Work & Organization

AI and the Labor Market: Between Reskilling, Upskilling, and Human Requalification

The debate about the future of work has intensified, with increasingly focused analyses on the effects of automation based on artificial intelligence. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 estimates that 41 percent of employers plan to reduce their workforce within the next five years through automation of activities currently performed by human personnel. At the same time, the report highlights a parallel transformation movement: companies are not just eliminating roles considered obsolete, but also planning the creation of new positions related to the development, management, and supervision of AI systems. The transition is therefore neither linear nor exclusively substitutive. Some skills, particularly repetitive ones, will tend to lose relevance, while the demand for analytical, digital, and technological orchestration capabilities will grow. The central challenge for businesses and institutions will be to govern this occupational reconfiguration, supporting pathways of reskilling, upskilling, and requalification.

The Ministry of Labor launches the National AI Observatory

On February 19, 2026, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies published the first document titled “Towards the Observatory on the adoption of artificial intelligence systems in the world of work - Collection of contributions to support the start of the Observatory’s work.”

The text represents a preliminary step in building the national observatory dedicated to monitoring the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market.

The report was built from contributions drafted by a plurality of subjects, both public and private, coming from different institutional, administrative, productive, and research contexts, with the aim of offering an articulated and non-uniform picture of the ongoing transition.

Within the document, it is highlighted how artificial intelligence is currently employed to automate tasks and address complex problems in a plurality of application contexts. From scientific research to the stock market, from robotics to justice, from industry to autonomous vehicles. AI allows us to imagine a society and labor market in which it becomes essential to combine the opportunities offered by new technologies with the protection of employment and workers’ rights, placing a balanced management of the ongoing transformation at the center.

Adaptability and Upskilling

In today’s labor market, skills are no longer stable. Their validity cycle shortens to the point of requiring continuous updating. It’s no longer sufficient to acquire technical knowledge once and for all. Today we need adaptability and upskilling, the two keywords that describe a phase in which technological innovation and organizational complexity impose a constant revision of professional capabilities.

Required Hybrid Skills

After two years dominated by debate on the potential of artificial intelligence, green innovation, and Industry 5.0, starting from 2026, a concrete implementation is taking shape. The change translates into growing demand for highly qualified profiles equipped with hybrid skills. Professionals capable of combining specialized hard skills with a systemic vision, indispensable for operating in increasingly interconnected contexts.

It’s no longer enough to master a single technical area. The engineer must understand environmental and regulatory implications, the data analyst must dialogue with marketing and operations, the designer must integrate sustainability, technology, and user experience. Industry that places human-machine collaboration at the center requires figures capable of interpreting complex data without losing the human dimension of the decision-making process. Similarly, the energy and digital transition imposes cross-cutting skills: data management, cybersecurity, resource optimization, reading ESG impacts.

From Training Welfare to Learning Organization

Training assumes a central function and can no longer be delegated exclusively to the individual. Organizations must evolve toward the learning organization model, integrating skill updating into the ordinary flow of work, rather than considering it an interruption of operational activities. This means building a skills welfare, investing in reskilling and upskilling to close gaps that, if neglected, can generate significant consequences even on a competitive and financial level.

Alongside technical skills, which remain indispensable, the so-called power skills emerge with force. In an increasingly automated ecosystem, the distinctive value lies in critical thinking, the ability to read complexity, including emotional complexity, and to coordinate different perspectives. Therefore, managers with a choral vision are needed, capable of guiding multidisciplinary teams toward shared goals.

The New Humanism of Work: Ethical Leadership and Human Capital Sustainability

Leadership is called to evolve. The manager of the future will not just be a process supervisor, but a facilitator capable of building psychologically safe environments, where technology and people can cooperate synergistically. Artificial intelligence and automation do not replace intuition, but amplify it, freeing time from repetitive activities to direct it toward strategic decisions and value creation.

This transition, however, involves significant ethical and social responsibility. The risk of polarization of the labor market, between those who possess the skills to govern change and those who risk being excluded from it, is concrete. Organizations must mitigate it with structured investments in inclusive reskilling pathways. Sustainability no longer concerns only environmental impact, but also the ability to keep human capital employable over time.

The Importance of Human Requirements in Hybrid Work

The digital revolution has profoundly modified the profile of required skills, transforming human requirements, once perceived as signs of professional weakness, into strategic tools for all company levels. The flexibility of hybrid work, closely connected to the search for well-being and work-life balance, now involves the entire organizational system.

This model requires more advanced communication and intercultural skills, inclusion capabilities, and real trust in collaborators, indispensable for promoting their empowerment and autonomy. In parallel, greater professional mobility, fueled by the great resignation phenomenon, the wave of voluntary resignations that began after the pandemic, and the great reshuffle, the movement of workers toward companies considered more aligned with their work-life balance, has made talent retention an absolute priority. The bond with the organization can no longer be based exclusively on compensation, but must counteract isolation and loss of belonging.

Closing Gaps by Investing in Training

Training and professional development become true drivers of engagement and retention and strategic tools for facing recruitment difficulties and retaining critical skills. The Cegos Observatory Barometer highlights that 60 percent of HR managers indicate reskilling for internal mobility as a concrete response to growing difficulties in attracting and retaining talent. Investing in requalification means valuing resources already present in the company, reducing costs and times related to turnover.

Closing gaps in key skills allows people to grow, update themselves, and perceive real recognition of their potential. However, for the employee experience to be meaningful and not formal, continuous learning must be designed with contemporary criteria: personalized pathways, integration into the workflow, impact measurement, and coherence with company strategy.

Learning Culture, Technology, and DEIB: Leadership Responsibilities

Leaders are called to systematically strengthen both the learning culture and the technological infrastructures that support it, with the aim of promoting well-being, motivation, and DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging).

How to Intervene Concretely?

  • Create safe and inclusive learning environments, where people can develop new skills and experiment without fear of error or judgment.
  • Offer personalized training pathways, calibrated on individual needs and skills required by future roles.
  • Promote internal collaboration and networking, fostering social learning, knowledge exchange, and learning in the workflow.
  • Adopt innovative digital technologies, such as e-learning platforms, simulations, and virtual reality, to make the training experience more engaging.
  • Constantly monitor market evolutions, to adapt upskilling and reskilling programs to new needs in a timely manner.

Equally Relevant Are Mistakes to Avoid:

  • Lack of strategic planning, without preventive analysis of future skills and existing gaps.
  • Neglecting individual needs, ignoring interests, motivations, and employee potential.
  • Focusing only on technical skills, underestimating soft skills and cross-cutting capabilities.
  • Lack of support and follow-up, without mentorship, coaching, and practical application of acquired skills.