The Josh Bersin Company

SHL, one of the pioneers in industrial and psychological assessment, has now built a new instrument to assess an individual’s readiness for AI.

Sara Gutierrez, Chief Science Officer at SHL, explains how SHL is addressing this challenge.

Drawing on SHL’s 45-plus years of talent intelligence and behavioral science and a large study of millions of data points, Sara introduces a skills model built on four factors – AI literacy, analytical thinking, continuous learning, and AI promotion – that together define who is truly ready to become a superworker – any employee who uses AI to elevate their work to create more impact and have more meaningful work.

The conversation is full of grounding data. Across more than one million assessments, SHL found that graduates and early career workers know how to use AI tools but not necessarily how to use them well, while seasoned professionals show strong contextual judgment but struggle to reimagine solutions from scratch. Neither generation arrives superworker-ready and each needs help to develop the superworker readiness. And it’s not technical skills that differentiate superworkers from the rest. Powerskills – those durable human skills, like adaptability, critical thinking, and learning orientation – predict who will thrive as AI reshapes every role, and every worker can develop them.

The proof is in a real case: a media and telecommunications company used SHL’s AI readiness model to de-risk an AI transformation. Enthusiasm for AI was high, but gaps in applying it responsibly – using guardrails, exercising judgment on outputs – were putting success at risk. The assessment gave leaders something they rarely have: a data-backed, actionable development plan to help all employees thrive.

Employees welcomed the personalized recommendations. The lesson, as Sara puts it, is that leaders must frame the assessment not as evaluative but as developmental and supportive – because with 70% of employees not trusting that their employer knows how to use AI responsibly, trust is the whole game.

Related Resources

Let’s Stop Talking About Soft Skills: They’re PowerSkills

Podcast: How To Become An AI Pacesetter: Superworker Explained – article

Galileo Learn: The Superworker Organization: AI Goes Enterprise (certificate course)

Research: The Superworker Organization: AI Goes Enterprise

Research: AI Pacesetters: Six Secrets of the Superworker Company

New book: Superpowered, coming this Fall

It’s a strange time: the economy and capital markets are booming, yet worker engagement is as low as it was during the pandemic. It’s a strange combination of events: stock market at all time highs while affordability and trust are at all time lows. Have we over-inflated our economy or is it something more systemic.

As I discuss in my latest article, some of the challenges we face have been building for many years, while others are very recent. We live in a world of growing automation, fear of job loss, yet an extraordinary world of new health, business, and creative opportunities. And young people are the most pessimistic of all.

Is it just the “chaos of change” that’s causing the issue?

In today’s podcast I explain the factors and give you, as a business or HR leader, some advice on what to do.

Additional Background

Affordability Is Not Just Inflation: It’s Time For A Historic Shift In Wages.

Worker engagement just hit a decade low — and new data from 88 million employees shows why managers are the problem

AI Prices Are Going Up, Up, Up – And What This Means For Enterprise AI

Conflicts are on the rise globally, at the highest level since WWII, data shows

There’s Another Reason Gen Z Can’t Find Work

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Employee Engagement and Trust in Companies
(00:06:07) - Wage stagnation and what can we do about it
(00:11:08) - Employee Experience in the AI Era
(00:12:28) - IBM's Core
(00:18:17) - More Focus on Frontline Work

Today Eightfold launched its AI Candidate Agent, so I wanted to explain how the multi-agent world of HR 2030 is coming together.

In this podcast I explain what Eightfold is up to and how multi-agent AI systems are now starting to sweep across talent acquisition, particularly in high-volume recruiting. And it’s more complex, interesting, and valuable than you may think.

This article explains the market and business case in more detail, and we encourage you to read about HR 2030 to see where this exciting world is going.

Additional Information

The Talent Acquisition Revolution: How AI is Transforming Recruiting

Interview with Ashutosh Garg, Co-Founder & CEO of Eightfold.ai and Viven.ai

HR 2030, The Josh Bersin Institute, And Galileo

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Interviewing With the Candidate Agent
(00:01:46) - Is the Candidate Agent Also an Internal Candidate Agent?
(00:09:17) - HR in 2030: The Super Agent
(00:20:19) - AI in Talent Acquisition: Announcement

Over the last few years we’ve experienced a global affordability and income inequality problem and there are a myriad of policy issues at play. Yet at the same time something else is going on: wages and employee earnings have fallen way behind growth in GDP, profits, and productivity. What gives?

In this podcast, and the related article, I discuss how pay practices are changing and how we, as leaders or HR professionals, have a lot of agency to help address this situation. Without wading into politics, we have clear research on the way that pay operates as an “investment” not an expense, and how high performing companies actually reward their workers in exceptional ways.

It’s a complex topic and one that’s about to become more “systemic” and real-time with AI, so consider this some background to give you food for thought as more and more employees demand raises and accommodations for the high cost of living.

Additional Background

Why Has Cost of Living Become The #1 Issue In The US? It’s More Complex Than Inflation

The Rise of the Supermanager

Benchmark Your Pay Practices With Galileo: The AI Superagent for HR

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Compensation and Income inequality
(00:10:17) - Pay and the AI challenge
(00:12:39) - Three Things About Pay
(00:16:24) - Employee pay and the future

All organizations, whether they are profit-seeking companies, non-profits, or governments, have politics. And the issues of how we make decisions, the role of top-down vs. bottoms-up governance, and how we empower people to speak up… these are existential topics in any group of people.

As the USA celebrates its 250 year anniversary and we read so many articles about our history, I wanted to reflect on what our political history teaches us about business leadership, governance, and employee empowerment.

For those of you who study political science, I admire your craft and I think we have a lot to share.

Additional Information

The World Is Accelerating: What Has Changed About Leadership?

Organization Design: The Real Secret To Growth

The Big Reset Playbook: Organizational Culture & Performance

 

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Lessons from the United States
(00:10:33) - The American culture of accountability and forgiveness