How AI will augment your workforce, not replace it
It wasn’t so long ago that artificial intelligence and machine learning were considered trendy buzzwords with limited relevance to most businesses. But times have changed quickly, and AI has become essential in many use cases. Among them are customer service (cited by 56% of respondents to the Forbes Advisor survey) and cybersecurity (51%).
The rush to adopt AI is so frantic that the global market for the technology could be worth as much as $500 billion by 2024. So, if you aren’t getting involved with AI and deploying it correctly for your business, you could quickly find your organisation being left behind.
Many organisations that have held back from AI adoption have done so because they fear it could replace human effort and, ultimately, jobs. However, as you’ll read in this blog, AI can be a force for good and support people’s day-to-day work rather than replacing it.
The biggest employee concerns
It’s natural that employees are wary of AI and feel that it might eventually render their positions obsolete. Even as knowledge of AI becomes more widespread, nearly 40% of frontline workers still say the proliferation of the technology concerns them.
There’s no single reason why the level of concern is so high. Issues include uncertainty around how AI may develop or that AI has already started to affect their work or take over specific duties. However, in the latter’s case, this is a relatively isolated problem: research by CNBC has found that only 8% of workers say AI is a necessary part of their jobs, and 64% say it isn’t involved at all.
Where AI can make a positive impact
The potential of AI is so vast that its possible use cases across industries are comprehensive. These include (and are by no means limited to):
- Supporting talent acquisition and retention: At a time of upheaval in the job market and amid great demand for skills and talent, AI can lighten the load on busy employees. By letting AI take care of repetitive and time-consuming tasks, staff will feel less pressure, be more optimistic about their jobs, and be more likely to stick with their organisation long-term.
- Improving productivity: Connected to the previous point, AI and automation can make otherwise long and arduous tasks much quicker and easier to complete. This means that overall business productivity can improve substantially and ensure staff have more time to add value to your business in new ways.
- Enhancing employee experiences: Hardware and software difficulties commonly cause employee frustration, especially when working remotely without ready access to IT support. AI can better support these workers so that their technology works reliably more often, making daily work more enjoyable.
- Enabling better communication and collaboration: Many good communication tools contain AI-powered solutions that improve the experience, including automated notetaking, transcription, and content analysis.
Taking these ideas further, businesses like yours can get the best of both worlds, combining human endeavour and AI to maximise skills and productivity. Using AI to augment manual work improves capabilities, reduces the risk of mistakes and errors, and ultimately expands the possibilities of what a business can achieve. Additionally, some functions AI better carries out, and some are better carried out by humans: a more collaborative approach between the two allows tasks to be matched to whichever party is better for executing them.
How SCC can help
The ability to exploit the full potential of AI needs more than just a correct choice of solution. It also requires the underlying cloud infrastructure and ongoing support from an expert partner to maintain and optimise everything long-term.
SCC delivers this level of service and innovation to businesses like yours. A flexible, tailored cloud service brings together support, expertise, managed services, and access to the latest AI technologies. Our long-standing partnerships with leading technology vendors, and the close working relationships we build with our customers, mean that we’re perfectly placed to help you get the correct AI deployment for you.