Will machines replace jobs for humans? The consequences of this may be unexpected...
It’s a future that many fear: as machines carry out almost every imaginable task, employment rates dip and millions of human beings are thrown on the scrap heap. 22%5 of participants in our survey stated that their biggest fear about AI is that it will cause unemployment.
This fear is not without basis. A report by the World Economic Forum on workforce trends and strategies for the AI industrial revolution suggests mass job dislocation due to various factors, including technological advancement.
It estimates that 75 million jobs may be displaced between 2018 and 2022, but that 133 million additional new roles could emerge at the same time.6
Furthermore, business leaders have inevitably been preoccupied by political events and the massive upheaval that the uncertainties threaten to cause to exports, regulation and talent. However, this change has caused too many to ignore or underestimate the impact of AI on employment. Fears about immigration and new arrivals taking jobs have been replaced by fears about those jobs being lost to technology. 51%7 of respondents in the Hanover survey believed that AI will have a greater impact on the jobs market in the next 20 years than immigration did in the last 20 years. Only 17%8 of participants disagreed.
Whatever your view on immigration, it has caused a backlash that has angered and disillusioned a significant proportion of UK and EU citizens. It has helped to drive the UK out of the arms of the European Union. Although immigration and the AI revolution are two different things, there are a lot of lessons that can be taken from the former when implementing the latter, such as the need to ponder the perspectives of both the victims and advocates of any advances.
Millions of workers, both blue and white collar, could find themselves unqualified for both the new jobs created by AI and the traditional roles that are changed almost beyond recognition by it. Some organisations are already making plans to manage this change and to benefit from it. Others, meanwhile, are distracted by other issues, or simply feel overwhelmed by the AI industrial revolution, unable to know where to start managing it.
Companies need to manage this pain during the transition stage through strategy that’s fit for purpose as well as effective communications to help convey these.
Despite the scare-mongering headlines, the very nature of AI means that a human workforce will remain important. The technology removes mundane tasks and provides vast new reservoirs of data that human beings can use to do their jobs more effectively.
Companies should therefore be thinking about redeployment not unemployment; of invigorating, not automating, their workforces. By handling this change well, successful organisations can improve the morale, skills and engagement of their employees by allocating mundane tasks to machines so that human beings can do what human beings do best. This includes being creative and using their interpersonal skills.
Businesses need to go about implementing AI technology in a human-centred way, so as not to raise fears of workers being replaced by machines. They should focus on how AI will make the workforce more efficient and allow people to spend more time doing the human-centred part of their jobs, such as interacting with customers, using their judgement, planning and problem solving.
Organisations need to decide how they will implement AI-assisted technologies in a way that complements their human workforce. They must think about upskilling their workforce now. Their focus needs to be on human-specific qualities such as compassion, judgement and creativity.
The AI revolution is already happening, and businesses would do best to get ahead of it. They need to stay informed, be aware of new AI-related technologies emerging in their sector, be engaged with regulators and know what other organisations are doing to manage this change. Lack of insight could lead to being edged out by competitors.
Our research shows that 42%10 of people feel that their companies aren’t prepared and equipped for the changes that AI will bring to the nature of jobs. (Only 24%11 of people felt otherwise.) Of these, 59%12 said that their companies have not discussed how AI might affect their job. These figures should alarm shareholders, investors and senior executives of businesses implementing AI who haven’t communicated this with sensitivity. If not, they risk their AI initiatives being mistaken as schemes to cut corners and save money, rather than transforming the way we live and work for the better.
Good communication is essential to maintaining morale and employee buy-in during this change. It is crucial that organisations develop strategies for communicating these changes to their workforce. This means being clear not just about the ‘what’ that is happening but also the ‘why’. This is essential, in order to help employees to understand the journey that they and the organisation are on.
Businesses also need to ensure that external communications align with internal ones. After all, an organisation’s employees are its best advocates, and they should have access to the same information provided to customers, suppliers, regulators and the media.
AI represents a change management programme and many of the existing rules and best practices of communications apply. This means allowing for two-way communication and ensuring that the message and the medium are appropriate in terms of culture, age and position within the organisation.