much time and support the transition allows.
Employees would have responsibilities too: participating, practicing, seeking feedback, and discussing difficulties early. The agreement becomes specific enough for both parties to act on.
Instead of starting with a catalog of training courses, the discussion starts with a decision: what is the organization about to ask people to do differently?
From there, training can address the actual transition, including opportunities to practice and evidence of readiness.
For EduQuencher, that is a useful starting point for employee development. The value of training lies in whether it gives people a credible path from the work they know to the work the organization now needs.
EduQuencher Corporate Training
You may already know your team needs support. The challenge is figuring out what they need to learn, finding the right training, and fitting it into a workweek that’s already full.
If figuring out how to prepare your team for changing roles feels like a lot to take on, let EduQuencher help you get them on the right path. We offer training in both the hard and soft skills needed to move your business forward.
Before you let another valuable employee go, talk to us about helping them build the skills their changing role requires.