AI is Changing the Job. Are Your Team Development Plans Keeping Up?

As performance reviews and development conversations begin across companies, leaders are taking stock of their teams, assessing potential, identifying skill gaps, and setting goals for the year ahead. For communications leaders, this year it is particularly important not to treat this annual process as a routine HR exercise. Instead, it’s an opportunity to step back and ask bigger questions about how the function is evolving, how we evaluate talent, and how we prepare our teams to meet the demands of a rapidly changing landscape.

Like many other fields, communications is undergoing one of its most significant transformations in decades due to the adoption of artificial intelligence. AI is increasingly taking over routine tasks such as drafting press releases, media pitches, social posts, internal newsletters, and even analytics reports. According to a recent HarrisX–Ragan Survey of Communications Leaders, 95 percent of organizations now use AI tools in their communications work. The shift extends to the C-suite, where many senior leaders trust custom-trained AI agents for some tasks more than their top experts. In that same HarrisX–Ragan survey, 57 percent of CEOs said they would choose a custom-trained AI tool to write an important speech rather than depend solely on a top communications professional.

These fundamental changes are reshaping both the profession and expectations for communications teams. Leaders and their teams now need to demonstrate the skills that technology cannot replace. Among them are strategic thinking and creative problem solving, which CEOs rank among the most valuable capabilities. The C-suite increasingly expects communications teams to function as strategic business partners, not merely as order takers and tactical executors.

Preparing teams to thrive in this environment requires intentionally embedding these capabilities into talent development plans, especially for junior employees early in their careers. Here are four focus areas to consider:

1. Build Business Acumen Early

Communicators cannot act as true business partners without a deep understanding of how their company works. Many entry-level employees enter the function with limited exposure to the commercial context, spending their early years producing content without understanding how decisions are made. Leaders can support their learning by sharing insights from executive meetings, promoting cross-department shadowing, and creating a glossary of key terms. It’s important to set the expectation that everyone on the team builds a solid understanding of how the business operates, including its revenue streams, customer pain points, industry trends, and competitor dynamics. Developing business fluency early gives junior communicators the perspective they need to contribute more effectively and produce higher-quality work.

2. Foster Strategic Thinking as a Mindset

Strategic thinking is not reserved for senior titles; it is a mindset that must be cultivated early. Emerging communicators should be coached to build context awareness, ask “why this, why now?”, and think several steps ahead. That includes developing an instinct to evaluate risks, considering stakeholder dynamics, and understanding the long-term implications of their recommendations, while remaining adaptable in the face of uncertainty.

Encouraging curiosity, situational awareness, and pattern recognition helps junior staff move from simply executing tasks to approaching their work with business-informed judgment.

3. Develop Multidisciplinary Communicators

Over-specialization is one of the hidden risks for communicators today. When team members are trained too narrowly — whether in media relations, executive communications, internal communications, or HR communications — their value and growth potential can become limited in an increasingly complex environment, with more stakeholders and issues to manage than ever before. AI may streamline certain tasks, but the human value lies in understanding how all pieces of the stakeholder ecosystem connect. There’s a growing need for professionals who, while having expertise in a particular domain, also have the breadth of skill to think strategically and plug easily into a variety of contexts while keeping pace with today’s breakneck news cycle. Providing early-career communicators with broad exposure across disciplines positions them to grow into true strategic partners to the business.

4. Position AI as a Thought Partner, Not a Shortcut

It’s clear that AI is here to stay, and communicators at all levels need to develop the knowledge and skills to use it effectively. While most communications professionals now use generative AI tools, few organizations provide structured learning opportunities. Leaders who excel in this space are building AI curriculums for their teams to ensure consistent understanding, smoother adoption, and effective integration into daily workflows. Equally important is guiding teams to treat AI as a thought partner rather than a shortcut, since relying on it merely to “make life easy” can result in generic outputs and shallow thinking. Encourage staff to bring their own ideas first, apply critical thinking, and then use AI to refine, test, or iterate concepts. AI can accelerate scenario planning, analyze stakeholder reactions, and enhance messaging, but human experience, judgment, and strategic insight remain essential.

Bottom Line

This year, performance-review season is the ideal moment to redefine what impact means for your communications team and to align employee development plans with the demands of a rapidly changing landscape. Professionals who will thrive are those with business acumen, strategic thinking, the ability to operate across disciplines, and the skills to use AI as an amplifier rather than a replacement. By building these capabilities early, we not only future-proof our teams but also position the communications function within the organization as a key enabler of enterprise strategy and business success.