The Shift Report · Issue 6 · 14 June 2026
Everyone has AI now. Almost nobody has an advantage
44% of UK workplaces use AI every day, but most can’t say what it has improved. A tool can only work with what it’s been told, and almost none of what your best operator knows has ever been written down.
44% of UK workplaces use AI every day. That figure comes from Skills England research published on 10 June. Read the next line and the picture changes: most of those workplaces can’t say what it has improved.
I think the explanation is simpler than the AI conversation makes it sound. A tool can only work with what it’s been told. A model trained on the whole internet still knows nothing about your site. It doesn’t know why your night shift runs the goods-in check in a different order to the day shift, or which order is correct. If nobody has written that down, the tool can’t use it, and neither can the new starter you hired last month.
So the companies getting something out of AI this year have one thing in common. They already knew their own work well enough to point the tool at a real part of it. The rest bought the same software and got a faster way to write emails.
Three things worth knowing
1. A logistics firm turned one man into software.
Lazer Logistics built an AI coaching tool, named it Uncle Phil after its COO Phil Newsome, and put it across about 750 sites. It reads telematics, in-cab video, inspection reports and yard workflows, then coaches site managers in the moment, the way Newsome’s 36 years would if he could be everywhere at once.
My take: the interesting decision is what they fed it. To build the tool, somebody had to get 36 years of judgement out of Newsome’s head and write it down. Most companies have a Newsome. Very few could tell you, on paper, what he does that the others don’t. That writing-down is the slow, unglamorous job, and it decides whether an AI project has anything real underneath it. The software is the cheap part.
2. Walmart built the pallet for the person unloading it.
Walmart now uses machine-vision forklifts to unload trailers. The part I’d point at sits before the robot: the company builds each pallet using store-level data, so the goods a shop needs first come off the lorry first. Walmart calls the worker’s job “conductor” now (Fortune, 12 June).
My take: they designed the packing job around the unloading job. I’ve watched the opposite cost real hours for years — a load goes out correct on every system and miserable to receive, because the person who built it was measured on getting it out the door. You don’t need a robot to copy this. Ask one team what the team after them always has to redo. The answer is usually free, and usually already known by everyone except the people who could change it.
3. The skills gap that’s hurting operations isn’t the one in the headlines.
A manufacturing survey from Octave on 3 June found 47% of firms now use AI in quality work, up from 33% a year ago. The same survey found 85% said staff and skills shortages were dragging their quality down (2,263 managers across the US, UK and Germany; sponsored research, so read the framing accordingly).
My take: when people say “AI skills gap” they usually mean their staff can’t drive the new tools. The skill that’s actually leaving is the operational knowledge that used to pass from an experienced operator to a green one over two years of standing next to them. Nobody has two years now. Before an “AI upskilling” line goes in the budget, I’d spend the cheaper money first and capture what your experienced people know while they’re still on the payroll.
One thing to try this fortnight
Audit the distance between your SOP and your best person. Pick one task where getting it wrong is expensive — a release decision, a safety step, a handling procedure. Sit your most experienced operator down with the written version and ask them to read it out loud and stop wherever the document and the real job stop agreeing.
You’ll get more than you expect: the step they do in a different order, for a reason; the check that isn’t on the page but they’d never skip; the line they’ll tell you to ignore because it went out of date two reorganisations ago. Everything they stop on is the gap between your written operation and your real one. You can’t buy your way across it. You can map it, one task at a time, and it starts with a 30-minute conversation this week.
SOPwise turns a Standard Operating Procedure into a training package: task-based steps, critical mistakes, and scenario questions. £35 per SOP, no subscription. Built for UK manufacturing and chemical distribution.