Personio Pulse: Upskilling in the AI age ??

In a world eager to harness the capabilities of #AI at a rapid pace, the time is now to think not only about how we master the skills we need to maximize the technology’s potential, but also the ripple effect it will have.

Efficiencies are at the heart of a lot of this. Removing human processing tasks and giving them over to the digital ‘workforce’ means a range of things to us in relation to the work we are left to pursue.

Professor, author, TEDx speaker and founder of People & Transformational HR Ltd , Perry Timms , shares what the impact will be for managers, leaders and employees.

?? The impact of AI for managers

According to a range of academic studies, managers spend around 50% of their time on administrative activities. So, if that is all scripted and outsourced to our co-piloting bot, great! With all this spare time managers need to focus on:

• Coaching their teams
• Building stronger relationships with other managers
• Strengthening their plays on planning and forecasting

Managers’ attention, demands and actions appear to be increasingly squeezed. AI could be a powerfully liberating force. All those who want upskilled managers say ‘aye’!

?? The impact of AI for leaders

In leaders, we’re talking about executives, specialists and more strategic players.?

AI should allow these people and their teams to use data that helps them make the big calls. It should allow them to be ready for and refine potentially complex scenarios that need modeling and testing. It's a tool that will allow them a chance to think differently about what they double down on as leaders and organizations, in order to guide their people to sustainable success.

?? The impact of AI for employees

And then there is the wider workforce. This is probably where the impacts are most felt and most likely to need a significant amount of ‘recalibration’. Employee work, roles and even entire jobs (according to predictions) are likely to experience the biggest shifts.?

We need to consider how we make the most of the automation and the AI tools we now have at our disposal and unlearn and relearn new ways and even behaviors. We need to look at what options are now open or lost to us for careers and progression and how we interplay with our machine-based ‘colleagues’.?

And we will look to our executive leaders to be even more clear and transparent about direction, data and decisions. We will need our managers to be there, supportive, guiding and helping us with a different set of approaches we will be expected to use. These will impact how we behave, operate and escalate.

?? Guidance in the AI age?

If it hasn’t happened to you already, it’s coming soon. AI is changing the game and will continue to do so indefinitely. Without wanting to sound too dramatic — the time to prepare is now. The following is advised:

• Encourage more active learning and awareness of what AI and automation is.
• Engage the executive team about shared responsibilities to support each other and the organization with an AI/automation section in board meetings, strategies and specific trials, experiments and learning.
• Support managers and enable them to start to engage more with the coaching, enabling and work reengineering efforts they will work on with their teams.
• Provide guidance, learning and safe spaces for people to experiment in their work, roles, operations and relationships.

There won’t be a finish line for this: There is no such thing (as we can tell) as the state of AI work will continue to be a regular and ongoing transition.?

Helping people see this as an integral part of their work now will pave the way for activism, confidence and capability-building. Preparing now will pave the foundations for positive and productive utilization of the next generation of digital technologies.

Discover more from Perry Timms and a whole array of special guests via our podcast —?Tomorrow’s People. Listen here.?