Business Leaders is under pressure on business leaders to ensure AI is faster, cheaper and more efficient. It may thrill investors, but for employees it could mean less work around the world.
According to its CFO Dominik Asam, the $320 billion software giant SAP may need fewer engineers to deliver the same thing, or even bigger output.
“There's simply automation,” Asam said. Business Insider. “There's a specific task that's automated and you can afford fewer people for the same amount of output.”
As an executive at C-Suite, Europe's most valuable software company, Asam warned that this reality will only happen if the corporate world implements technology properly. Ultimately, a recent MIT study found that 95% of generator AI pilots do not meet the mark.
“I'm going to be brutal, and I'll say this internally, too. For SAP and other software companies, AI is a great catalyst.
“If you do it well, if you can implement it and make it faster than others, that's great. If you're left behind, you certainly have a problem.
SAP's workforce doesn't look the same
With 110,000 employees worldwide, AI has been holding the best minds at SAP for years (now the term is part of the description of business). But like the CFO, the company's CEO Christian Klein has been evaluating the way technology can rebuild his workforce.
“It would be an illusion to believe that AI will help and promote more productivity, but the workforce will still look the same,” Klein said. time last month. “That's definitely not the case. But I can't imagine a workforce that is exclusively digital workers.”
He estimated that about 60-70% of employment could be digital.
“Do you expect to need the same amount of developers, salespeople and consultants in the future? The profile of work today definitely isn't,” he added.
At the same time, Klein noted that other professions, such as data scientists, are in greater demand. But like ASAM, he acknowledged that reshaping his workforce completely overnight could be a recipe for disaster.
“Become CEO and now you make a decision and believe you have the power, so it's probably the biggest mistake you can make for everyone to just follow,” Klein said.
“There are many policies that can be put in place and more pressure, but people don't just follow automatically. They need to over-communication during change to convince people.”
luck I have contacted SAP for further comment.
Reshaping the corporate workforce
SAP is not only aware that AI capabilities mean that they have to rethink the size and shape of their workforce in order to stay first.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees that recent tech innovations have led to fewer people taking specific jobs, more people moving to other jobs, and ultimately the number of Amazon employees will shrink.
“It's difficult to know exactly where this will go online over time, but over the next few years, this will hopefully reduce the total workforce of a company, as it will provide greater efficiency through widespread use of AI across the company,” Jassy wrote in a June memo.
At Salesforce, the reality that powered this AI is already in effect, with CEO Marc Benioff cutting his workforce by almost half from 9,000 to 5,000 to 5,000.
As executives seem to agree that tomorrow's workforce is leaning more than it is today, leaders like Goodwill CEO Steve Preston worry that change will hurt people at the bottom of the ladder the most.
“I don't know that's devastating, but I think a lot of jobs will be drastically reduced,” Preston said. luck. “I think it's going to hit low-wage workers particularly hard.”
