Are you ready to have a robot as your manager?

Are you ready to have a robot as your manager?

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Individuals may be more accepting of the inexorable rise of artificial intelligence (AI) at work but organisations are not doing enough to help employees embrace AI and that will result in reduced productivity, skillset obsolescence and job loss, a new study warns.

According to a survey of HR leaders and employees from Oracle and Future Workplace, an overwhelming majority reported they were ‘ready’ to take instructions from robots at work which directly correlates with their familiarity of AI technology at home.

The report, AI at Work, which quizzed 1,320 HR leaders and employees, found that while people are ready to embrace AI at work, only six per cent of HR professionals are actively deploying AI and one quarter of employees (24 per cent) are using some form of AI at work. This contrasts starkly with 70 per cent of respondents using some form of AI in their personal lives.

To determine why there is such a gap in AI adoption when people are clearly ready to embrace AI at work (93 per cent would trust orders from a robot), the study set out to examine HR leader and employee perceptions of the benefits of AI, the obstacles preventing AI adoption and the business consequences of not embracing AI.
“As this study shows, people are not afraid of AI taking their jobs and instead want to be able to quickly and easily take advantage of the latest innovations,” said Emily He, SVP, human capital management cloud business group, Oracle.

“To help employees embrace AI, organisations should partner with their HR leaders to address the skill gap and focus their IT strategy on embedding simple and powerful AI innovations into existing business processes.”
Despite its clear potential to improve business performance, HR leaders and employees believe that organisations are not doing enough to prepare the workforce for AI. Respondents also identified a number of other barriers holding back AI in the enterprise.

The vast majority of HR leaders (90 per cent) are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI as part of their job and to make matters worse, they are not currently empowered to address an emerging AI skill gap in their organisation.

While half of employees (51 per cent) are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI and 71 per cent believe AI skills and knowledge will be important in the next three years, nearly three quarters of HR leaders (72 per cent) noted that their organisation does not provide any form of AI training programme.
“AI will enable companies to stay competitive, HR leaders to be more strategic and employees to be more productive at work,” added Dan Schawbel, research director at Future Workplace.

“If organisations want to take advantage of the AI revolution, while closing the skills gap, they will have to invest in AI training programmes. If employees want to stay relevant to the current and future job market, they need to embrace AI as part of their job.”