Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation is reshaping whole industries – from manufacturing to banking and health care – and almost every other enterprise. In the health care industry, for example, AI is being investigated to prevent dosage errors; provide personalized medicine, automatic treatment or recommendation; manage the high cost of back-office challenges and inefficiencies by eliminating time-consuming, non-patient care activities; detect claim fraud; and other applications and tasks. Many fear significant job losses as a result of a digital workforce, but the flip side is that this transformation comes with real opportunities for those ready to embrace technology advancement. Technology can never replace the human touch, but it can help take over mundane tasks and give providers, nurses, and caretakers the opportunity to innovate. With the proper training and skillsets and the support of employers, whole new careers are open to health care workers eager to leverage technology advancements.
According to Gartner, AI will create more jobs than it eliminates. The consulting firm predicts that 2.3 million jobs will be created by next year, versus 1.8 million jobs lost, as a result of AI and automation. These gains will be seen in health care along with other sectors. Gartner also predicts that AI and other emerging technologies will generate $2.9 trillion in business value and recover 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity. In coexisting with robots and new advancements, a business can create a culture in which employees and technology work together to achieve goals.
Reskilling Employees to Reach a Business’s Potential
Everyone from financial managers to nurses and doctors has seen an increased need for digital skills in their work with businesses, thus making reskilling a priority among employers across all industries. AT&T is an example of the reskilling taking place among employees in the U.S. Its initiative, known inside the company as Future Ready, has undertaken a $1 billion web-based, multiyear effort that includes online courses; collaborations with leading universities; and a career center that allows employees to identify and train for the kinds of jobs the company needs today and down the road. An online portal called Career Intelligence lets workers see what jobs are available, the skills required for each, the potential salary range and whether that particular area is projected to grow or shrink in the years ahead. It provides employees with a roadmap to get from where they are today to where the company needs them to be in the future. According to the company, more than half of its employees have completed 2.7 million online courses in areas such as data science, cybersecurity, Agile project management and computer science. The company has awarded 177,000 virtual “badges” to about 57,000 employees on their internal career profile pages, indicating they’ve completed the coursework. The bottom line of this initiative: Employees that are currently retraining are two times more likely to be hired into one of the newer, mission-critical jobs and four times more likely to make a career advancement at AT&T.
Instilling a culture of life-long learning and providing training opportunities for employees is key as technology and automation transform the workplace. Companies that want to remain competitive will require a change in senior leadership mindset and talent strategies to implement retraining programs in order to raise skill levels of employees by teaching them new or more advanced skills.
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Sources: Forbes, CNBC, PwC