11, August 2026

Suprise Fakude

5 -minute read

SANDTON, 6 August 2026, Artificial intelligence may be changing the workplace at speed, but the biggest threat to a person’s career may not be AI itself. It may be waiting too long to adapt.

That was a central message from iFundi’s Future Ready Careers Webinar, where CEO Stefan Lauber and Academic Director Joel Perry explored what the rapid evolution of AI means for careers, skills development and the future workforce. An audience poll during the webinar exposed a telling gap. While most participants agreed that the world of work is changing rapidly, fewer believed those changes would significantly affect their own jobs.

Waiting Is the Biggest Risk

Lauber highlighted the danger in that thinking. People often recognise disruption happening around them while assuming its effects will arrive later or affect someone else first. For professionals, that assumption comes with a cost. New skills take time to develop, and meaningful experience takes even longer to build. Waiting until a role has already changed can mean starting from behind. The message was not to fear AI, but to prepare for what changes.

AI Is Changing the Job, Not the Need for People

Tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini have already changed how people research, write, analyse information and complete everyday tasks. But today’s chat-based tools are only one stage in AI’s development.

Agentic AI takes the technology further, allowing systems to complete tasks, make decisions within defined boundaries and automate workflows. Robotics extends those capabilities into physical environments such as manufacturing, logistics and autonomous transport. As these systems become more capable, human judgement becomes more important.

Critical thinking helps people assess AI-generated information, while communication, creativity and adaptability enable them to turn technology into meaningful results. The goal is not to compete with AI, but to know how to work alongside it and where human oversight still matters. That makes skills development increasingly urgent. Another audience poll showed that many employees had received little or no structured AI or future-skills training from their employers. For individuals, the implication is clear: career development cannot depend entirely on an employer.

Organisations make learning decisions based on budgets, business priorities and compliance requirements. Professionals, however, have their own long-term ambitions. Taking ownership of learning and applying new skills in real work is becoming an important part of career resilience.

Build the Skills Before You Need Them

For organisations, Perry argued that the same principle should guide workforce development. Businesses should not wait for a skills shortage to emerge before deciding how to respond. They need to identify the capabilities their future strategy will require and start developing them early.

Perry described this approach as “growing your own timber.” Instead of repeatedly competing for scarce skills in the labour market, organisations can build their own pipeline of future talent by investing in the people they already have.This means connecting workforce planning to business strategy, identifying future competencies and creating clear pathways for employees to upskill or reskill.

Turning Learning into Capability

Preparing for future skills is only part of the equation. Organisations also need to think about how those skills are developed. Qualifications and formal training remain valuable, but real capability develops through application. Practical projects, mentoring, workplace experience and continuous feedback help people turn knowledge into skills they can use to solve real business problems.

For organisations, the challenge is to develop these capabilities before they become critical shortages. For professionals, the question is more personal: Are the skills you have today the skills you will need tomorrow?

Standing Still Is the Real Risk

Artificial intelligence will continue to reshape industries, workplaces and careers. Some tasks will change, new capabilities will become more valuable, and the tools people use today will continue to evolve. No one can predict every change ahead, but waiting for certainty is not a career strategy. Preparing for the future means staying curious, continuing to learn and developing the skills that will keep you relevant as the world of work evolves. The biggest career risk isn’t AI. It’s standing still while the world of work moves forward.

iFundi’s Career Advisor and Skills Planner help individuals and organisations identify skills gaps, understand changing career and workforce requirements, and build clear development pathways for the future.