80% Bosses Feel Their Workforce Is Not Ready To Adopt Advanced Technologies: Accenture

Although the vast majority of Indian organizations believe that advanced technologies will be crucial for future growth, only a few plans to increase their training investment significantly in the next few years, thereby limiting their ability to harness the potential of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), according to a ‘Future Workforce’ study from Accenture.

The study based on a survey of 1,100 workers across skill levels in India and 100 senior executives in India, found that while 69 percent of the senior executives agreed that adopting intelligent technologies will be critical to their organization’s ability to differentiate in the market, but said their organizations don't plan to increase their training investments over the next three years significantly. This, despite 59 percent of the executives identifying skills shortages as a critical hindrance to future growth.

A vast majority of workers expressed the need for training, with 93 percent saying it will be important to learn new skills if they are to work with intelligent technologies in the next three to five years, and even more (95 percent) saying they believe that AI will help them do their job more efficiently.

Five in six executives surveyed (84 percent) expect that over the next three years, collaboration between their workers and AI systems will create new sources of value and improve efficiency. Four in five (80 percent) also recognize that their workforce is underprepared to adopt advanced technologies.

Sunit Sinha, MD of Strategy and Talent at Accenture India said, “We are entering the age of man-machine collaboration, where machines will augment human capabilities, allowing people to focus on what they do best while doing the things that humans would rather not.” 

The research also suggests strategies to help leaders shape the future workforce in the age of AI:

1. Reimagine workto better understand how machines and people collaborate. More than half (56 percent) of the Indian executives surveyed believe that traditional job descriptions will become obsolete, and 22 percent report that they’ve already redesigned jobs to a large extent in their organizations.

2. Teach people to work with intelligent machines. To fill the new and reconfigured jobs of the intelligent enterprise, companies will need new approaches to training. “New skilling” programs must be rapid, flexible, tailored and scalable to maximize the value that can be achieved when humans and machines work together. Also, companies will need to invest more in training.

3. Prepare the organization for human-machine collaboration. To foster the human-machine collaboration that will lead to the best results, companies must not only address the skills challenge, but also make organizational changes — including redeploying talent, organizing for agility, and adapting leadership to the needs of the intelligent enterprise.

Rajguru Tandon

BW Reporters The author is a correspondent with BW Businessworld with keen interest in HR and employee welfare.