Almost every company are in the progress of a platform shift currently. The pace of work has been boosted with abundant data and always-on communication. Employees struggling with pressurised workloads and business leaders running slow in increasing productivity amid economic uncertainty find Artificial Intelligence useful to help lift this burden. Companies that embrace emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence will boost productivity and unleash creativity for everyone.

Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2023

Recently Microsoft released their flagship Work Trend Index 2023, which reveals 74% of Indian employees fears that AI will replace their jobs. Meanwhile, 83% of employees are willing to delegate a major portion of their workload to AI in a process to mitigate any threat of job loss that puts forward by the technology.

The Microsoft Work Trend Index report was themed “Will AI fix work?” which has become a concern after the launch of a wide range of AI tools in the industry. Microsoft conducted the survey among 31,000 in around 31 countries, including India. Microsoft also mentioned that it also referred to various Microsoft 365 productivity signals along with the labour trends from the LinkedIn Economic Graph.

Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, said, “This new generation of AI will remove the drudgery of work and unleash creativity”. “There is an enormous opportunity for AI-powered tools to help alleviate digital debt, build AI aptitude and empower employees”, he added.

Balancing the working hours for communication and creation

According to the report, 78% of employees say they don’t have sufficient uninterrupted focus time during working hours. They find it difficult to balance the time spent on communication and creativity, as they spend most of their working hours on digital communication and gather work information, emails, meetings etc. Here, the involvement of AI in work process will balance it and help you reclaim time and energy for the creativity-oriented tasks.

Does AI enhance creativity?

The survey also showed that almost three in four Indian employees are comfortable using AI for their administrative work, analytical work, and sometimes even for creative work. Keeping away the concerns, the employees’ optimism about AI doesn’t stop at the balanced working hours; they also opine that AI can enhance creativity by developing ideas for their work and even editing their work. The Indian workers seek to understand AI and believe it is promising to help with the most meaningful part of their jobs. 87% of workers in creative job roles said they are comfortable using AI for creative aspects of their job.  

Creating an alliance

Though most employees are amidst the concerns of AI replacing jobs, the data put forward by Microsoft also revealed that the employees in India are more excited for AI to lift their work pressure than they are afraid of jobs getting stolen by AI. Author and Organisational Psychology Professor Adam Grant said, “It is fascinating that people are more excited about AI rescuing them from burnout than they are worried about it eliminating their jobs.” Employees are looking for AI to help in almost every aspect of their jobs. They look for AI to assist them with searching the accurate information, summarising meetings, and even planning their weekly work. Meanwhile, managers in India believe that AI would contribute to boosting workplace productivity rather than reducing the workforce and identify it holds 1.6 times more potential for value addition.

The need of upskilling

As per the report, almost 90% of Indian leaders stated that their newly-joined employees should be upskilled to prepare for the technological advancement brought about by AI. Natural capabilities like critical thinking, analytical judgement, problem-solving, creativity, and originality are the new competencies and are not just for the technical roles of AI experts. Most of the Indian leaders said the employees need to learn when they should leverage AI and how to write better prompts and evaluate creative work, and crosscheck bias. When AI and humans come together, it creates magic by completely transforming the working patterns.

However, the report further highlighted almost 78% of Indian workers feel they lack the relevant abilities to fulfil their work effectively. Around 76% of Indian employees say they are struggling to do their jobs in fixed time and energy. These people are 3.1 times more likely to struggle with new technology and strategic thinking. Almost 60% of leaders have revealed a lack of innovation or ideas in AI is critical.

• https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/over-70-per-cent-indian-workers-fear-losing-job-ai-new-microsoft-survey-reveals-2387406-2023-06-01
• https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/ai-dilemma-indian-workers-worried-about-losing-jobs-to-it-but-happy-to-delegate-work-anyway-383855-2023-06-01
• Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash