Leveraging Generative AI for Job Augmentation and Workforce Productivity 2024

Skills At a workforce level, two out of five employers report that a lack of adequate AI-related skills is an obstacle to the integration of GenAI at work. 26 Increased demand for GenAI skills outside of tech roles is evident when examining the share of job postings in non-tech roles that now request these skills. 27 Yet, there is a prevailing concern among 78% of senior executives that their companies may fail to train their employees rapidly enough to keep pace with technological advancements in the coming years. 28 This concern is reinforced as 37% of more than 56,000 workers from 50 countries and regions surveyed by PwC have not used GenAI applications for work in the past year, and an additional 25% have only done so once or twice. Even in the highly exposed financial sector almost one-quarter of workers reported not to have used GenAI for work. In the telecommunication sector, which showed the highest overall use of GenAI, 19% of workers have never used GenAI in their work. 29 Culture The culture of an organization is a crucial factor in the adoption of new technologies such as GenAI. Organizations interviewed for this report stress the importance of change management: successful introduction of GenAI depends on experiments and finding use cases. This requires a stimulating and supportive culture. For example, it is important to cultivate mindsets such as a future-positive attitude, growth mindset and agility, which are crucial for employees to embrace GenAI in the workplace. Young (technology) companies and data-driven organizations tend to adopt new technology easier and faster because they are less hampered by existing, established ways of working and embody a data culture and digital literacy. Business value Certain enterprises are readily committing substantial resources to GenAI technologies, with investments in GenAI projected to grow by 60% over the next three years, reaching 7.6% of IT budgets by 2027. 30 Others exhibit greater reluctance, questioning the assuredness of the returns these investments may bring. Companies often cite costs as a significant barrier to GenAI adoption, with a number of them unsure of the technology’s potential benefits. 31 The uncertainty is amplified by the limited evidence available on the impact of GenAI on firm performance. 32 Preliminary outcomes show promise, but the conclusive benefits remain unclear. For instance, the edge from adopting GenAI could diminish with increasing competitive pressures in the market. 33 Preliminary findings indicate that the most significant promise of GenAI in revolutionizing business models could reside at the intersection of specialized expertise and innovative problem-solving, propelling rapid advancements in proposition innovation that encompass new offerings, customers, markets, channels and customer relationships. Interviews conducted for this report with various early adopters of GenAI show that organizations remain cautious about the use of GenAI in externally facing products and services. While ultimately something they may strive for, so far, most organizations are experimenting and scaling up GenAI within the comparatively safer walls of their own internal organization. To shift the focus from smaller-scale incremental improvements to new business models, the advancement of GenAI, in combination with other emerging technologies, will be one of the most important determinants. For instance, the emergence of multimodal LLMs enables the concurrent processing and generation of various data forms (including text, imagery and audio), integrating these elements to create a thorough understanding. It can bring new strategic business benefits such as improved decision-making, enhanced user experience and operational efficiency. 34 With more clarity on the speed and magnitude of such developments, the potential of GenAI to lead to business model reinvention will become more apparent. 10