Future of digital – watch out for AI!

As technology has developed, employees often question their job security and fear that technology will eventually take their job. Instead of shying away from this fear, it is essential that we face the changes head on to be able to utilise them to our advantage. It is not fair to leave your employees to tackle these issues by themselves, they must be guided.

AI and automation require a workforce that most companies do not possess. Very few members of a team will be able to make automation work for the company specifically, who can code a machine to perform to your requirements? The rise of automation may be taking off but despite this a staggering 77% of employers still hold the view that soft skills are as important as hard skills, soft skills cannot be replicated by machines. The human touch does and will always be required within technology and the technology advancements prove this.

Will AI eliminate many jobs? AI will actually create more jobs than it eliminates, it has been claimed that perhaps roles within AI or automation will land with top tier and highly skilled managers, however, this is not going to be the case as we have seen a multitude of technological advancements throughout the years and they have all lead to a variety of roles; senior management, entry level and lower skilled work.

Al and automation will see careers such as ‘Automation Ethicist’ and ‘Interactive chatbot designer’ come to fruition. Employers will be focusing on retraining and encouraging employees to upskill to meet these technological requirements. To all employees, for employers it makes a lot greater sense to focus on reskilling and upskilling their current team as introducing employees to these new career paths ahead of time will lead to higher benefits being reaped for the company.

What about soft skills? For younger employees a soft skill that continually needs to be developed by companies with technology is communication, unfortunately recent graduates coming into the technology career place are lacking strong communication skills and this has been picked up by approx. 40% of managers according to research. Social media and email are key communication channels that are used day in day out (those LinkedIn connections won’t find themselves).

Company culture is more important than ever (I am not talking about nap pods by the way…), as with such advancements, technology professionals can often fear their job roles changing. It is vital that employees realise that these new technologies are assisting with humans, they are not going to replace them (you can breathe a sigh of relief) Learning to co-exist with these new technologies is a big learning curve…

Takeaways// upskill, upskill, upskill. It is critical to ensure you are learning and developing from day one