Professional services have always run on human expertise. Clients pay a premium for their judgment and deep domain knowledge. These skills take years to build, but the market is shifting at a pace that traditional talent development cannot keep up with.
ManpowerGroup's 2026 Talent Shortage Survey of 39,000 employers across 41 countries finds that 72% of firms struggle to fill roles. And, for the first time, AI skills have overtaken engineering and traditional IT as the hardest capabilities to find. In Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services specifically, that figure rises to 73%.
Against this backdrop, professional services firms face high attrition and a relentless pace of technological change. Firms must prepare the next generation of professionals for a world where human expertise and AI must work in tandem. Yesterday's training models are no longer fit for the purpose. Recognising this, leading firms are setting the pace in digital learning, building AI capability from within.
AI training: building capability from the inside out
Accenture: The firm is reskilling 700,000 employees in agentic AI — one of the largest corporate AI training programmes in the world. For its clients, Accenture partnered with Stanford Online and launched the GenAI Scholars Programme, an on-demand course of more than 40 hours designed to equip business and technology leaders with the skills to harness GenAI in their organisations.
Deloitte: Deloitte partnered with Anthropic to launch a GenAI certification programme targeting 15,000 of its own professionals globally. The firm's AI Academy has since trained more than 120,000 professionals across all experience levels — and its audit professionals alone ran over three million AI prompts in the first year of use.
KPMG: KPMG UK partnered with Multiverse to deliver a structured AI training programme that ends with employees receiving a formal AI credential, while its external AI Learning programme equips business leaders to lead AI transformations at scale. KPMG was the first firm globally to receive ISO 42001 certification for AI Management Systems.
McKinsey: McKinsey's internal AI platform, Lilli, distils over 100 years of firm knowledge into a single, queryable resource. Since launch, 92% of global staff have used it, with 74% using it regularly, saving more than 30% of their time previously spent on information gathering and synthesis.
PwC: A $1 billion commitment over three years signals just how seriously PwC is taking AI fluency. Centred around "My AI", a programme built on hands-on experimentation and collaborative prompting sessions, the initiative drove 20-30% efficiency gains among employees. Beyond its own walls, the firm partnered with Innovate UK to launch an AI Skills Hub, offering curated, sector-specific AI training to help employers in skills-shortage industries close the gap between demand and available talent.
Immersive tech: redefining how training is delivered
Accenture: Since 2020, Accenture has used VR to onboard new hires through One Accenture Park, a virtual campus that replicates the full onboarding experience, including water cooler spaces for informal connection. The offering has since expanded to hosted digital events and virtual whiteboards.
Deloitte: Deloitte's most distinctive emerging tech initiative is its Unlimited Reality Ambition Lab, a half-day client experience designed to move organisations beyond curiosity about the metaverse and into concrete strategy, addressing real business problems in an immersive, simulated environment.
EY: EY's focus is on helping clients navigate the metaverse strategically by offering deep advisory expertise to help organisations build immersive strategies, develop technology roadmaps, and position themselves for a technology-driven future.
KPMG: KPMG took a collaboration-first approach, launching a Metaverse hub for its US and Canada operations — a private virtual space where employees, partners, and clients can meet, train, interview, and explore the firm's capabilities, all within the metaverse.
PWC: PwC's own research found that VR users learn four times faster than peers in traditional classrooms. The firm turned this finding into a client offering, providing immersive tech and VR training services to help organisations drive better learning outcomes.
Navigating the risks
The momentum is real, but so are the risks. Hallucinations, where AI generates plausible but incorrect information, remain a top concern, particularly in high-stakes legal and financial contexts where a single error carries real consequences. Data security is an equally live issue, as training tools routinely require access to sensitive client and firm data. Rigorous human oversight is not optional; AI must augment professional judgment, not replace it.
Summing up
AI adoption in professional services is accelerating rapidly. According to Thomson Reuters, GenAI usage has nearly doubled in twelve months, and more than 90% professionals expect it to become a central part of their workflow within five years.
Agentic AI and immersive VR simulations are emerging as the next frontier, providing professionals the space to rehearse complex, high-stakes situations without any real-world risk.
Talent has always been the differentiator in professional services. What is changing is how it is developed. Firms that are leading the way have made AI training a top priority, embedding it into their workflows and talent strategy.
The business case is proven, and the gap between early movers and the rest is widening. For leadership teams still weighing the decision, the window is narrowing.
How Infosys BPM can help
Building AI fluency at scale demands the right infrastructure, content, and delivery capability. Infosys BPM's Learning Services provide an end-to-end solution across the entire learning value chain, from instructional design and content development to delivery, administration, and analytics. Powered by AI, the platform tailors learning paths to individual skill gaps, roles, and career trajectories. For professional services firms navigating rapid AI adoption, Infosys BPM brings the operational depth to deploy digital learning for consultants at scale, with measurable outcomes built in from the start.
