Thoughts on maintaining the centrality of employees in your artificial intelligence implementation, and a short self assessment to help focus your plan.
Human challenges in the implementation of artificial intelligence are widespread. This assessment helps you plan for and address them and improve the probability that your artificial intelligence adoption will deliver value for your organisation.
McKinsey have predicted that generative artificial intelligence will increase workforce productivity with a global value of $6.1 -$7.9 trillion annually. They expect this to be achieved at some point between 2030 and 2060 and be based on making existing workers more productive by complementing their work and through elimination of jobs by automation.
The impact of artificial intelligence on productivity will be added to impacts on other organisational elements for a combined benefit of $17.1 -$25.6 trillion – a massive boost for the organisations that are successful in their adoption of artificial intelligence. It is clear that in most industries, organisations’ AI adoption will determine competitive success – failure to adopt will be existential for many organisations and their employees.
On October 24th 2024, the Boston Consulting Group released their “Where’s the Value in AI?” report which described the current state of AI adoption. Most companies are at an early stage and only 4 % have reached the point where value is being generated from it. The BCG provide guidance on how organisations should move forward – emphasising that 70 percent of the implementation focus should be on people and processes.
This guidance stresses the importance of employee participation in and support for artificial intelligence. Changes in working practices and skills as a result of AI driven changes in processes, for example with the introduction of work practice guidance based on AI enabled quality inspection, will only be successful if employees support the new practices and act on the guidance provided.
Employee attitudes towards artificial intelligence in most companies do not support this AI positive behaviour today. In fact, they are likely to make artificial intelligence adoption very difficult. While, according to the World Economic Forum, 60 percent of adults globally expect that AI will significantly change their lives in the https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/01/artificial-intelligence-ai-technology-trust-survey/ next three to five years, 61 percent don’t trust them. A recent Accenture report notes 95 percent of employees see that there will be value for the organisation in working with generative AI but 60 percent worry that it will cause job loss, stress and burnout.
These statistics illustrate the importance of the centrality of employees in your artificial intelligence implementation. Our work on AI for our Digital Transformation Certificate online program at Watspeed at the University of Waterloo includes a focus on the development of tools and techniques that will help organisations conduct analysis of, plan and manage successful implementation of technological change. We have developed a tool that focuses on your efforts to positively motivate employees for artificial intelligence. The tool structures your consideration of the key aspects of employees and AI. These are:
Adoption Design: The relationship between AI and people needs to be carefully considered. Employees are more likely to support adoption if the technology is aligned with their skills and capabilities, if its impact on employee wellness is taken into account, if it makes them personally more valuable and secure in their jobs and if careful consultations on AI adoption have taken place with employees.
Managing Change: The human side of any significant organisational change always has to be managed carefully – and that includes AI. Effective communication processes should be being used and strong consultation processes should be in place throughout the implementation. Where severance is necessary it should be handled fairly and sensitively and employees should be confident that their quality of working life will be improved by AI.
Training: We usually understand that AI skills training will be necessary for many employees. We don’t always recognize that the introduction of Ai requires employees to have a better basic understanding of, and comfort with, information technologies, the processes they are contributing to and how these impact organisational performance. These are necessary to enable them to maximise the impact of artificial intelligence and to give them confidence in their future value to the organisation.
Wellness: Our research shows that that employees are apprehensive about artificial intelligence, fearing that it will reduce the quality of their working life through increasing stress and burnout and reducing job security. The introduction of AI will often require significant job disruption and change that will challenge mental wellness. Having good employee wellness support systems in place will be essential.
Artificial Intelligence Impact: While our focus here is on engaging employees, we must also maintain our determination that AI will contribute to the strategic objectives of the organisation. This section is included to ensure that this emphasis on performance is the objective of the work with employees.
The following short assessment is intended to help you consider how you will achieve effective employee participation in artificial intelligence. Complete the assessment by rating each of the following statements on a 1 – 5 scale, with a response of 1 indicating strong disagreement with the statement and a response of 5 indicating strong agreement with it:
Adoption Design
| Our plans for AI adoption are influenced by consideration of our employees skills and capabilities | |
| Our plans for AI adoption are influenced by a desire to maximise employee wellness | |
| Our plans for AI adoption will increase the value of our employees | |
| Our plans for AI adoption have been developed in close consultation with our employees |
Managing Change
| Effective communication processes keep everyone fully informed about our use of artificial intelligence | |
| Consultation processes fully engage employees in artificial intelligence changes that impact them | |
| Severance processes are fair to and respectful of employees | |
| Employees are confident that their quality of working life will be improved by the organisation’s adoption of artificial intelligence |
Training
| Training is available to employees to help them develop their general technical skills | |
| Training is available to employees to help them develop their non-technical skills | |
| Artificial intelligence training provided to employees is effective | |
| Training in work processes and skills that contribute to the maximisation of the performance impact of AI is provided |
Wellness
| Stress levels of employees have been reduced by our adoption of artificial intelligence | |
| Our use of artificial intelligence has improved the job satisfaction of our employees | |
| Employee wellness has been improved in our organisation in the past three years | |
| Effective mental health support resources are available to all our employees |
Artificial Intelligence Impact
| Our artificial intelligence strategy is based on our strategic business objectives | |
| Our use of artificial intelligence is delivering significant business value that appears in our main business performance metrics | |
| Our investment in artificial intelligence is achieving its planned objectives | |
| Our use of artificial intelligence is enabling our organisation to be a strong competitor in our business sector |
Once you have completed the assessment, total your score for each section. Sections with the lower scores indicate where work is required to strengthen your artificial intelligence implementation.
