Why I Created the AI Skills Readiness Index
For the past 15 years, I’ve worked alongside Australian industry and professional associations through my research agency, Survey Matters. In that time, I’ve seen associations guide professions through enormous change - regulatory reform, workforce shortages, technological disruption, shifting member expectations and evolving community standards.
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shift arrive as quickly, or with as much uncertainty, as artificial intelligence.
Over the last two years, the conversations I’ve had with association professionals have changed dramatically. What started as curiosity about tools like ChatGPT quickly became deeper questions about workforce capability, professional standards, ethics and future employability.
How are members using AI?
What skills will professionals in our industry need in five years?
What happens if adoption outpaces training?
Who is responsible for guiding safe and ethical use?
And perhaps most importantly — what happens to younger professionals entering the workforce if we don’t get this transition right?
Those conversations were the catalyst for creating the AI Skills Readiness Index.
At its core, the Index was never designed to be a technology tool or another survey product. It was simply designed to help associations support their members through this transition. A way to help professions understand where they are now, where the risks and opportunities sit, and how they can prepare their members for a world where AI becomes embedded into almost every profession. I firmly believe this is really important to get right.
What struck me early on was the growing gap between adoption and capability. Research from the World Economic Forum suggests that nearly 40% of existing skills are expected to be transformed or become outdated over the next five years, while AI and technology literacy are among the fastest-growing skill areas. At the same time, Deloitte found workplace use of generative AI increased rapidly in a single year, with younger professionals leading adoption. Yet formal training, governance and professional guidance are still catching up, and that worries me.
Not because I think AI is something to fear, but because history tells us that major technological shifts create winners and losers. The people who thrive are usually the ones who either control resources or who receive the right support, training and opportunities early enough to adapt.
As a business owner, I can already see the productivity benefits AI brings. It helps us reduce repetitive work, speeds up our research and analysis, and creates opportunities to focus more on strategic and creative thinking. Used well, I can see how it can genuinely lifts our capability. That is also what much of the global evidence is now suggesting. Jobs and Skills Australia, for instance, concluded that the most significant impact of generative AI is likely to be augmentation of work rather than full automation of occupations.
But augmentation still changes what the employment market looks like.
Entry-level and early career roles are already shifting because many of the routine tasks traditionally used to learn a profession are becoming automated first. Jobs and Skills Australia has highlighted that these standardised and repetitive tasks are particularly exposed.
That creates a very personal concern for me, not just professionally, but as a parent.
Like many parents of young adults, I think a lot about what the workforce will look like for the next generation. My generation entered workplaces where we learnt gradually through repetition, observation and on-the-job development. We had the opportunity to build confidence over time.
I want my children and their friends who are just entering the workforce, in fact all young Australians entering the workforce today, to still have meaningful pathways to build careers, expertise and financial security in this new environment. I don’t want AI capability to become something only available to people working in large organisations with access to expensive training and resources. Small businesses who are unable to provide this training employ a lot of young adults too!
If we are not deliberate about how we manage this transition, we risk widening existing inequalities between industries, businesses, regions and generations.
That is why I believe associations matter so much in this moment.
Professional associations are uniquely positioned to help professions navigate this transition responsibly. They understand the practical realities of their industries. They are trusted by members. They shape standards, ethics, accreditation and lifelong learning. Most importantly, they can provide credible guidance that is profession-specific rather than generic.
The AI Skills Readiness Index was created to help associations do exactly that. It was designed to measure current skills and identify gaps, to understand how AI is actually being used in professional settings, to support the development of evidence-based training and workforce planning and to ensure that real AI capability develops alongside professional judgement, ethics and human oversight.
Because ultimately, this is not just a technology conversation. It is a workforce conversation. A productivity conversation. An education conversation.
It is a conversation about the future for the next generation.
I genuinely believe AI can improve work, create new opportunities and strengthen industries. But only if we invest in people at the same pace we invest in technology. That is the future I hope the AI Skills Readiness Index can help support.
If you agree and would like a chat about how you can help your members develop the skills they need in an AI world, please reach out via rsullivan@surveymatters.com.au. The Index is by no means perfect yet, and it will have to keep evolving as things are moving so quickly, so we are running a foundation or pilot program for associations and would be delighted if you are interested in giving your time so we can run it with your members.
It is one of the ways we hope to be able to contribute to this transition period and give back to the sector that we have enjoyed working with for the last 15 years.
Bec Sulivan ,Co-Founder & Research Director, Survey Matters