Business leaders in the UK believe that the transition to a hybrid ‘human-AI’ workforce will be their biggest strategic challenge over the next five years. The majority of them, or 67%, fear that their organisation will become irrelevant if it fails to shift to this hybrid workforce, according to a survey from Capita People Solutions.

The survey of more than 2,000 company staff found that 72% of business leaders see the ‘human-to-hybrid’ transition as their most important priority, while 93% acknowledge that they need to start proactively managing the shift to a hybrid workforce this year.

Capita’s study defines ‘human to hybrid’ as ‘the new dynamic where humans will work in a fully digitised and technologically-optimised environment, and increasingly work alongside robots and AI, over the next ten years’.

Meanwhile, 51% of employees report that they will choose to leave their organisation if it doesn’t manage the transition to a hybrid workforce well and continue to offer opportunities to progress.

The biggest worry for workers is that working within a hybrid workforce will result in a lack of human interaction at work (46%). Other concerns include reduced opportunities to progress (26%) and the possibility of a less inclusive and diverse workforce (23%). However, most workers are positive about the prospect of working within a hybrid workforce, believing that it will provide increased opportunities to learn new skills (44%), greater flexibility (40%), and more interesting and varied work (32%).

“Investing in AI and automation is not enough to build a sustainable or productive hybrid workforce; organisations also need to ensure they have the skills, cultures and processes in place to work alongside this technology,” Erika Bannerman, Executive Officer at Capita People Solutions, said. “It has to be a people-first approach, where innovative technology is used to support, enable and empower a highly-skilled, motivated and agile human workforce to deliver higher value work.”