Companies should use artificial intelligence to reshape jobs and reskill employees rather than simply cut headcount, as eliminating junior roles could leave organisations without the experienced talent they need in the future, according to MT Forum panellists.
Speaking at IEG Campus on September 10, Former AirAsia Group chief people officer Intan Shahira Mohd Shahru said companies often viewed AI investment through the lens of workforce reduction when the focus should instead be on removing tasks that could be automated.
“It should be about removing tasks, not entire jobs,” she said.
She said AI could reduce the number of people required to perform certain tasks, but organisations should avoid removing entire layers of their workforce, particularly junior positions that provide the experience needed to develop future leaders.
Intan used the aviation industry to illustrate the risk, noting that eliminating junior pilot roles through automation could eventually leave airlines without enough experienced pilots to fill senior positions.
“If you remove the first officers and senior first officers, who is going to become the captain in 2036?” she said.
The same principle applied across other industries, she said, where workers traditionally gained the experience and exposure needed for senior positions by progressing through junior roles.
IDstar chief executive officer Ferdinand Prasetyo said the development of junior talent remained essential because today’s junior employees formed the pool of senior professionals several years later.
“Senior growth must start from junior,” he said.
He said companies therefore needed to rethink how junior workers were developed as AI took over repetitive tasks that traditionally provided early-career employees with practical experience.
Rather than removing the junior career ladder, organisations could use AI to expose younger workers to more complex responsibilities while allowing them to develop cognitive, communication and problem-solving skills.
Ferdinand said clients were increasingly looking for workers who could combine technical capabilities with communication, presentation, project management and cross-cultural skills.
He said the nature of technology work was also changing, with clients increasingly seeking people who could perform tasks such as coding and testing with AI.
This meant young workers needed to learn how to use AI effectively rather than compete directly with it, he said.
Intan said AI adoption should therefore be accompanied by reskilling, allowing employees to take on new responsibilities as technology changed the nature of their work.
She said managers would increasingly need to manage both human employees and AI agents, creating a different model of workforce management.
Dr Paul Anthony Maria Das, Programme Coordinator and Senior Lecturer at Taylor’s University, said the changing nature of work also placed greater pressure on universities to ensure graduates developed AI and digital capabilities.
He said universities needed to produce graduates who could use AI effectively while also developing problem-solving abilities that would remain valuable as technology evolved.
The panellists said AI was likely to eliminate or automate individual tasks across many occupations, but organisations needed to distinguish between automating work and eliminating the people who perform it.
Removing too many junior positions could create a short-term reduction in costs while weakening the pipeline of experienced workers needed to fill senior roles in the future.
They said companies would therefore need to balance productivity gains from AI with continued investment in human development if they wanted to build sustainable talent pipelines.