As report after report predicts that generative artificial intelligence will transform millions of jobs, many white-collar workers are wondering what that means.
The release of ChatGPT in November sparked excitement and anxiety about the potential of this type of technology to transform work. But change takes time, especially in large organizations. Hype often far exceeds a company's ability to adapt. On the other hand, many employees want to stay ahead of the curve and lighten their workloads, and are at a loss for employers to provide clear guidelines and training.
More than 85% of employees say they need training to deal with how AI will change their jobs, according to a Boston Consulting Group survey of nearly 13,000 employees in 18 countries. thinking about. However, so far he has received less than 15% of his training.
That may be about to change. While some companies have completely banned or limited the use of tools like ChatGPT due to information security concerns, others have gone all-in on generative AI and are implementing enterprise-wide initiatives to increase employee knowledge. Some companies are rushing to build and launch training programs.
For consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, that means rolling out mandatory training to all U.S. employees over five months starting in August. Given growing concerns among workers about what AI means for their jobs, Yolanda Shields-Coffield, PwC's U.S. chief human resources officer, said the first step is technology. He said that it is important to understand it in an easy-to-understand manner. “The sooner we can stand up and start teaching people about this technology, the sooner we can dispel some of that,” she said.
The company divides its workforce into three tiers based on how deeply each tier needs to understand new technology. The first and most widespread is to educate all employees, regardless of their role, on the basics of generative AI: what it is, how it works, best practices, and how to use it ethically and responsibly. This is essential training for understanding.
The more obvious tiers two and three are software engineers who need additional technical training to integrate AI into their internal systems, and senior leaders who need a deep understanding so they can help clients transform their businesses. configured. “We don't want or need to have 75,000 deep subject matter engineers. That's not the goal,” Shields-Coffield said.
Although the training roadmap is detailed, the company has specifically chosen not to extend it beyond December. “Frankly, we didn't go beyond that because we think technology will continue to evolve,” Shields-Coffield said. “We want to make sure we're not stuck and work on something that needs to be completely redone by January.”
Meanwhile, other firms, such as Booz Allen Hamilton, take a slightly less structured approach. The consulting firm also offers formal training, but this is voluntary and typically occurs at the employee's convenience. Jim Hemgen, director of strategic talent development, said staff members have the opportunity to participate in twice-weekly virtual sessions on best practices. The company is also recently hiring new employees for a full-time version of the same training program, which has been reorganized to focus on generative AI.
Digital consultancy Publicis Sapient is tackling AI problems in a more targeted way. The guidance will vary depending on the nature of the job, but chief human resources officer Kameshwari Rao said the company provides all employees with prompt engineering, or asking the right questions to get the best answers from the chatbot. It is said that they will ask you to learn the process of creating it. As a first step, all engineers are required to complete this training by her September.
Other companies are choosing a more hands-on learning approach. Earlier this year, Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of online learning platform Coursera Inc., said the company would provide refunds to employees who wanted to upgrade to the enterprise version of ChatGPT. Staff were encouraged to experiment with it as much as possible in their work and share what they learned in his dedicated Slack channel and in regular all-hands meetings. For Maggioncalda, speed was of the essence, and that meant getting new technology into the hands of employees quickly so they could start learning as quickly as possible.
But eventually we realized that this kind of organizational change cannot be done completely bottom-up, where employees figure out how to use it themselves, or top-down, where senior leaders dictate how everything should be done. Maggiocalda says. Majioncalda says middle managers will be a big part of the process and will need their direct reports to tell them how to change the way they work. This is a training that Coursera is currently working on developing.
“You can't tell everyone how their jobs are going to change,” he says. “But you can't just say, 'Oh, I'll think about it.'”
