Employee learning and skilling in AI embedded organizations – predictors and outcomes

Purpose In this research article we aim to answer two research questions: - With ever increasing AI based integrations in organizations, it is imperative to understand how employees learn and adapt to these newer technologies? What is the impact of this learning and adaptation on AI-based employee productivity? Design/methodology/approach A survey-based research design has been conducted among the employees working in technology companies. Questionnaires were administered by the researchers physically using snowball based purposive sampling to reach the participants who are working in the AI driven technology companies. The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling and numerous studies have previously used this approach for model fit and testing. Findings it was found that employee learning has significant positive mediational impact on the relationship between AI trust, knowledge sharing and AI skills and AI-employee collaboration. SEM results indicate that data fits the proposed model well. Practical implications findings indicate that as the trust in AI develops, employees are more interested in learning and increasing their understanding of AI driven work and increase their AI skills such as Machine learning and data analytics. To increase AI-employee collaborations and upskilling: organizations will need to foster AI training opportunities; make employees work on projects having AI based sociotechnical systems; create environment of knowledge sharing among employees on AI themes. Originality/value The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ubiquitous, and more and more organizations are adopting AI in their operations which lead to massive scale changes in the functioning of organizations. These large-scale massive transformations are posing challenges and opportunities at the same time. At the same time, it created immense challenges for employees’ adjustment to the new learning and skilling requirements posed by AI (Sengupta et al., 2022). It is therefore expected that employees embrace the associated new technologies of AI such as big data analytics, Machine learning and Robotics.