The Evolving Workplace

Modern tech has changed the way the world operates. No boundaries, no walls, no cubicles, no time zones, no barriers. Information has easy flow. Consequently there is a change in expectation in the working style as well for people around the world.

The connected world has connected beyond boundaries. These are fantastic times to live in. These are fantastic times to work in.  Concepts like BYOD are adding seamless mobility to the workplace. Here are some facts about the changing workplace:

• As per a recent survey by AfterCollege.com, 68% fresh graduates prefer working remotely.
• Telecommuting is fast on the rise. Between 2004 to 2015, it has risen by 79% as is only growing from there. More and more people are opting for telecommuting.
• Working remotely is helping to increase productivity of workers significantly.
• The World Economic Forum recognizes ‘telework’ as the the biggest transformer of work place in near future.
• Interestingly office and administrative jobs are seeing biggest decline as more and more people are shifting towards individual contribution and remote working.

Obviously, Artificial Intelligence has its own way in the workplace with the evolving change.

1. Breakdown of hiring tasks: To bring more and more automation in the workplace and to remove as many administrative tasks as possible, organisations are investing in breaking down the current process to smaller chunks that can be automated. Once this automation is done, intelligence will be a natural extension. Simple example is of recruitment of an employee and the on-boarding process. The moment any new employee gets on board anywhere in the world, small admin tasks to get their IDs to their system installations can be broken down into smaller units of work that can be simply automated with intelligence.
2. Automating HR questions – Any HR questions can be answered with a chatbot now. Lot of startups and even IBM Watson is investing into automated assistants that can enable this.
3. Employee Tracking – Metadata based AI tools are available to track employee activity within the organisational network. What files one downloads? What are the user timings to login/logout etc are captured in real time to find the employee availability and effectiveness in a distributed workplace.
4. Skills upgrade is pervasive – More and more companies are opening any time anywhere training mechanisms. Advent of MOOCs is ensuring that employees can get the right kind of training. Artificial Intelligence helps in suggesting skill based training plans and career tracks for individuals.

While more and more such use cases are emerging in the distributed work place and so the implementation of AI, modern managers need to swiftly embark the journey to this change to stay relevant.