Driving Results: How to Inspire Employees to Embrace AI

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, workers have worried about technology’s impact on their jobs. In the early 1800s, the Luddites in England famously rioted against textile machines. Innovations like the steam engine not only powered looms and other machinery but also revolutionized transportation, reducing the need for the large numbers of people once required to manage horses and sail ships.

It’s therefore of little surprise that workers of all stripes are worried about the latest technological advance: artificial intelligence (AI). Many studies show that most employees believe AI will enhance their productivity. That can only raise job satisfaction. However, almost as many fear that AI will replace them.

Our recent study of 310 U.S. companies across three industries reveals a growing trend of AI being utilized to make and execute decisions that were traditionally handled by employees to deliver better outcomes.  We found this by asking them to estimate the percentage of systems they are developing that would alert or advise employees vs. the percentage that would act on their behalf – i.e., take control. More and more companies are building systems that will take control of certain decisions.

Will these employees – ranging from front-line workers to the top management team – just sit back and say, “Fine with me”? We doubt it. At the same time, however, the prospect of letting AI make decisions faster, more accurately and less expensively can’t be ignored. No CEO or CFO can ignore that. Given the potential benefits of AI’s promise – greater scale, speed and accuracy – more and more organizations are bound to build and deploy them.

The challenge, then, is this: How can we encourage employees at all levels, particularly those in senior positions, to embrace AI?

Boosting Impact Through Increased Automation

Research that we recently conducted inarguably shows a rapid shift toward autonomous AI systems in financial services and insurance, healthcare and life sciences, and transportation and logistics. We found that companies that got the biggest benefits from AI were more likely to design AI systems that take control – if necessary – compared with companies whose AI systems generated the smallest benefits. Some 35% of AI systems being built by companies this year and next will act on behalf of users.

Convincing employees to allow AI to take over decisions they’ve historically made will be challenging, primarily due to pervasive anxiety. An EY survey revealed that 71% of 1,000 US workers are concerned about AI; 48% said they are more concerned now than they were a year ago. And 41% fear AI is advancing too fast. Moreover, there is a trust gap between executives and their employees. For instance, 62% of business leaders trust AI compared with 52% of employees, according to a recent Workday study of 1,375 executives and 4,000 workers worldwide.

So how do companies get employees – especially members of the top leadership team — to willingly give up control of certain decisions and actions to AI?

Reconciling Competing Realities

Business leaders want the extraordinary benefits that AI can deliver (i.e., greater productivity, innovation and operational efficiency). For instance, McKinsey research suggests AI could contribute $13 trillion in business value to the global economy by 2030. But many business leaders wrongly assume that most employees will go along with an AI system that benefits the company even if it diminishes their job.

Yet even if AI stands to unleash greater organizational performance, many company leaders aren’t confident their employees will be able to master the technology. Executives surveyed by Workforce Intelligence for edX (an educational platform company) say 47% of their workers won’t be prepared for the future of work. Even worse, these executives believe 49% of their workers’ skills will be obsolete by 2025. What if they train them? Many executives surveyed are not sure their workers will be AI-savvy.

But what about the roles of executives? Will they be exempt from the AI transformation of the workforce? We don’t think so. Unlike previous waves of technological change, senior leaders’ jobs are as much at risk as rank-and-file employees. Interestingly, 7% of the executives surveyed by Workforce Intelligence said most, or all, of the CEO’s role should be completely automated or replaced by AI.

In our experience, business leaders will resist if AI comes for their job – even for small pieces of it.

Cultivating a Unified AI Adoption Mindset

Given the high stakes and embryonic state of autonomous AI systems, company leaders must be transparent about the risks of AI. Moreover, they must identify professional and personal growth opportunities that AI is likely to spawn. They must encourage and train employees to cede control when an AI-infused product or service is better equipped to take action. Most importantly, they must gain senior manager input to ensure that AI-induced actions remain appropriate and relevant to generating superior results.

So how can executives convince employees at all levels to welcome AI systems that take on an increasing number of the decisions they make today? From our research and client experience, the following actions can make that happen. Let’s start with the rank and file.  Here are our seven focus areas for AI transformation.

