Industry leaders say taking time to slowly implement new tools and processes is paying dividends in long-term employee adoption and engagement.
The technology sector is leading the way with artificial intelligence (AI) integration, with research suggesting its adoption rates are higher than in any other industry. This reflects the significant value that many high-tech companies are securing from their AI investments at every organisational level.
A roundtable discussion organised by Workday revealed how leaders in the industry are capitalising on this value, as well as how they’re integrating AI effectively into their workflows – and how they’re measuring their success so far.
“Everybody now gets to engage with AI,” says Sadie Bell, Vice President, Innovation of People Systems, Digital Experience and Intelligence at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “And this is really why there's a revolution, because it's affecting every person and every job.”
Not only is AI supporting every employee group, but it’s also addressing individual needs. Technology leaders value its unique potential to be tailored to specific roles and skillsets. “I've never seen a technology that is as personal as AI, from the standpoint that it is helping me with my specific tasks,” says Ben Askin, Chief Information Officer at tax-compliance software company Vertex. “I can get my work done at scale, with better quality, enabling me to orchestrate better outcomes for our company and our customers.”
Workers have also already moved beyond using AI to pursue productivity gains. Now they are also focusing on the business value and transformative outcomes that AI can deliver. Research shows 77 per cent of professionals believe AI will have a transformational or high impact in the next five years, with most foreseeing more innovation and more time spent on engaging, judgement-based or expertise-driven work.
“AI can eliminate manual and repetitive tasks to give time back to employees,” says Arnulfo Sánchez, Chief Accounting Officer at database platform DataStax. “[But it is also] allowing people to be more effective at their jobs. It has enabled the individual to work on storytelling instead of worrying about consolidating data.”
Each new success paves the way for further AI roll-outs. In the technology sector, in particular, many companies are managing competing demands for resources as they scale. AI deployments that deliver rapid ROI are crucial, underpinning confidence in the overall value case for the technology – and often funding the next phase of innovation.
Implementing AI incrementally is also important to building employee trust and engagement. Workers at high-tech organisations may seem more comfortable with AI, but individual tech employees are just as likely to have anxieties about what the roll-out of new tools might mean for their roles. “Some people really take to it quickly, but others are more timid,” says Vertex’s Askin. “So, we’re really taking baby steps to get there.”
Indeed, ensuring support for employees is just as crucial as training them. “Change management is just as important as capability in the technology,” says Sheri Rhodes, Chief Customer Officer at Workday. In practice, that means working with staff throughout deployment, consulting them on where they see potential to introduce the technology effectively in their jobs, emphasising how new capabilities will change their roles for the better, and re-skilling or upskilling teams if needed to more efficiently adopt AI.
Big-bang change can also be risky, warns DataStax’s Sánchez. “We start small – we test, test and test again, and we start with low-risk areas,” he says, adding that his team always aims to use features that have already been tested and adopted by other companies.
While AI can solve an incredibly broad range of business challenges, it’s important to offer role-tailored guidance and ensure the right data sets are provided for each use case. AI deployments have the greatest potential when users have the confidence and trust to take full advantage of them. One of the ways that companies can measure success is by studying adoption rates across organisations, and by the impact this has on internal mobility.
Bell goes on to explain that employee upskilling is seen as a key indicator of AI impact at Hewlett Packard Enterprises. “Our team members are upskilling and reskilling, and that is a really important metric of our success,” she says. “This investment in our workforce enhances our ability to drive innovation and take on new opportunities, ultimately contributing to significant company growth.”
Employees in tech companies – particularly burgeoning start-ups – may be more used to a rapid pace of change than their peers in other industries. But unless leaders are willing to work with their staff to build up usage slowly, deployments are likely to disappoint, even in technically advanced organisations. As workers become confident building new tools and processes into their day-to-day actions, they are able to focus more on the work that matters.
“Experiment a lot and check the results,” advises Workday’s Rhodes. “Always keep the human in the loop. It's not about an AI ‘doomsday’ and AI taking over. Really, it’s about empowering people, improving the way we work, and the combination of people and AI accelerating us to a better future.”
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