The Future of Work Supplement:
Are Employers and Workers Ready for the Future of Work?
The Artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is happening today and is undeniably transforming the way we work. From leveraging chatbots to improving customer and stakeholder interactions, to reducing menial tasks for frontline workers, as well as providing greater insights such that workers can make better decisions – AI is driving an invisible revolution within the workplace.
There are often two camps of thought about the impact of AI on the workforce. One group believes that AI will impact the workforce negatively, where jobs will be lost. The other believes that AI will serve as a complement to human labour, enabling workers to move up the value chain to deliver higher value work. But one thing is for sure: AI will disrupt the future of work, and organisations need to act now.
In Hong Kong, real estate organisation Ricacorp has turned to AI to better understand their customers’ property requirements. By integrating AI with existing data such as property valuation, recent transaction history, listed price offered by sellers and internal records like customer preferences, Ricacorp’s agents are better able to identify buying trends and patterns. In fact, the company expects AI to help raise profits by 40 percent.
Microsoft recently completed a study with IDC Asia/Pacific entitled Future Ready Business: Assessing Asia Pacific’s growth with AI, which revealed that AI will nearly double the rates of innovation and employee productivity improvements by 2021. Almost 80% of organisations polled agreed that AI is instrumental to boosting their competitiveness in the next three years. There are clear benefits in adopting the technology, but the bigger question about whether employers and workers are ready for an AI future remains.
Most conversations we have with business and government leaders are focused on building a future ready workforce that can harness new technologies, especially AI. While 62% of business leaders and 66% of workers polled feel that AI will help augment jobs, one of the top challenges faced by organisations today is still their staff’s dearth of knowledge on how to work with AI. No real impact can be created without skilled employees who can develop, deploy and even monitor AI for their work. But despite acknowledging the benefits of AI, 64% of organisations have yet to implement plans to develop an AI-ready workforce.
One key issue for business leaders to address is their mindset to embrace transformation. What is worrying is that the number one challenge identified in the study is the lack of thought leadership and leadership commitment to invest in AI.
In addition, the study found that a significant number of business leaders and more than half of workers surveyed believe that cultural traits and behaviours that contribute to AI adoption are not being demonstrated today. For example, more than half of the workers surveyed did not feel empowered to take risks, or to make decisions autonomously, or even to act with speed and agility – all traits required for agile development and deployment of AI to complement existing processes.
Are Employers and
Workers Ready for the Future of Work?
By Ralph Haupter, President, Microsoft Asia
The age of artificial intelligence is creating an invisible
revolution and is changing the nature of work. As every
interaction is becoming digital, organisations must set
the pace for transformation for AI to complement,
rather than disrupt work.