Rebuilding the Apprenticeship for the AI Era
The conversation at Davos acknowledged the implementation crisis last week, but the data underneath it should keep us awake. Randstad's survey shows Gen Z are the most anxious about AI at work, despite being the generation using it most. Entry-level roles drop by 29% while we tell young people to upskill with tech. We're cutting the ladder and asking them to climb.
The Implementation Crisis Is Actually an Expertise Gap
While global headlines obsess over the 56% of firms seeing no return on AI, this is not a technology failure. It is an expertise gap. AI is at its best when it is a support for craft, not a replacement for it.
The opportunity for UK businesses is in closing the massive training gap. Currently, we are hoarding the learning: 81% of the C-suite report receiving AI training, compared to only 27% of their employees.
Eliminating the "AI Tax"
When we give tools to teams without giving them the "why" behind the process, we create a productivity drain. Workday’s 2026 research predicts that 37% of AI time savings are currently lost to rework, fixing mistakes and redoing outputs because the human in the loop lacks the expertise to guide the tool.
We can't solve this with more software licenses. We solve it with Manager Expectation. Employees whose managers explicitly expect and support AI usage are 2.6 times more proficient than the baseline.
What the 2026 Apprenticeship Model Actually Looks Like
For UK creative businesses specifically, timing matters. The government is set to publish a definitive Copyright Impact Assessment by 18 March 2026. This will be a "reset moment" for the sector, finally defining how human creativity is valued and compensated in an automated world.
To prepare, we must move from problem to plan:
Reclaim the Room: Leads should use AI to clear their own admin first. Use that reclaimed time to bring juniors into the rooms where real decisions happen.
Document the Logic: When you automate a task, document the thinking. Explain the judgment calls and taste that can’t (and shouldn’t) be prompted for.
Augment, Don't Automate: Use AI to handle the "sludge" so your team has the mental bandwidth for creative judgment calls and mentorship.
The Human Dividend
Companies that invest in this now will have the senior expertise they need when the market shifts. Companies cutting purely for efficiency will struggle to hire back the expertise they didn't develop. Success in the AI era isn't about doing more with less. It's about using technology to protect the human taste that makes our work matter.
Want to talk through what this looks like for your team? Book time for a chat here.
This article was originally published by Tina Saul on LinkedIn.