Employees on an average spend about 20 percent of their work week simply looking for files and compiling data. Today with artificial intelligence (AI) in the workspace, it can be a win-win situation for both employees and the organization. AI will take care of the tedious and repetitive tasks – giving employees ample time to focus on strategic and important issues.

Here’s a scene that all of us are all too familiar with and would not mind some help from AI! Most teams spend a lot of time preparing for and executing meetings, which is something AI can easily fix. By quickly sifting through an employee’s computer, AI can identify all files, emails or messages relevant to a meeting. So, robots aren’t taking our jobs, but artificial intelligence is making it easier than ever to do them!

One out of three workers believe AI intelligence will see an upsurge in the job market soon, with millennials feeling particularly hopeful, revealed CCS Insight’s most recent employee enterprise review. The review of more than 650 employees, across five sectors, reaffirmed that workers see AI as the technology that will cause the most disruption to the workplace.

A few years down the line and AI will be able to do most of the administrative tasks that consume much of employees’ time in a faster, more efficient and cost-effective way.

AI will create a more intelligent workforce

Don’t race against the machine, treat it as a co-worker. Not only will AI enhance managers’ work, but it will also enable managers to interact with intelligent machines in interconnected ways. As the debate on AI taking away human jobs continues, most leaders acknowledge “short-term displacement,” and agree the long-term economic benefits outweigh the near-term consequences.

The key to minimizing the impact to jobs is to educate workers on how to leverage AI so they can focus on more strategic and high-value skills. So, AI will do away with the redundancy which lies among various aspects of business functions, and therefore pave the way for people to perform more evolved and intelligent jobs.

This also means that there will be a growing demand to upgrade and up-skill talent to keep up with the widespread AI adoption across job functions. Thereby creating a more intelligent workforce.

AI will act as the hero of the moveable workforce

In a 24/7 and 365 days connected world, employees are expected to be responsive round the clock. Say a colleague who is on an important client call requests you to join the call for the crucial project update that you had been overseeing, right before you’re about to board the flight for your vacation. Would you take this call?

Your answer most likely would be ‘Yes’. In such scenarios, locating previous emails, or information related to the client in the last minute may create mental stress. But AI could be your answer to this problem!

Imagine how easy it would be if technology allowed you to perform a real-time search in the context of your situation by just using a voice search on your mobile! You would come out as a shining star in this situation – or any other.

AI will prepare itself to suit workforce needs

For organizations, the task at hand is not to divide jobs between AI and its people but to equip its people to adopt AI to perform better.

A blunt yet often overlooked fact is that technology needs human training. Humans have been building technology so that it performs in the way we want them to and the same applies to AI. Therefore, it would be important for technology like AI to understand workforce capabilities, help them understand best practice, and help employees do higher-skilled jobs with higher quality, higher productivity and greater efficiency.  Only then, AI will see a bigger adoption by the workforce.

As AI becomes a more mainstream technology, many progressive companies are beginning to make major investments in AI. As vendors bake AI into existing employee communications and teamwork solutions, they must also watch out for areas where AI can improve and increase productivity.

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