AI ‘part of the solution’ for productivity challenges, PwC’s head of people says

Speaking recently on the big four firm’s podcast series on responsible AI, PwC chief people officer Karen Lonergan said that as businesses race to adopt AI across their operations, there is an emerging gap between an organisation’s AI ambition and its workforce's preparedness to realise it.

“People often ask, 'Should I be worried about AI?' But being worried never really helps. Taking action does,” she said.

“What leaders should be worrying about is failing to invest enough in the right people skills and development.”

According to PwC’s 2026 CEO Survey, less than one in three Australian business leaders believe their current AI investment levels are sufficient to meet their goals. Moreover, while 67 per cent of Australian CEOs plan to invest in emerging technologies over the next year, only 28 per cent say they can attract high-quality AI talent, well below the global average of 42 per cent.

“Productivity is one of the essential challenges of our generation of leaders in Australia, and we have to use AI as part of the solution,” Lonergan said.

“This means we have to look at how we can use AI to do things differently, and build out the skills that allow us to do different things too. Articulating what these opportunities are and helping people grow in ways that embrace them will go a long way towards encouraging a workforce to lean into change.”

The firm’s 2026 AI Performance Study has found that Australian businesses lag global peers in workforce readiness and score lowest on the incentives that encourage employees to experiment with and use AI in their work. To this end, Lonergan said, what is “really critical is we've got to think about how we bring our people on a journey and support them to develop the skills they need today and into the future, whatever that may look like for them”.

For leaders across business functions looking to move forward, there are key lessons to be learned from adopting new technologies over the years.

“What we've seen across other technology disruptions, is that it changes the nature of some of the work we do. There will be some things the technology can replace, but there will be a whole load of new roles and opportunities created,” she said.

“Where AI cannot follow is in the territory that requires distinctly human judgement. PwC's upskilling program is built around exactly that idea, developing the capabilities that matter because they cannot be automated.”

PwC’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer, which found that human-intensive skills are giving workers a new competitive advantage in the labour market, supports this, noting that new tasks are 2.5 times more likely to require trusted human skills alongside technical expertise.

Looking ahead, Lonergan noted that upskilling will be inseparable from the responsible adoption of AI.

“Deploying AI without investing in human capability is a commercial risk, and it erodes the accountability and judgement that responsible use of the technology requires,” she said.

“We believe that mastery of those skills is critically important for our people going forward, whatever role they are doing.”