AI Skills, Career Growth

Should AI Skills Determine Who Gets Ahead at Work?

For Duncan Trevithick, becoming skilled at using AI at work is clearly in his best interest. If he can use AI to complete more tasks in less time, he could qualify for a bonus at the end of the year.
On the surface, it sounds like an attractive incentive. But Trevithick is questioning what employees really gain from becoming more productive.
“The uncomfortable interpretation is that employees are being assessed on how effectively they can participate in their own redundancy,” says Trevithick, 34, who is based in Spain and works in marketing for an AI training data company.

If AI allows him to complete what would normally be two days’ worth of work each week, Trevithick says the financial rewards do not necessarily match the additional productivity.
“I do not receive two days off or a 40% pay raise. The higher output simply becomes the new baseline. In the short term, that may help me get promoted. In the longer term, I have helped prove how much of my job no longer requires me,” he says.

Trevithick is also beginning to rethink what his role means in an AI-driven workplace.

“I’m just trying to view myself as a manager, and I’m managing some people, and I’m also managing AI agents, AI loops, or whatever you want to call them.”
His concerns reflect a broader workplace trend. Companies are increasingly considering employees’ ability to use AI when making decisions about bonuses, promotions, and, in some cases, even whether their jobs remain necessary.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet told the Rapid Response podcast in March that AI has become an integral part of how the company operates. She said employees seeking promotion need to demonstrate the ability to work in the same way the organization operates.
Major companies, including Disney, Meta, JPMorgan, and KPMG, have also introduced AI leaderboards to track and rank employee usage of the large language models and platforms available to them, according to media reports. Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase has reportedly fired engineers who failed to complete AI training requested by CEO Brian Armstrong.
These developments highlight how eager business leaders are to see meaningful returns on their AI investments. The pressure is particularly strong as many companies continue to struggle to translate AI spending into significant business value.
Employees, meanwhile, increasingly feel that they have little choice but to adapt. In a challenging job market, workers may view AI proficiency as an important way to remain competitive and demonstrate their value.
A July survey of 1,881 UK jobseekers by recruiter Gi Group found that 75% would not be discouraged from applying to an organization that included AI proficiency in individual performance reviews. Around 22% said such a requirement would make them less likely to apply.

For Trevithick, the situation resembles a powerful wave that cannot simply be ignored.
“It’s like being in the sea and you see a giant wave coming. You can get out a surfboard and try and ride it as long as possible, or you can just let it take you under. But you can’t stop the wave.”

A New Two-Tier Workforce?

For Pamela, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, the changes taking place at the large consultancy where she works are more troubling. The US-based senior executive has observed that while there is no formal requirement for employees to use AI, proficiency with the technology appears to influence who receives recognition and who falls behind.

“The ground is shifting under us. You’ve got to demonstrate AI fluency and fluidity as one of your key achievements. It’s kind of quiet where nobody’s saying, ‘learn AI or else.’ But let me tell you, in performance reviews, they reward who uses it well,” Pamela says.
She believes this shift is placing increasing value on AI capabilities over traditional experience and credentials, creating what she describes as a “two-tier workforce.”
“You’ve got the same job title, same tenure, but different value based on whether someone treats AI as a threat or a tool. That gap widens really quickly once leadership notices it,” she says.
“AI fluency beats credentials every day. Somebody that has 15, 20 years of experience and no AI fluency will be passed over for those that have, say, three years, but are fast with the tools.”
She adds that employees who are not visibly using AI may face slower promotion timelines and find it harder to demonstrate their value within their organizations.

Is It Fair to Make AI a Career Requirement?

The growing emphasis on AI proficiency also raises questions about fairness and employment law.
“The question then becomes whether the employer increases expectations on the basis that the employee can now produce more work. Is that fair?” Chander asks.
“And if an employee is effectively doing more because AI has made them more efficient, should they be rewarded differently? Or are they effectively making themselves redundant, thus acting as a disincentive to be productive?”
Chander advises businesses to establish clear AI policies, provide appropriate training, and set reasonable boundaries. Without those safeguards, organizations could face disputes involving fairness, performance expectations, and job security.
Changes to UK employment law could also give workers additional protections. From January 2027, UK employees will have six months to submit unfair dismissal claims, compared with the current three-month period, and will be able to bring such claims after six months of service rather than the current two-year threshold.

The Problem With AI for AI’s Sake

HR consultant Tina Rahman argues that many employers are not being transparent enough about why they want AI integrated into employees’ roles or what they ultimately hope to achieve.
Rahman, who runs London-based consultancy HR Habitat, says businesses are seeking productivity gains, cost savings, and reduced reliance on outsourcing. However, she believes those objectives are not always communicated clearly to employees.
A lack of clarity is contributing to frustration within Pamela’s organization.
“Leadership is being inconsistent and vague on purpose. Firms want productivity gains without owning the disruption narrative,” she says.
“If something goes wrong, they’re going to say, ‘I didn’t tell you to do that. Where’d you get that from?’ Then if you did something with AI, and it works, great.”

Kamila Miller, an applied AI researcher and lecturer at Henley Business School, warns that making AI usage a formal performance metric could encourage employees to focus on the appearance of productivity rather than meaningful results.
“Make AI usage a KPI, and people will log their interactions to hit the metric, route work through a chatbot that did not need it, and generate AI-flavored outputs that look productive on a dashboard. You will measure adoption. You will not measure judgment, learning, or better decisions,” Miller says.
“You have not made people more skilled. You have made them more obedient.”

When Companies Rethink the AI Push

Some companies have already begun reconsidering whether AI usage should be directly tied to employee performance.
In April, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn told the Silicon Valley Girl podcast that the language-learning company had stopped including AI usage in performance reviews.

He explained that employees had questioned whether the company expected them to use AI simply for the sake of using it. The company ultimately decided that employees should focus on performing their jobs as effectively as possible, with AI serving as a tool when it genuinely adds value.
Amazon has also reportedly taken a similar step. In May, the Financial Times reported that the company had shut down an internal leaderboard tracking employee AI usage. According to the report, some employees had attempted to improve their rankings by assigning unnecessary tasks to AI.
The debate highlights a fundamental question for the modern workplace: Should employees be rewarded for using AI, or should they be rewarded for achieving better results?

As AI continues to reshape how work is performed, companies will need to decide whether AI proficiency should become a new measure of professional success or simply remain one of many tools employees can use to do their jobs better.