Leveraging Generative AI for Job Augmentation and Workforce Productivity 2024

Unease felt in departments with administrative work All interviewees agreed on one thing: GenAI adoption by employees in the organization is much more important than the technology itself. However, while in some organizations and departments employees were eager to try out the new technology, in other organizations and departments, people were more hesitant. Moreover, people were not always comfortable with the outcomes of technology. Are the outcomes accurate? Is there bias? Is it ethically responsible to replace a photographer’s images with GenAI -generated images?Even within organizations, the differences can be significant, and rapid adoption often depends on where ownership lies: with frontline teams, with the organization’s IT department, or jointly? Frequently, IT professionals within the organization were among the quickest to embrace GenAI and are playing an important role in the roll-out of pilots and use cases. Almost all interviewees indicated that the most significant impact of GenAI is felt in departments with a lot of administrative work. It is precisely in those departments that there often was uncertainty because people were afraid of losing their jobs or fear that they do not have the skills to keep up: “In a way, you have to adapt to the pace of that group, otherwise you won’t get them on board,” said one of the interviewees. “You shouldn’t go faster than these people can. Don’t immediately set all kinds of productivity goals for them. First, make sure that people start using it and derive value from it.” Insights on GenAI workforce deployment: Importance of building trust3.3productivity gains but are planning to do so in a next phase. Some of the interviewees emphasized the significance of capturing the value at an organizational level, so that time saved is not wasted or consumed by other burdensome tasks of individual employees. However, while most organizations are still in the phase of experimenting and slowly scaling up use cases, they do expect that work will change and that employees will have more time for value-added and creative tasks, and for problem-solving. What these organizations do have in common is their iterative approach and ability to learn quickly. They are also resilient and quick to embrace new technology versions, incorporating them into their strategy. This indicates that agility and resilience are considered more important at this stage than having a fully laid-out plan fr om the beginning. Many interviewees agr eed on the importance of measurement but have chosen to postpone it to later phases or not yet found a way to integrate it into their operations. Some organizations have doubts about whether the promise of future productivity growth will be fulfilled and that the full value of GenAI workforce deployment can be captured at an organizational level: “Didn’t we all think that email would increase productivity, while now we all spend hours dealing with email? And isn’t there a risk that the achieved efficiency will “leak” because the freed-up time is not necessarily spent in a useful way?” Improving quality of work According to interviewees, productivity is consistently cited as a key motivator for implementing technology, even if just to get budget for it. If tasks and processes can be performed faster and/or with fewer people, this is always beneficial for a company. But (expected) productivity improvement is not the only driver. Improving the quality of work is mentioned by interviewees as an equally important driver for the deployment of GenAI to the workforce. If implemented correctly, technology has the potential to be more accurate and consistent than humans, make fewer mistakes, and can therefore lead to higher quality and customer satisfaction. “Empowering people” is also a frequently mentioned term by the interviewees. More than one-quarter of respondents explicitly mentioned that GenAI enables employees to do work that is more enjoyable, creative and more value adding, freeing them from tedious administrative tasks. Organizations facing a shortage of staff and labour-market scarcity in their industry anticipate GenAI to reduce work pressure and stress. Though sometimes they experience unintended side effects in this area: some organizations have experienced that automation of administrative tasks actually led to increasing work pressure, whereby employees had lost the opportunity to clear their minds and unwind, which they used to do during this routine work. In those cases, efficiency gains are filled by extra breaks. As noted earlier, all interviewed organizations assume that work is changing and new roles are emerging, such as roles focused on validating GenAI outcomes. Empowering the workforce also means preparing the workforce for the future: when tasks are materially altered or truly disappear, the staff must be empowered to do other work. 18