KARACHI: People are ready to take instructions from robots at work, according to a new study conducted by Oracle and Future Workplace, a research firm preparing leaders for disruptions in recruiting, development and employee engagement.

The study found that while people are ready to embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI) at work, and understand that the benefits go far beyond automating manual processes, organisations are not doing enough to help their employees embrace AI and that will result in reduced productivity, skillset obsolescence and job loss.

“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.

For helping 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.

The study — AI at Work — identified a large gap between the way people are using AI at home and at work. While 70 per cent of people are using some form of AI in their personal life, only 6pc of HR professionals are actively deploying AI and only 24pc of employees are currently using some form of AI at work.

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, employees believe that AI will improve operational efficiencies (59pc), enable faster decision making (50pc), significantly reduce cost (45pc), enable better customer experiences (40pc) and improve the employee experience (37pc).

HR leaders believe AI will positively impact learning and development (27pc), performance management (26pc), compensation/payroll (18pc) and recruiting and employee benefits (13pc).

“AI will enable companies to stay competitive, HR leaders to be more strategic and employees to be more productive at work. If organizations want to take advantage of the AI revolution, while closing the skills gap, they will have to invest in AI training programs. If employees want to stay relevant to the current and future job market, they need to embrace AI as part of their job,” said Dan Schawbel, Research Director at Future Workplace.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2018