What leaders need to know about generative AI skills and education trends for 2025

(MENAFN- H+K Strategies) By Maureen Lonergan, VP, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Training and Certification

Generative AI once again took center stage in the world of technology in 2024. Everywhere you turned, someone was talking about it and trying to understand the implications for their business. While we can expect more of the same in 2025, the conversation is evolving as many generative AI proof-of-concepts will move into production, or as more organizations experiment with generative AI.

In fact, two out of three organizations said that they are increasing their investments in generative AI due to early signs of business value, according to a Deloitte study. The greater investment in generative AI means businesses will need more people with AI skills to execute their AI strategies and roadmap, which in turn requires leaders to continue providing AI skills training for their employees in 2025. We saw significant demand in 2024 from AWS’s customers and partners who want to help their employees gain AI fluency, which enabled us to train two million people globally with free AI skills in just one year as part of Amazon’s AI Ready commitment. The demand for AI skills training will continue to rise.

Let’s dive into five other skills trends you can expect to impact you and your employee talent strategy this year.
1. Generative AI skills remain critical but don't neglect soft skills. With change comes uncertainty, and there’s a lot of pressure for leaders to help their workforce prepare for and understand the organization’s point of view on the generative AI evolution. Employees need clear guidance and encouragement to be part of the change—including the psychological safety to try new things and fail safely. Now is the time to examine your culture to ensure it supports ongoing learning, critical thinking, and experimentation at all levels of the organization.

2. Generative AI-powered learning is on the rise. Generative AI will transform how we learn in 2025. Technology advancements have continually lowered barriers to help more people access quality education. Generative AI-powered learning will open even more opportunities to level the education playing field. Not everyone can have a dedicated, in-person tutor, but with generative AI, more people can have this type of experience embedded in a digital learning system. Research shows that one-on-one tutoring vastly improves student performance. A generative AI-powered tutor assists you as you learn, understanding your current knowledge and skill level, where you need additional support, and providing recommendations and coaching along your personalized learning path.

3. Digital learning assistants accelerate business outcomes. It’s not just students who will benefit from AI tutors or learning assistants, employees who are upskilling and reskilling will too. For leaders, this means your investment in digital training modalities for your employees will generate an even greater return on investment. Your employees can gain enhanced learning depth through digital training, allowing you to quickly develop a workforce that has the critical skillsets to contribute to business growth. Simply put, the faster and better your workforce can learn new concepts and skills through the power of generative AI, the faster they will be able to help your business innovate and improve the bottom line.

4. Cohort-style training drives long-term business impact. One of the best ways to keep up with the pace of technology is to invest in organization-wide upskilling initiatives that build an engaged culture of learning. However, it can be tough to know how and where to invest to maximize your organization’s immediate innovation need. With the interest in generative AI, in particular, we’re seeing more organizations deploy short-term, highly focused training initiatives on a specific topic, area, or team. The key is to organize a collaborative, cohort-style training that includes dedicated ideation, hands-on learning, and soft skills education. These sessions have a few key benefits. First, employees come away with actionable use cases that maximize the newly developed skills, giving them priority focus areas that might not have been possible without collaborative, hands-on learning. Second, with priority initiatives identified, leaders can make quick decisions about redeploying newly-skilled talent into new roles or investing in additional reskilling. Third, the short-term and focused nature of the training gives the organization quicker results, which reinforces the business benefit of skills development. This leads to greater leadership buy-in for workforce skills initiatives. Given the success we’ve seen in cohort-style generative AI training, I expect more leaders will adopt this approach as they continue to upskill their workforce in 2025 and beyond. And given how quickly generative AI is evolving, speed matters more than ever in the world of technology and business.

5. Measuring business impact from training efforts. As we help our customers and partners launch generative AI training, we are also helping them determine how to measure the value of training efforts. Productivity is an important factor to evaluate, but it’s much more than that, and it’s a long game. By ensuring your team has the right skills to complete a project or initiative, you don’t have to recruit new talent, outsource the work, or worse, shelve the project altogether. Measuring the business impact of ongoing training comes down to what can be accomplished that was not possible without the skills development. This takes into account your teams’ engagement, retention, efficiency, collaboration, and confidence to take risks.
None of us can know exactly what 2025 will bring given how quickly AI and its impact on your business and people are evolving. The only thing a leader can control is the environment they create that allows their workforce to take on new challenges and opportunities with confidence. What’s certain is that investing in your employees empowers them to build skills that will be paramount to your success in 2025, no matter where your roadmap is leading you.

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