Should employers teach AI skills to workers who’ll eventually leave?

The counterargument and its limits

The most common objection is that trained workers leave, taking the investment with them. The fear has some grounding. PwC’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer found workers with AI skills can command wage premiums of up to 56% over their peers. The employer that trains, by this logic, is subsidizing someone else’s next hire.

Vigna acknowledges the tension but argues the bigger danger is the untrained worker who stays, working alongside expensive tools that go unused. Recent HRD America reporting shows that deploying AI tools without equipping employees to use them amplifies mistakes rather than speeding up work. She describes a pattern she has seen repeatedly, where companies rushed into AI because their competitors did, without defining the problem they were trying to solve.

“Many of those AI adoptions are failing,” she said. “That’s because many organizations hadn’t actually defined the business problem they were trying to solve with AI.”

Workers appear to want that training. In the same Harris Poll survey, a majority said they wish their employer would train them on AI, and more than three quarters said they’d take part if it were offered for free.

Nokia’s view on fundamentals before adoption

Linda Krebs, global talent acquisition leader at Nokia, sees the question from a very different vantage point. Nokia employs between 70,000 and 80,000 people across more than 130 countries, so AI adoption in HR moves carefully, working through the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), regional employment laws, and a workforce with wildly different starting points. Krebs, speaking to her personal perspective on the company’s approach, describes an internal AI platform open to all employees, structured learning sessions through Nokia’s development portal, and a culture that encourages experimentation within guardrails.