Are your employees nervous about the AI Revolution? Are they ready to jump ship and consider other lines of work?
If you want to keep them on board, you must act fast and have an honest conversation with them. It might sound trite to tell them, “You have many skillsets that AI does not possess,” but it’s true! Machines can do significantly more today than in years past, but there’s still a need for human input.
Wondering how to change employee attitudes about AI? The key is to increase their sense of job security by emphasizing the human abilities that will be in high demand.
Skills That Will Give Your Employees Confidence During the AI Revolution
1. Analytical Thinking
Generative AI technologies can now handle many tasks, but they aren’t perfect. As intelligent as they are, they can still produce incomplete, biased, or incorrect responses.
This is because their outputs don’t always result in an objective analysis. Only humans can assemble facts, evidence, arguments, and observations and make judgments that take everything into account.
Employees with strong analytical thinking skills can spot AI errors to mitigate business risk. They can also use those skills to select new AI applications, ERP systems, SCM systems, and other enterprise software.
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2. Technological Literacy
As companies continue to invest in AI and machine learning technology, they still need people who can operate these sophisticated systems. This includes employees who know how to coordinate and integrate the datasets and solutions.
Encourage your team members to gain expertise in the following fields:
- Machine learning
- AI development
- Robotics
- Data science
- Programming languages
- Data analytics
Conduct employee training if necessary and make sure the data employees are working with is clean, accurate, and up-to-date. The connection between business intelligence and AI cannot be understated.
3. Creative Thinking
Employees who know how to approach a problem and solve it in a creative, innovative way will thrive in the new AI economy. Robots and the machines that run them excel at many tasks, but humans still outpace them in terms of creativity.
Remind employees that they are extraordinarily capable of creating, inventing, imagining, and dreaming. Even with all the new technology that’s changing the modern workplace, there will always be a need for employees who can envision unique solutions to everyday operational issues.
4. Emotional Intelligence
Employees with emotional intelligence (EQ) have a knack for understanding, controlling, and expressing their own emotions. They also are highly aware of and responsive to the emotions of others.
Why is this an important skill to have in highly technical environments? It gives employees the ability to connect with others on a deeper level than any machine ever could.
From addressing workplace conflicts to welcoming new hires, workers with a high EQ will always be necessary.
5. General Knowledge About the Implications of AI and Big Data
On the technical side, it stands to reason that your employees should have a working knowledge of AI and big data. They should also know how those new technologies can improve your business processes.
While no two businesses will use these systems in the same way, it’s helpful for employees to know the basics of how they work and what they can do.
6. Talent Management
HR personnel should refine their ability to identify, recruit, and retain top talent. In particular, they should become experts at positioning your company as the ideal workplace for someone with AI knowledge and experience.
7. Systems Thinking
This process often involves the following phases:
- Observing events and gathering data
- Identifying patterns of behavior over time
- Identifying the underlying structures that drove those events and patterns
In other words, a systems thinker knows that individual parts are not isolated. They all integrate with one another.
As such, a systems thinker keeps a broad perspective when using AI applications, tracing interrelationships between data and looking for ways to connect the dots.
Then, they draw conclusions and make predictions about what’s to come by referencing key events, as well as historical patterns.
How to Change Employee Attitudes About AI: Expand Their Skillset
Are you planning to implement AI-enabled technologies but anticipating change resistance? Just like with an ERP implementation, the best place to start is developing a communication strategy.
Once your employees feel more comfortable with the prospect of AI, you can develop employee training that equips your workforce with each of the above skillsets.
Wondering how to change employee attitudes about AI? Our organizational change management consultants can help you develop messaging you can use when introducing an upcoming AI initiative to employees.
