This week Barry Phillips reviews a position paper just published about AI in the Northern Ireland workplace.

Transcript: 

Hello humans, and welcome to the podcast that aims to summarise in five minutes or less each week an important AI development relevant to HR. My name is Barry Phillips.

Last week witnessed the publication of ‘AI and the Future of Work in Northern Ireland’  a report commissioned by Matrix, on behalf of the Department for the Economy,  providing an assessment of how artificial intelligence will transform work in Northern Ireland through to 2030.

Here are 5 insights that struck me from the report:

1. Disruption is uneven. ICT and professional services are at the sharp end; construction and agriculture much less so (pp. 13–15). Nothing about the HR profession here in particular but lets just pause here for the moment for I have two relevant observations. First, Josh Bershin, the US HR guru said recently that in his experience, the rule of thumb ration of HR professions to employees has now changed. It used to be one HR professional to every 100 employees. Now he thinks it’s closer to 150 employees to each HR person.

Last week I was talking to the head of a very large recruitment company in the island of Island who said he thinks HR departments are beginning to trim the fat and have started by simply not replacing lower level admin staff in HR.
 2. The economic prize is big — but fragile. AI could add anywhere from £0.2bn to £3.7bn GVA by 2030. That swing depends on choices made now (p. 18).
 3. It’s about tasks, not just jobs. Between 13%–47% of tasks could shift. That’s equivalent to 110,000–200,000 jobs being reshaped (p. 19). That’s a lot!
 4. Inequalities could worsen. Entry-level and admin roles — where women are over-represented — are most exposed. Add NI’s heavy reliance on FDI back-office jobs, and the risks multiply (pp. 15–16).
 5. Three levers matter most: willingness, capability and capacity. Without leadership will, institutional adaptability, and proper resourcing, we’ll lose momentum (pp. 38–43).

The report reminds us that AI’s path will be jagged, sometimes shocking. One line from the interviews really hit me:  “If there’s no junior role, there’s no path to senior.”

As HR and compliance leaders, we need to think hard about pipeline, fairness and skills strategy. The decisions we take in the next few years will define whether NI is left behind — or becomes a serious AI leader.

I’m questioning the tone of this report. Yes it raises a key issue here: how do we flip our small size from disadvantage to advantage. But we need answers to this and fast.

Let's be honest. We’re not known for being first out of the blocks in terms of adoption of new technology. We know we have to move fast here but so does every other competing country (and many are already moving forward at warp speed).

We keep saying our small size can be an advantage — but what’s our first bold move to prove it?

Could it be wholesale adoption of ChatGPT in the public sector and not Copilot which is clearly inferior? That would get my vote and anyone else’s who doesn’t believe it comes with the data security risks often attributed to it.

Until next week – Bye for now