🤖 AI is here. Never before have companies faced such a profound change. Take these five steps to stay ahead 👇
Companies are navigating a shift surpassing the scale of the Industrial Revolution.
Yes, yes. I know the Industrial Revolution brought massive change.
Companies shifted from small, family-run, low-volume and local enterprises to large-scale, high-volume and mechanised factory organisations.
Workers shifted from agricultural work to factory work. They moved from home-based skilled craft work to mass production, machine-based labour.
But this happened over an 80-year transition period.
And there were jobs for displaced workers to move in to: factory jobs.
This time, we are in a transition that is happening…overnight.
Even as little as two and a half years ago, the OECD wassaying that it wasn’t yet seeing the impact of AI on jobs, since employers had not yet rolled changes out at scale, and we had not yet seen the impacts of generative AI on jobs.
🤖 Now, Ai is reshaping business models at scale and that's a fact.
And we are not replacing some jobs with other jobs.
The entire way of working as a company – and the workers that it needs as a result – has changed.
💼 Companies are becoming leaner, they need more strategic, creative, and technically skilled people, and they don’t need people performing tasks that AI can do.
📌 Let’s take the example of digital bank Klarna.
Klarna recently said that its AI agent now performs the work of 853 full-time agents, which is saving the company $60 million.
The company had (around) 5,500 workers in 2022 and now has (around)3,000, and will have under 2,000 by 2030. That's a 70% drop in workforce size.
Here are some other recent examples of jobs being removed:
The question for companies is not whether to re-structure.
Financial markets expect it, peers are doing it, consumers expect it.
It’s how to do it.
👇Here are five steps for companies to take now:
Adopt worker-centric AI
Is AI augmenting human work or replacing it? Is the company creating hybrid workflows where humans and machines collaborate together? Is there a human-in-the-loop?
Ensure core labour fundamentals are in place
What measures can we take to prioritise worker health and wellbeing? What channels do workers have to discuss these topics with management? Do they have freedom of association and collective bargaining?What are our wage strategies, and do they meet living wage expectations?
Reskill and upskill - with others
What reskilling and upskilling initiatives are there in place? Are they meaningful? How do they connect with meaningful talent progression and promotion?
Can we connect our digital transition reskilling and upskilling efforts with our green transition reskilling and upskilling efforts? Can we connect with peers in similar situations to jointly fund relevant training programmes and talent pipelines?
Counter disproportionate impact on marginalised workers
Marginalised workers (e.g., Black and Latino/Hispanic workers, women) face higher automation risk.
What measures can we put in place to proactively counter disproportionate impacts of AI rollouts on marginalised workers?
Actively shape relevant policy with government
A human-centred transition succeeds when governments adopt and enforce the right policies, frameworks, and incentives.
How can my company play a meaningful role to support and encourage governments to take these essential steps forward?
Not only is this the right thing to do for workers, it's the right thing to do for companies!
🙌 It helps:
And when else can a company say: I played a role in helping counter mass job disruption, inequality, and social backlash to ensure business continuity and economic stability. 👏
See my newsletter for more on what AI means for business models and workers, as well as takeaways from the recent Munich Security Conference (and for a pic of me in Libya outside of Qadhafi’s house days after NATO-led strikes destroyed it!)
👇 Is this now a museum-worthy picture? Me, in my New York law firm office in 2010, doing work the ‘old-fashioned’ way. Who else remembers tearing pieces of paper to make multiple bookmarks or folding book pages to track research across many pages?
