GUEST COLUMN:
Rhys Morris
Managing Director
The Busy Group
In any conversation about AI, there’s a lot of focus on what it might take away from the workforce. But what excites me most is what it can offer – the chance to create quicker, more responsive support for individuals, and the opportunity to make learning, reskilling and career development far more personal and far more accessible.
At BUSY Group, we work across the full employment and education journey, supporting people into work, helping them move through career transitions, and building up the skills that open up long-term opportunities. Much of what we do involves understanding individuals: their needs, their strengths, and where the gaps are. AI, when used well, can significantly speed up that process.
In particular, AI is proving helpful in employability settings. For people who’ve been out of work, or those moving between industries, the idea of restarting or retraining can be daunting. What AI can do is take the data – the employment history, the learning profile, the training outcomes – and use it to map out viable next steps. That frees up time for the part that matters most: human interaction. Supporting someone into a new role or training pathway still requires empathy, judgement and guidance, and that will never be the role of a machine.
So we need to see AI as a tool – something that helps us do more, not something that replaces what people are already doing well. It can help identify patterns, spot potential, and scale services. But it can’t mentor, coach or support in the ways that a person can.
It’s also vital that we don’t leave people behind in this shift. I’m concerned by what we see when we map out areas of digital poverty. The same regions that lack good access to devices and connectivity are often those facing wider social and economic disadvantage. That isn’t a coincidence, and we risk deepening those divides if we don’t act now.
There needs to be a deliberate strategy to tackle this. We’ve seen how levelling-up has tried to rebalance physical investment across the UK. We need a similar approach to digital access – a clear commitment to invest in areas where digital exclusion is highest, and to ensure that the opportunities created by AI are genuinely available to all.
Education has a critical role to play here, but it cannot act in isolation. We need a more joined-up approach between schools, businesses and government. Employers should be closely involved in shaping what future skills development looks like – not just for school-leavers, but across the life course. We’re already seeing demand from employers who want to know how best to prepare young people to enter their industries, and that sort of dialogue needs to become the norm.
Government, meanwhile, must set the tone, providing a strong regulatory framework, supporting investment in digital infrastructure, and ensuring that privacy, data use and misinformation are all properly addressed. The emergence of AI tools raises legitimate questions about ethics, transparency and trust. A clear, enforceable framework would help give the public more confidence in how these technologies are being used.
At the same time, we need to be realistic about what our current education system is – and isn’t – set up to deliver. It’s still too focused on a narrow academic pathway, with university as the default end point. That doesn’t reflect the needs of many young people, nor does it match the broader skills needs of the economy. If AI is changing how we work, we must also allow it to change how we prepare people for work.
None of this means abandoning the human side of education or employment support. On the contrary; it actually means reinforcing it. AI can help us process more data, draw better insights, and create personalised routes to learning or work. But the people at the end of those insights still need encouragement, support and sometimes a helping hand to take the next step.
If we get this right, we can start to close gaps in access, in opportunity, and in outcomes. But it depends on strong coordination. Business, government and education providers all have a role to play in ensuring that no one is excluded from the next phase of workforce development. We need to treat AI not just as a technical innovation, but as a test of how inclusive and responsive our systems really are.
Listen to Rhys discuss this and more in episode two of the DeeplearnHS podcast series, AI-Driven Skills Development, Upskilling, and Workforce Adaptation, HERE
