Humans & AI in the Workplace Podcast.
00:00 Introduction to AI in the Workplace
03:01 Clear Intention and Support
05:27 Cost-Effective Support Strategies
07:18 Human Impact of AI
08:15 Creating the Best Change Experience
08:39 Conclusion and Call to Action
Welcome everyone to the Humans and AI in the Workplace podcast. Over the last few years, it's become clear that artificial intelligence, AI, is one of the most impactful and disruptive transformations in the workplace. As a leader, you may be wondering how to get started and how to do it in an intelligent way. Or you may be stuck on how to overcome some of the people issues and human bottlenecks your AI has crashed into. We are here with Dr. Debra Panipucci and Leisa Hart to discuss today's topic and how to create respectful transitions when navigating the human impacts of AI change in the workplace.
One of the things that we often talk to leaders about when we're working with them in this context is to look at where are the opportunities for the existing skills of their people. For example, if you've got people in a call centre, they're generally people who know the most about your customers, the questions they ask, what they're passionate about, the concerns that they have.
They'll have a depth of knowledge across your products that is possibly hard to find anywhere else in your business. So how can you harness that to generate different types of engagements with clients that are really based on those human strengths and relationships and understanding and empathy and knowledge of your products and services in a very personal way with a client? You can still use technology to support that.
If you've got someone in a role where they've got a depth of experience from working in a call centre and now they're in a proactive role with a client. For example, if you had someone in a superannuation call centre, you could pivot those skills into how can they support members in times where there's potentially some difficult circumstances or there's an opportunity for them to think about their retirement in a different way and how to set their life up for that.
So, another example is in finance teams, you've got someone who deeply understands numbers, data, information. They know a lot about your business. They know about where things are going well and where they're not. How can you use that knowledge in a different capacity? So don't just think about this as an opportunity to get rid of people. It's an opportunity to look at where you can pivot that knowledge of your business and the skills into future focus roles that create better customer experiences and better outcomes for the business. We sometimes hear as leaders wanting to bring intelligent technology into their business to reduce the amount of people in their team and to really drive those productivity gains and drive down costs in their business. We don't really mind if that's the why that you're bringing the technology in.
What we do care about though is that you be very clear about that as the intention and how you will support your people through that. So if you are expecting to reduce the number of people in your team, look at ways that you can support those people in your team who you think will be displaced by the technology. Look at how you support that transition. And also look at, think about them as human beings and their level of current skills and the marketplace. So if their roles are displaced in your business, is their role displaced in all businesses? And if so, how can you support them through that? Are there opportunities to build their skills in different ways? Are they interested in something different that you could encourage and support them to explore through the process of restructuring or departure from your organisation, like how can you help support them so that they can get their next job? And they leave feeling significant and that they still have a contribution to make somewhere in terms of work with their skills. There's some great examples where we've worked with clients and specifically put in place a careful plan for leaders to support their people through this transition to a point where once they've gone through the process,those people have thanked the leaders for their experience. And not only does that create a good experience for those humans who we should be caring for, and that is our duty of care as leaders in businesses, is that people experience. Not only does it create a great experience for them, it also creates a great experience for the leader. But what it sends as a signal to everyone else in the business who stays is that we have a culture of being thoughtful and careful and If you get to a place of, you know, needing to transition from this business, you will be supported to do so. So it sends a really big signal to those people remaining in your business that they are valued, that they're also significant. And when the time comes that they might need to find something else, that they'll be supported through that process. And that does a lot to preserve aspects of the culture that support people to feel psychologically safe and therefore doing their best work.
For the leaders out there who may be thinking that this sounds like a lot of work and very expensive, it doesn't have to be. You can put simple things in place like as soon as you know that there will be roles that are displaced, talk to recruitment agents and get a recruitment agent in to chat to the team about the market and what roles they're seeing in different organisation and how different roles are changing because we often find that when a person is in an organisation for a while, they start to lose a sense of what's actually happening in the marketplace for their types of skills. So having an agent come in and actually talk to your people about what they're seeing, the types of salaries they're seeing, the types of roles they're seeing, can give people that sense of significance and clarity around what their next step can be and start to reduce some of that fear.
The other thing you can do that's it doesn't have to be as expensive as outplacement. Outplacement is the ideal goal. You put them in outplacement and they get trained up in different areas and supported to find their next role. But it can be quite costly. So if you don't have all that money for outplacement and you've been through talking to recruitment agents and getting somebody in, also helping people to just explore free courses online and giving them the space and time to do free courses online so that they can build up their skills in different areas. And this change is different to other changes we've been through in the past, if only for the very reason that in the past when we brought new technologies or changes into our organisations, they've changed our organisation on its own and yes, people have been restructured, they may have lost their jobs, but they've been able to find jobs elsewhere in the industry. AI is coming in to automate roles, not just in your organisation, but across the industry. So if the AI is available for you, it's available for every organisation. So you need to really think about the human side of this. You can't just sweep it under the rug as part of project management.
You really need to think about the human impact and the human side of bringing this technology in so that you can integrate and supercharge your humans through this process. And where roles are displaced, you help support those people in the best way that you can. We want to help you address these so that you're in front of the challenges so that you can lead your people through the introduction of intelligent technology coming into your business in a way that creates the best possible change experience. There's also more resources on our website as well for leaders who are a bit more curious and want to take further action today beyond what we've suggested here. So thanks for listening. Thank you.
Humans and AI in the Workplace is brought to you by AI Adaptive. Thank you so much for listening today. You can help us continue to supercharge workplaces with AI by subscribing and sharing this podcast and joining us on LinkedIn.
