I was standing inside the Mediterranean Biome at the Eden Project when it struck me.
Around me, plants from South Africa, California, the western Mediterranean – species that had no business thriving in Cornwall – were flourishing. Lush, abundant, extraordinary. Not because they had changed themselves to survive the British climate. But because someone had deliberately built an environment that welcomed them.
The conditions changed. The plants didn’t have to.
I had come to Anthropy26 to think about leadership. I hadn’t expected a greenhouse to hand me the clearest possible frame for the most urgent question in my field.
We spend enormous energy asking people from underrepresented backgrounds to adapt – to code-switch, to fit in, to make themselves legible to environments that were never built with them in mind. And now, just as we’re making real progress on that, artificial intelligence is quietly removing the entry-level roles that gave those people their way in.
If you remove the first rung, the ladder becomes a wall.
The Progress Is Real. And It’s Under Threat.
For twenty years, our work at Jenny Garrett Global has been grounded in one conviction: inclusive leadership produces better results. Not as a moral position – as a business reality. Diverse boards make better decisions. Inclusive talent pipelines outperform. The Parker Review demonstrated that targets move the dial on board representation. The GEMS Report, tracking the UK’s top 400 companies on gender pay, parental leave, and female board representation, showed a 20% improvement uplift in a single year.
I believe that. I’ve seen it. And I also know that all of it depends on people being able to get in the door.
Here’s what’s worrying me. According to Korn Ferry’s 2026 Talent Acquisition Trends Report, 43% of companies plan to replace roles with AI – and entry-level positions are among the top targets. Their research is direct about what follows: cut those roles today and your cost saving becomes your talent crisis tomorrow. The beginner analyst who spends two years learning your business becomes a junior manager. The coordinator who understands every process becomes your team leader. Remove those roles, and in a few years you’ll be scrambling to hire managers from outside who don’t understand your culture, your people, or your challenges.
The AI skills gap isn’t just a technical problem. It’s an inclusion problem. And organisations treating it as purely a technology question are missing the most important part of the picture.
The Two-Tier Workforce Is Already Here
We talk about the two-tier workforce – those who know how to work with AI and those who don’t – as though it’s something on the horizon. It isn’t. It’s forming right now, in hiring decisions being made this quarter, in graduate schemes being quietly reduced, in the slow structural disappearance of the roles that gave people their start.
The scale of investment accelerating this is significant. BCG research shows companies expect to double their AI spending in 2026 – from an average of 0.8% of revenue to 1.7%. That investment is reshaping functions at speed. The question inclusive leaders need to be asking is: who benefits from that acceleration, and who gets left further behind?
The people who feel the impact of AI-driven role reduction first are, almost always, those who were already climbing against the odds. First-generation graduates. People from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Those whose route into professional life depended on those junior positions existing. This isn’t a side effect to manage later. It’s a design choice being made now, by default, in organisations that aren’t asking the right questions.
What Inclusive AI Strategy Actually Looks Like
The conversations I had at Anthropy26 – not just in sessions, but in coffee queues, at bus stops, in the two minutes before things started – gave me something I hadn’t expected. Not despair. Grounded, purposeful hope. So many people quietly, determinedly working on getting this right.
Inclusive AI strategy isn’t the same as an AI strategy with a diversity statement attached. It means actually auditing which roles are being automated and asking what replaces them for people early in their careers – not as a side question, but as a core one. It means investing in AI literacy for the whole organisation, not just the technical teams. It means designing pathways into AI-adjacent roles that don’t require people to already have a foot in the door. And it means asking, before deploying any new AI tool: who benefits here, and who bears the cost?
The Mediterranean Biome taught me something else. Those plants weren’t just tolerated in that environment. They were celebrated. An AI-ready organisation isn’t one that has replaced its people with technology. It’s one that has created the conditions for everyone to flourish. The human qualities that AI cannot replicate – imagination, empathy, the ability to build trust across difference, the capacity to create meaning – are not becoming less valuable. They are becoming the most valuable thing in the room. But only if the people who hold them are given the chance to be there.
The Decisions Made Now Will Define the Next Twenty Years
I’ve been doing this work for twenty years. I’ve seen organisations get inclusion right and get it catastrophically wrong. The difference, almost always, is whether leaders treat it as a structural question or a values statement.