1. Communicate Clearly and Often on AI’s Upside
   Employee skepticism about AI is fueled by enormous hype. Reinforce the good vibes and address AI’s vices head on. Roughly 82% of US workers polled by EY said AI will improve their efficiency. And 81% said AI would make them more productive, which optimizes performance.
2. Create an AI First Culture
   In fact, steal a page from digital experience software giant Adobe’s playbook. Before launching Firefly, its generative AI model for image creation, Adobe conducted voluntary worker discussions on ethics and involved employees in QA. These discussions attracted thousands of employees, catalyzed interest and provided a rationale for the responsible deployment of AI. (Adobe needed to be transparent and proactive to counter employee concern that Firefly could eliminate the need for designers, according to internal messages viewed by Business Insider.)
3. Evangelize
   Promote the ways AI-infused products and services can improve business. Take Delta Airlines, which has gone public with generative AI’s ability to help it quickly and more accurately respond to customer queries. SVP and Chief Digital Officer Eric Phillips told attendees at the 2023 Skift Global Forum that AI improves the customer experience, which results in greater revenue opportunities. “The revenue play, from a customer perspective is: ‘I had a good experience, I’m coming back.’” The takeaway: Call center reps who use AI and provide better customer service help Delta retain more customers and generate more revenue. Those reps, in turn, are more likely to excel at their jobs and be rewarded.
4. Bring New Ideas
   Offer tips on how AI can help employees solve their problems. Focus on how AI will remove rote and routine work and free them up to undertake more creative and value-generating tasks. In our experience, if an organization automates a part of an individual’s job that they hate, they may more readily accept a new AI-infused product or service.
5. Maintain a Human Element
   Keep employees in the loop to override decisions if necessary.  AI-powered decisions and actions should be modeled on how the best employees operate.  One thing leaders and employees agree on is that humans must be in the loop as more and more decisions are made by AI.
6. Build a Stakeholder Group
   Identify champions within your organization to promote the virtues of AI systems that take control. High-performing employees (especially GenZ workers) may be more apt to allow machines to take control. GenZ workers are more familiar with AI; high-performing employees of any age are likely to feel they have greater job security. com’s Generative AI Snapshot research found that 65% of generative AI users at organizations are Millennials or Gen Z. And roughly 77% of employees in the EY study said they would be more inclined to embrace AI if workers from across the organization were involved in the adoption process.
7. Invest in Learning
   Train employees on how to use AI systems that can make decisions for them. What’s more, train them for new jobs. Approximately 80% of employees surveyed by EY said more training would increase their use of AI. Employees surveyed by Workforce Intelligence (800 non-executive knowledge workers, including individual contributors and managers) said they aren’t receiving enough training. The $4.7 billion software company UKG addressed this challenge head on. It provided nine training courses across functional areas to get employees to embrace AI. The goal was to make AI feel less like a special purpose tool for certain functions and more like a creative aid for all roles. It also held a hackathon to help employees find ways to use AI.

Winning Over Top Management for AI Adoption

What about the people who run such companies. Our research shows that AI can make many of the decisions they make faster and better, which boosts results. But will executives allow AI to make those decisions?

We believe two actions are crucial to convincing the C-suite to consider how AI could help them:

• Map out the decisions they make, using large categories, to see where AI could – and could not – make better decisions. Such categories could be personnel decisions (hiring, firing, promotion, etc.); critical projects (whether to fund, remove roadblocks, etc.); supplier decisions (which vendors to use, which to let go); and customer decisions (which to pursue, which to abandon, which to accommodate with special requests, etc.) for those in customer-facing functions such as sales, service, etc.
• Decide which decisions a) require huge amounts of data that b) must be made rapidly (i.e., faster than is humanly possible). These are the ones that an executive should consider letting the machine make. For example, consider the supply chain management or procurement function at a company that contracts with hundreds of suppliers. Think about how an AI system could take on some responsibilities for the head of supply chain or procurement. If a relatively unimportant supplier hikes prices significantly, entrust AI find other suppliers and secure competitive bids. Then let AI evaluate whether to switch suppliers. The company benefits by having a more cost-efficient supply chain, and the supply chain leader is seen as a hero for reducing this expense quickly.

Prepare for Resistance at All Levels

Just as the Luddites fiercely opposed mechanization over 200 years ago, resistance to AI systems that autonomously make decisions and take actions can be strong. The pace of AI advancement may outstrip employees’ ability to adapt. Expect that resistance to be more pronounced at higher organizational levels. It is crucial to recognize that as your company increasingly depends on AI to make and implement critical decisions, active involvement from the C-suite in the system’s design is essential. This ensures they fully grasp the implications and can mitigate the risks associated with shifting tasks from humans to AI.

Involving top management in the AI design process will help maintain the balance of power, ensuring humans remain integral to the business. This approach minimizes the risk of disempowering your workforce while fully leveraging AI’s potential.

About the Author

Ingrid Curtis is the President of Sparq. She oversees the execution of Sparq’s consulting delivery and drives the future of its services through its new capabilities and acquisition strategy.