Consulting executives said AI had made interpersonal skills more valuable, arguing these skills must be developed in-office.

Sayeh Ghanbari, UK head of consulting at EY, said: “This change we’ve seen in the last few years where people have set up their lives to be…at home a lot is just not the route to success in the world of AI. We’re facing a position where we’re going to have to reduce flexibility, but in order to help the human skills.”

She told the Financial Times that AI would help with routine consulting work, adding that human consultants would have to be good at being “human” and that they have to be more “face to face”.

The executive explained that it would be a “real leadership challenge” to persuade employees who had “set up their lives” around remote work to return to the office, adding: “To build a career in consulting and develop all of those human skills…you cannot do that through so much remote work.”

She claimed that firms had “dropped” human skills training, which includes empathy, storytelling and leadership following the pandemic, as they focused instead on AI and technical skills.

Callum Licence, KPMG’s head of UK advisory, told the FT that AI had made it “more important than ever for those starting out in their careers to have opportunities to learn directly from others.”