AI adoption is a structural question. The decisions being made right now – about which tools to adopt, which roles to automate, how to invest in people’s development, and how to govern what’s being built – will determine who gets to participate in the economy of the next two decades. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s simply what the evidence suggests.
The Korn Ferry research found that only 22% of talent leaders believe their leaders can effectively manage teams that combine humans and AI agents. That readiness gap isn’t just a capability problem. It’s a signal that most organisations are moving fast on AI adoption and slowly on the human dimensions of that change.
The ladder hasn’t been fully kicked away yet. But it’s wobbling. The leaders who recognise that now – who ask the harder questions before the consequences become visible – are the ones who’ll build organisations worth working for, and a workforce the whole country benefits from.
At JGG, our AI-Ready Leadership and Inclusive Leadership programmes help organisations build cultures where AI adoption works for everyone – not just those already at the top. Download our Two-Tier Workforce white paper for a deeper look at the data and practical steps. If your organisation is grappling with what equitable AI adoption looks like in practice, we’d love that conversation.
What is your organisation doing to make sure AI works for everyone – not just those already at the top of the ladder?
About the Author
Jenny Garrett OBE is the Founder and CEO of Jenny Garrett Global, a leadership development consultancy specialising in Inclusive Leadership, Entrepreneurial Leadership and AI-Ready Leadership. She is co-author of AI for Equity (Emerald Publishing, September 2026), co-host of the AI for Equity podcast, and a graduate of MIT’s AI Strategy and Leadership Programme.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the two-tier workforce and why does it matter for inclusion?
The two-tier workforce refers to the growing divide between workers who can effectively use AI tools and those who cannot. It matters for inclusion because the people most likely to be left in the lower tier are those already climbing against the odds – first-generation graduates, people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and those whose entry into professional life depends on junior roles that AI is now eliminating. What started as a technology question is becoming one of the most significant inclusion challenges of this decade.
How is AI affecting social mobility in the UK?
AI is affecting social mobility primarily by removing entry-level roles – the first rungs of the career ladder that have historically given people from less privileged backgrounds their way into professional life. According to Korn Ferry’s 2026 Talent Acquisition Trends Report, 43% of companies plan to replace roles with AI, with entry-level positions among the top targets. For social mobility, this is not a future risk – it is a design choice being made now, in organisations that are not asking who bears the cost of that automation.
What is inclusive AI strategy?
Inclusive AI strategy means genuinely integrating equity into how an organisation adopts and deploys artificial intelligence – not attaching a diversity statement to an existing AI plan. It means auditing which roles are being automated and asking what replaces them for people early in their careers. It means investing in AI literacy across the whole organisation, not just technical teams. It means designing pathways into AI-adjacent roles that do not require people to already have a foot in the door. And it means asking, before deploying any new AI tool: who benefits here, and who bears the cost?
What is Jenny Garrett Global’s approach to AI-ready leadership?
Jenny Garrett Global’s AI-Ready Leadership programmes help organisations build cultures where AI adoption works for everyone – not just those already at the top. The approach combines inclusive leadership development with practical AI literacy, working simultaneously with diverse talent, their managers, and senior sponsors through the Tri-Level methodology. The goal is not to slow AI adoption but to ensure the human dimensions of that change are addressed with the same rigour as the technical ones. The Two-Tier Workforce white paper sets out the evidence base and practical steps in detail.
Why are entry-level roles important for leadership development?
Entry-level roles are where people learn how organisations work – how to navigate a workplace, build relationships, develop judgement, and accumulate institutional knowledge. The beginner analyst becomes the junior manager. The coordinator who understands every process becomes the team leader. When those roles disappear, organisations lose the pipeline that produces their next generation of leaders, and individuals lose the on-ramp that makes senior positions reachable. Korn Ferry’s research found only 22% of talent leaders believe their leaders can effectively manage teams combining humans and AI agents – a readiness gap that begins at the bottom of the career ladder.
What can HR and People leaders do right now about AI and social mobility?
HR and People leaders can take three immediate steps. First, audit which roles in your organisation are being automated or reduced, and ask explicitly what replaces them for people early in their careers. Second, ensure AI literacy investment reaches the whole organisation – not just technical functions – so the skills gap does not entrench existing inequalities. Third, put belonging and social mobility explicitly on your AI transformation agenda rather than treating them as separate workstreams. For a deeper look at the data and practical steps, download the Two-Tier Workforce white paper or explore JGG’s AI-Ready Leadership and Inclusive Leadership programmes.
