{"id":169514,"date":"2026-05-28T08:50:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T07:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/?p=169514"},"modified":"2026-05-28T08:50:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T07:50:43","slug":"building-an-inclusive-ai-workforce-the-uks-opportunity-to-thrive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/2026\/05\/28\/building-an-inclusive-ai-workforce-the-uks-opportunity-to-thrive\/","title":{"rendered":"Building an inclusive AI workforce: the UK\u2019s opportunity to thrive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Praveen Prabhakaran, Chief Operating Officer, UST, on how the UK can use AI-driven transformation to create a more inclusive technology workforce while accelerating innovation and economic growth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI is transforming organisations across the world, driving productivity, innovation and economic growth. In parallel, leadership teams are grappling with how to ensure their workforces have the cultural mindset, skills and confidence to adapt alongside this change. This means bringing employees on the transformation journey, rather than positioning AI purely as a threat to jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the UK government, the country\u2019s AI market is valued at more than \u00a372 billion, making it the third largest globally after the US and China. This rapid growth is already contributing significantly to the economy, with British businesses reporting an average 11.5% increase in productivity thanks to AI. However, despite this momentum, the sector continues to face a persistent challenge: the lack of diversity within its workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women account for just 19% of employees in core tech roles across Europe, a decline of 3% from the previous year. In the UK, there has been some progress at entry level, with more women entering the sector than in previous years. While these gains are encouraging, they are not yet translating into sustained representation across all levels of the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closing this gap is no longer just a diversity question. It is a question of sustainable growth, innovation and who gets to participate in the next wave of the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the UK\u2019s tech gap matters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lack of female representation in technology is not only a diversity issue but also an economic one. Women leaving the tech sector is estimated to cost the UK economy between \u00a32 billion and \u00a33.5 billion every year, a figure that grows as the sector itself does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cost is not only financial either. Without diverse perspectives shaping AI systems, bias is more likely to be embedded into them, producing unfair outcomes that disproportionately affect women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gap is not only showing up in the workplace. It starts much earlier. While the share of women graduating from European technology degree programmes has increased slightly since 2022, the pipeline from graduate school into the tech workforce has declined by 20 percentage points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, while women\u2019s STEM graduation rates are climbing, their participation in tech roles continues to decline, a clear sign that education alone will not deliver the gender equity the industry requires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning AI disruption into an opportunity for inclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where the current moment becomes pivotal. AI-driven disruption is reshaping every aspect of the technology sector, creating a rare opportunity to rethink how the industry attracts, develops and retains talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As organisations invest in building new AI capabilities and future-ready workforces, there is a critical chance to improve female representation across UK and European tech, ensuring the next generation of technologies is shaped by a more diverse and representative workforce rather than reinforcing existing inequalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UK government\u2019s January 2026 commitment to upskill 10 million workers by 2030 makes this moment decisive. Achieving it will require action from governments, employers and education systems to ensure women are not only using technologies but actively shaping them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At UST, we are helping drive this change through the AccelerateUS programme, a UK-based journey designed to take women from learning into technology roles, removing barriers to entry and progression along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The programme is designed to support women in technology at every career stage, from students and graduates to early-career professionals, while remaining closely aligned to industry needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the heart of the programme is a simple idea. People learn fastest by doing. AccelerateUS combines practical training, hands-on application and mentorship, bringing together industry practitioners, academic partners such as Leeds Trinity University and participants in a learning environment built around real-world problem solving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This matters because in the era of AI, skills development and future-proofing talent will be required at a scale never seen before. The World Economic Forum\u2019s Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that 59% of the world\u2019s workforce will require training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Training is therefore essential to meeting this demand, equipping people not only to build capability but to innovate, make better decisions and adapt as technology continues to evolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Results so far<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its first year, more than 100 participants have engaged with the programme through events across the UK and Europe and what stands out is not just the numbers but the breadth of what they have experienced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working alongside universities nationwide such as Leeds Trinity University, the programme has delivered hackathons focused on applied AI and innovation, targeted training programmes such as AI in Testing, capability-building sessions and wider industry-academia collaboration models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has also created a space for honest industry conversations, bringing together leaders from financial services, retail and technology to share what is genuinely working as they put emerging technologies to use and what is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impact is already showing in participants\u2019 journeys, with many progressing into further learning, securing interviews and moving into clear technology-focused career pathways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How the initiative aligns with the UK\u2019s ambition to upskill 10 million workers in AI and accelerate national adoption<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2026, the UK government set out an ambitious national commitment to make AI skills accessible to all adults through free, benchmarked training programmes designed to build capability across the workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the heart of its goal of upskilling 10 million workers in AI by 2030 is supporting the UK\u2019s wider ambition to become the fastest adopter of AI in the G7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ambition behind this programme goes beyond skills development alone. It reflects a wider national strategy to ensure the workforce is equipped to work confidently alongside AI, unlocking productivity gains, enabling more high-skilled job creation and freeing workers from routine, repetitive tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Estimates suggest that accelerated AI adoption could contribute up to \u00a3140 billion annually to the UK economy, reinforcing the role of skills development as a cornerstone of long-term economic renewal and competitiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UST\u2019s programme directly supports this national ambition by helping to translate ambition into action. By widening access to applied AI learning, strengthening pathways into technology roles and embedding practical, industry-aligned skills development, the initiative contributes to closing critical digital capability gaps across the UK workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s next for upskilling women in AI<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As AI continues to reshape industries and global economies, its full potential can only be realised if the structural barriers limiting women\u2019s participation in technology are addressed head-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closing this gap is not just a matter of equality. It is a strategic and economic imperative critical to reducing biases in AI systems, unlocking innovation and strengthening long-term competitiveness across the UK and Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the UK and Europe, there is a real opportunity to turn AI\u2019s disruption into a moment for inclusion, particularly for women. Realising it will take more government initiatives, more companies stepping forward and a shared willingness to act on it now, not later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Praveen Prabhakaran, Chief Operating Officer, UST, on how the UK can use AI-driven transformation to create a more inclusive technology workforce while accelerating innovation and economic growth. AI is transforming organisations across the world, driving productivity, innovation and economic growth. In parallel, leadership teams are grappling with how to ensure their workforces have the cultural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":169515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21064,21754,93,23],"tags":[19424,25799,20540,22875,23477,76,22463,25802,25803,25800,25319,16562,24719,17893,25801],"class_list":["post-169514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-technology-ciso","category-top-stories","category-united-kingdom","tag-ai-adoption","tag-ai-inclusion","tag-ai-skills","tag-ai-training","tag-ai-workforce","tag-digital-transformation","tag-future-of-work","tag-leeds-trinity-university","tag-stem-careers","tag-uk-ai-market","tag-uk-technology-sector","tag-ust","tag-women-in-ai","tag-women-in-tech","tag-workforce-development"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169516,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169514\/revisions\/169516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}