UK business leaders may be embracing AI, but need to unlock its full potential in order to mitigate the effects of the skills shortage, according to a new survey.

Ceridian, a global human capital management technology leader, released the results from its annual Executive Survey focused on the power of workforce mobilisation.

The survey, which interviewed more than 2,000 business leaders across seven countries, found that 85% of leaders are confident their organisations will achieve their 2023 goals and 75% see strong revenue growth ahead.

Additionally, eight out of ten survey respondents said their workforce has the skills to meet organisational performance goals in the next two years.

At the same time, the results uncovered friction between the positive outlook for operating results and a growing complexity crisis. 92% of respondents see workforce challenges like employee attraction, engagement, and retention, in addition to compliance complexities creating risks for their organization’s ability to achieve its goals in the next year.

“Top leaders feel confident they will reach their goals – guided by an understanding that it will take strong technology and tough decisions to meet demands and continually unlock the potential of today’s boundless workforce, which is fluid, always-on, and borderless,” said Susan Tohyama, CHRO at Ceridian.

“The efforts towards workforce transformation that organizations have already made are remarkable, but more opportunities abound. Our latest Executive Survey is a rallying cry for business leaders to invest today in people strategies and systems to be positioned for future growth and resiliency.”

The research shows leaders globally have begun embracing modern technology and reimagined talent strategies to help elevate their people operations and unlock efficiencies, however, there is still work to do in a number of critical areas, the survey found.

According to the survey, 81% of respondents said their organisation uses artificial intelligence to replace repetitive tasks, which three-quarters of these respondents say increases productivity and efficiency.

In the UK specifically, 85% of companies say they are integrating AI and machine learning (ML) into their operations – but this also tended to be for repetitive tasks.

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This is barely scratching the surface of AI’s full potential, however, and fewer than half of UK businesses (48%) are using AI-driven skills matching to optimise employee career development.

Despite 78% of UK business leaders anticipating labour shortages within the next year, 78% of leaders also expressed confidence that they have the necessary talent and skills to optimise AI usage across their organisations.

If these stats are in alignment, then leveraging AI for talent management and upskilling will be essential to meeting business targets in the upcoming year.

It appears that upskilling may be the new trend in businesses aiming to utilise new technology – 74% of survey leaders expect internal mobility to increase in their organisations in the next two years.

Further, with respondents ranking engagement and retention (55%) as their top roadblocks to achieving their organisational priorities and goals, followed by labour and skills shortages (50%), harnessing internal mobility opportunities will help give workers the flexible careers they want while fostering higher organisational performance and productivity.