WORKERS WELCOME AI NEW COWORKERS

Despite what you may have heard, the rise of robots and AI in the workplace is no reason to panic. Employees can, in fact, supercharge their career opportunities if they adapt to these new technologies, say experts.

But human resources departments and boardrooms will have to successfully surf the wave of change if they are to introduce and promote a virtuous cycle of technology use and valuation in the workplace.

Attention-grabbing headlines about technology laying waste to entire industries could cause business leaders to work with an inaccurate picture of the reality on the ground, a point supported by a Brigham Young University study in the US discovered people are prone to exaggerate the rate at which their careers may be ended by technology.

“Overall, our perceptions of robots taking over is greatly exaggerated,” says Brigham Sociology Professor Eric Dahlin. “Those who hadn’t lost jobs overestimated by about double, and those who had lost jobs overestimated by about three times.”

These findings are consistent with previous studies, says Dahlin, suggesting that workplaces integrate employees and robots in ways that generate more value for human labour.

“An everyday example is an autonomous, self-propelled machine roaming the aisles and cleaning floors at your local grocery store,” he says. “This robot cleans the floors while employees clean under shelves or other difficult-toreach places.”

The aviation industry offers another example of robots and humans working together, as Dahlin explains: plane manufacturers have used robots to paint wings at a rate of one coat of paint in 24 minutes, something that would take a human painter hours to accomplish. Humans are nevertheless required to load and unload the paint while the robot does the painting.

AI adds value to individuals and businesses

A separate report from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that 60% of employees have already welcomed AI as a coworker. Organisations with employees working well with AI are 5.9 times more likely to see significant financial benefits than organisations that are not using AI.

The report, Achieving Individual – and Organisational – Value With AI, indicates individuals derive personal value from AI when using the technology, which improves self-determination.

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"AI use in business is now pervasive,” says Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Analytics at Boston College. “Many technologies have embedded, even hidden, AI components that workers may not even be aware of. When everyone is using AI to some degree – and getting value from it – familiar tropes become problematic. The idea that managers who use AI will replace managers who don't, loses meaning when everyone is using AI."

AI use is so pervasive, in fact, that individual workers may take some of its applications for granted. According to the findings, 66% of individuals report that they do not use AI or use it only minimally. But when prompted with specific examples of AI-enhanced business applications –office productivity applications, calendar schedulers, and customer relationship management software, for example – 43% of respondents acknowledge they regularly or sometimes use business products with AI.

“When individuals don’t know that they are using AI, they naturally have a harder time recognising its value,” says François Candelon, Global Director of the BCG Henderson Institute and coauthor of the report. “But our research shows that employees using AI knowingly are 1.6 times more likely to get individual value, and 1.8 times more likely to be satisfied with their jobs, than those who do not realise they use AI.”

The survey revealed that many respondents think that using AI has improved interactions with their team members (56%), with their managers (47%), and with other people in their departments (52%), in addition to helping them feel more capable in their job performance.

“To obtain the financial and organisational benefits of AI, managers must promote a virtuous cycle of use and value at the individual level by cultivating trust, understanding, agency, and awareness of the technology,” says Shervin Khodabandeh, a Senior Partner and Managing Director at BCG, co-leader of GAMMA in North America, and a co-author of the report. “The relationship between individual and organisational value from AI is additive, not zero-sum.”

Technology skills gap is a threat to business

Those employees who do get to grips with data analysis, cloud services, AI and machine learning find there is a world of new opportunities as companies scramble to keep up with expansion plans.

Research by digital infrastructure company Equinix discovered 67% of IT decision-makers in the UK view a shortage of personnel with IT skills as one of the main threats to their business, while 61% acknowledged that the skills’ shortage has been exacerbated by the speed at which the tech industry is being transformed.

Equinix’s 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey found that, across the globe, the most in-demand tech employees are IT technicians (27%), cloud computing specialists (26%) and those with an aptitude for AI and machine learning (26%).

Other skills shortages raised in the research include data analysis (21%), data protection (21%), security software development (19%) and security analysis (18%). Globally, IT leaders anticipate that the gaps in tech skills will remain similar in the future, with AI/machine learning becoming even more in demand.

“The skills’ gap is present across the entire tech industry, but is particularly acute in operations roles where the rapid pace of change means the workforce needs to be constantly upskilled and expanded,” says Gary

Aitkenhead, Senior Vice President, EMEA IBX Operations

at Equinix.