Are you failing to prepare your workforce for AI?

© Kittipong Jirasukhanont via 123RF

The study of 1,320 HR leaders and employees in the US identified a large gap between the way people are using AI at home and at work.

While 70% of people are using some form of AI in their personal life, only 6% of HR professionals are actively deploying AI and only 24% of employees are currently using some form of AI at work.

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To determine why there is such a gap in AI adoption when people are clearly ready to embrace AI at work (93% would trust orders from a robot), the study examined HR leader and employee perceptions of the benefits of AI, the obstacles preventing AI adoption, and the business consequences of not embracing AI.

Employees and HR leaders see the potential of AI

All respondents agreed that AI will have a positive impact on their organisations and when asked about the biggest benefit of AI, HR leaders and employees both said increased productivity. In the next three years, respondents expect the benefits to include:

• Employees believe that AI will improve operational efficiencies (59%), enable faster decision making (50%), significantly reduce cost (45%), enable better customer experiences (40%) and improve the employee experience (37%).
  
• HR leaders believe AI will positively impact learning and development (27%), performance management (26%), compensation/payroll (18%) and recruiting and employee benefits (13%).

Organisations are not doing enough to prepare the workforce for AI

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.

• Almost all (90%) of HR leaders 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 more than half of employees (51%) are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI and 71% believe AI skills and knowledge will be important in the next three years, 72% of HR leaders noted that their organisation does not provide any form of AI training program.
  
• On top of the skill gap, HR leaders and employees identified cost (74%), failure of technology (69%) and security risks (56%) as the other major barriers to AI adoption in the enterprise.

Not embracing AI now will result in job loss, irrelevance and loss of competitive advantage

Despite all the talk about people being worried about AI entering the workplace, the study found the opposite to be true with HR leaders and employees (79% of HR leaders; 60% of employees) believing a failure to adopt AI will have negative consequences on their own careers, colleagues and overall organisation.

• Respondents identified reduced productivity, skillset obsolescence and job loss as the top three consequences of failing to embrace AI in the workforce.
  
• From an organisational standpoint, respondents believe embracing AI will have the most positive impact on directors and C-Suite executives. By failing to empower leadership teams with AI, organisations could lose a competitive advantage.

Says 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 skills gap and focus their IT strategy on embedding simple and powerful AI innovations into existing business processes.”

“AI will enable companies to stay competitive, HR leaders to be more strategic, and employees to be more productive at work. 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,” says Dan Schawbel, research director at Future Workplace, author of Back to Human.

Methodology

For this survey, 1,320 HR Leaders and employees were asked about their views regarding AI implementation and usage in the workplace. The study targeted HR Leaders and employees who work across different sectors and in organisations of different sizes.

All panellists have passed a double opt-in process and complete on average 300 profiling data points prior to taking part in surveys.