· Katie Steen · 4 min read
What Do We Gain? AI’s Value to the Workforce
A reflection on AI productivity gains, workforce value, and why universities should ask who benefits when technology frees up time.
My thoughts this week are inspired by a recent report by McKinsey – AI: Work partnerships between people, agents, and robots | McKinsey .
In it, lots of really interesting facts are mentioned – for example;
“Demand [from employers in the US] for AI fluency – the ability to use and manage AI tools – has grown sevenfold in two years, faster than for any other skill in US job postings.”
This is such a great stat, as it helps quantify the impact that AI is actually having on the workforce in terms of expectations and demands.
What however particularly stood out for me was on their comments about productivity –
“Companies will need to decide how to use capacity freed up by AI – whether to reinvest it in developing people and higher-value work or to focus on greater efficiency and cost reduction. Most will do some of both. Managing this shift means identifying which roles can evolve and giving employees clear, skill-based pathways to grow into them.”
In my former life as a television producer, the number one challenge was to encourage/ persuade the right person to be on camera. Often, they were the most nervous, most busy, or least keen. What I had to work out every time was the answer to this question – “What is this person going to get out of being on camera?”
In the last ten years of working within higher education and having to encourage /persuade the workforce to digitally upskill, I’ve applied a similar question – ‘How is this person going to benefit from this knowledge or training?’
Recently, when discussing AI with colleagues, I’ve asked myself this same question – ‘How are people in universities going to benefit from being able to use AI?’
My answer to this last question has always been from the productivity angle – the fact that by being able to automate some daily repetitive manual tasks, you can free yourself up to be able to focus more on areas that you’ve previously not had time for or to have more creative ‘thinking time’.
However, the McKinsey report has made me re-think this answer. I don’t mean that I would want the answer to be any different in an ideal world, but is it realistic when university purse strings are being drawn ever tighter and workloads are on the rise?
Perhaps instead it’s my aspiration that whilst AI, if used correctly, can make the workforce more productive, (which during these more economically challenging times we should all be thankful for) this should not come at the expense of other values that we also associate with professional life – such as career development, wellbeing and job satisfaction.
As we head into an increasingly AI-consumed world, I think we would all do right to just keep asking ourselves the question of ‘how will others benefit from this’, to ensure that the balances remain fairly weighted for all.
As McKinsey so eloquently puts it:
“Investing in workers and their skills—not just in technology—will be decisive in expanding human potential and ensuring that the benefits of AI are widely shared.”
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