The UK’s AI skills fork in the road

What was once a future concern is no longer. AI is rapidly reshaping how businesses operate today. The question facing UK companies is not whether AI drives productivity, but whether our workforce has the skills to harness it.

Research from The King's Trust shows the scale of transformation underway: more than half of jobs held by young people are set to change fundamentally within the next decade. Yet despite this reality, the UK is drifting towards an AI readiness gap at precisely the wrong moment. We face a clear choice: build AI capabilities into early-career talent now, or deepen a skills shortage that is already costing our economy billions.

AI readiness is about literacy

The King’s Trust’s Gen(eration) AI findings reveal a clear mismatch between aspiration and access. While 79% of young people believe AI will be important to their careers, far fewer feel they have the training or guidance to build real fluency.

This is not just a youth development issue; it is a major economic one. The same research identifies a £16 billion productivity opportunity if businesses embed AI skills more widely, with early-career development one of the most effective ways to unlock that value.

Crucially, early investment does not need to begin with specialist AI roles.

Just as ‘IT literacy’ once meant understanding everyday workplace tools, ‘AI literacy’ is becoming a core, workplace-critical capability. It is about understanding how AI works, where it adds value, and how it can be applied responsibly within a role, with clear pathways that build towards deeper AI mastery over time.

Structural challenges: The hidden barrier to growth

Behind the AI skills gap sits another structural challenge: the rising cost of administrative work, and the lack of enabling tools to reduce it.

Ricoh research shows that a significant proportion of workers’ time is still lost to admin-heavy processes, from document management to manual reporting. In the UK, nearly a third (28%) of decision makers and over a quarter (26%) of office workers say most of workers’ days are spent on administration rather than value-driving work.

These micro-inefficiencies scale rapidly across organisations, not because employees lack capability, but because they lack the tools and technologies needed to remove friction from everyday tasks.

Even a digitally confident, AI-literate workforce will see its impact blunted if it is forced to operate within outdated, manual systems.

This is why AI literacy cannot exist in isolation from technology investment. Organisations need both: a workforce capable of identifying where automation adds value, and the platforms, data infrastructure and AI tools that allow those insights to be acted on.

Underpinned by data literacy, critical thinking and problem-solving, the right technology enables people to move beyond administration and focus on higher-value, strategic work.

An understanding of ethics and integrity remains essential too, ensuring AI is applied responsibly and in line with organisational values, building the trust required for adoption and sustainable productivity gains.

The power of partnership and future-focused talent development

Despite the urgency, many businesses still lack a clear route to access, develop and retain AI-literate talent. AI capability is advancing faster than traditional education pathways can adapt, widening the gap between what employers need and what young people are being prepared for.

The organisations moving fastest are those defining AI capability through clear competency frameworks and understanding what AI literacy looks like at different levels and across roles. This allows businesses to pinpoint future workforce gaps and identify where early-career, apprenticeship and outreach programmes can have the greatest impact.

Ricoh’s long-standing partnership with The King’s Trust demonstrates the power of this approach. Since 2012, the collaboration has evolved into a multi-layered commitment to youth opportunity, combining mentoring, work placements and practical skills development. The same philosophy underpins Ricoh’s degree apprenticeships and AI graduate roles, embedding early-career talent directly into core business functions and delivering measurable productivity benefits.

Julia Beaumont, chief technology and programmes officer at The King’s Trust, says: “There are over 900,000 young people not in work, education or training in the UK. This report, published with Public First, is not about a distant reality of new technologies; this is about young people, their skills and the (very near) future world of work."

“The report is clear, AI presents far more opportunities than it does threats to young people’s employment and their future careers, however the scale of change cannot be ignored. The Trust, alongside our sector peers, employer and government partners, education and training providers, must be prepared and knowledgeable to best support young people – especially those who already face disadvantage – into sustainable work.”

A strategic investment in the UK’s growth

The UK has a real opportunity to turn AI from potential into tangible productivity gains. The path forward requires more than ad-hoc internal training or limiting AI expertise to specialist teams.

By building AI competency frameworks and early-career pathways with partners such as The King's Trust, organisations can create a sustainable pipeline of AI-capable talent that meets actual business needs. For the tech sector and wider economy, this represents a strategic investment in growth, competitiveness and the strength of UK productivity, with benefits that extend well beyond any single organisation.