By Alexia Russell
Copyright newsroom
Companies using artificial intelligence as a way of shedding staff are being warned it could backfire on them.
The warning – from workplace performance expert Craig Steel – comes as more bad economic news lands, showing New Zealand’s economy is contracting.
Last year businesses were being told to survive till 2025 … but the promised recovery has been slow in coming, and our latest GDP data makes for grim reading.
Steel is the chief executive of Vantaset, a company that goes into organisations to unlock their potential.
He says business leaders need to use AI and automation to deliver greater value for less cost, but they have to look at it through the right lens.
“When AI is implemented simply to reduce workforce size or centralise control, it can backfire – weakening morale, diminishing trust and stalling innovation. People will push back because they’re afraid that the only reason they’re bringing in AI is to get rid of them.
“There’s a misguided belief that AI will close the gap for any organisation that applies it. But what we’ve seen is that when organisations adopt technology without modernising their leadership and culture, the gains they were seeking rarely occur.
“So, what is it that an executive team is going to need to do, or what could they do, to fast track the adoption of AI, but in a way that their people want to back?”
He says the purpose of AI should be to become even more efficient and effective in the time we have.
“I feel hugely excited for the arrival of AI and what it can do for any organisation,” says Steel.
“I think we have to be really clear in saying where is the value? And how do organisations harness it?
“At the moment what I think a lot of the discussion is centred on is, ‘Can we bring AI in, in order to get rid of people?’ rather than saying, ‘can we leverage AI in order to leverage our people to add greater value?’”
Steel says we don’t want to turn our backs on AI, because the rest of the world is going to use it. But chief executives and bosses need to look at AI through the right lens, rather than the uncoordinated approach going on at the moment.
“Despite the hype, AI’s promise of efficiency is often delayed by years of integration, upskilling and business model adaption. In New Zealand, many small and mid-sized firms lack the scale or leadership frameworks to carry that burden effectively.”
Also today on The Detail, Steel talks about how New Zealand has exhausted conventional ways of improving productivity and needs to rethink our leadership structures – including in the troubled public service.
