Generative AI helps SMEs compensate for skill gaps and labour shortages. Among SMEs that use generative AI and have experienced a skill gap, 39% say that generative AI helped compensate for it. This figure is even higher (46%) where SMEs report that generative AI has improved employee performance, indicating that generative AI is particularly beneficial where a lack of skills is the main constraint for employee performance. SMEs not using generative AI are also optimistic that it could help them address skill gaps (42%) and worker shortages (24%), suggesting some untapped potential.
For a third of SMEs, using generative AI has reduced staff workload, or the entrepreneur’s own workload in the case of a one‑person business. In cases of overwork, technology that reduces workload by automating tasks and generating efficiencies may be very welcome. In addition, 14% of SMEs say that generative AI reduced their reliance on external contractors. It could be that generative AI enables these SMEs to perform tasks that they previously would have outsourced, given limited skills or resources in house.
Yet generative AI does not appear to lead SMEs to cut jobs. The vast majority of SMEs (83%) report that generative AI has had no effect on overall staff need. While AI might be expected to increase staff need by boosting productivity and consumer demand or decrease staff need by automating tasks, there are only modest signs of change, suggesting that SMEs prefer to wait before making internal staffing adjustments. 6% of SMEs report an increase in staff needs while 9% report a decrease.
Skills are essential for SMEs to use generative AI effectively. Although generative AI performs impressively on many cognitive tasks, it does not remove the need for skilled workers. Twice as many SMEs say that generative AI increases skills’ needs (20%) as say that it decreases them (9%). For workers, data analysis and interpretation skills and creativity and innovation skills are perceived as the skills that have increased the most in importance due to generative AI.