AI IN THE WORKPLACE – IS IT A JOB KILLER?

Rodney Davis: We’ve actually determined that it’s not about cutting out jobs or saving money, but it’s more about enhancing the value of what we give to clients, enhancing the speed with which we deliver our services, and freeing up our existing resources to do a different task within the same period of time. So overall, the client gets the benefit. So we don’t see it in our space as a cost saver. And in the cases where I’ve seen clients use it, most of the time, it hasn’t been about saving costs, though I have seen some where it saves significant costs.

WILL AI RESULT IN EMPLOYEE IDLE TIME?

Rodney Davis: I think that good businesses, and smart and ambitious team members find ways to productively fill the time. The day when people aren’t really working, and everything is done by robots or some other method of artificial intelligence. I’m not sure that their jobs would remain as fulfilling. I think people will find other things to do. I often say to my people, I don’t need you to work harder. I just need you to work smarter. And I’m hoping that artificial intelligence allows us to work smarter.

AN AI CASE STUDY

Rodney Davis: A client of mine who was in resource allocation, where scheduling was a big part of their business and took up a lot of time, made a big investment in artificial intelligence. It would have been the equivalent of 3 or 4 FTEs in the upfront cost (FTE meaning full time equivalent) over the course of a year. They took the equivalent of four salaries and invested that money to determine if artificial intelligence could actually make their processes more efficient. In that situation, a 1% enhancement would translate to about $200,000 a year savings. The average salary was about $45,000 to $50,000. So essentially they were betting that they could get more than 1% savings per year by making this plan in artificial intelligence.

Fast forward, it took them about 9 or 10 months to implement the first iteration. Within three years, they had saved about 4% using the artificial intelligence that they implemented. The value implication on their business was significant. They actually created value in their business. Did it result in job losses? In their case it did. But it was the right thing to do.

CAUTION – NORMAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT RULES APPLY

Rodney Davis: As with any change, the risk of negative implementation is that without thinking it through carefully, you may not get the results you wanted. Negative implications from bad implementation can have a multiplier effect. So my advice is to put your time and energy into how you want to use it, plan, and lay a good foundation. Because if you implement something like artificial intelligence on a bad foundation, the multiplier effect will turn it into a more negative outcome.

THE ROLE OF THE FINANCE TEAM

Rodney Davis: We were instrumental in confirming that if you automate things or make better decisions faster, which is what the AI was designed to do, it would be great. The finance team was critical in providing information that formed the baseline against what was being measured against what was being achieved. Is it X per hour? Is it X per month? Does it take X many in order to achieve the outcome? Your finance team can help you, as an organization, establish the baseline metrics against which you’re going to measure the productivity enhancements, or the efficiencies that come out of artificial intelligence. Without them, you may not have the framework from which to compare and contrast your decisions.

It’s coming. We can’t avoid it. I do think that most businesses that I look at today will be infected by artificial intelligence within the next five years. And if they aren’t, they’re probably behind their competitors.