Deloitte: 61% of companies are redesigning jobs around AI

According to Deloitte’s latest Global Human Capital Trends report, 61% of companies are already redesigning their existing jobs to more readily incorporate AI and robotics into their operations.

Of those surveyed, four in 10 believe that automation will have a major impact on jobs, whilst 72% of HR and company leaders feel that AI is a topic of significant importance in business.

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However, despite the recognition of the impact that technology will have on jobs, more than 54% of companies currently don’t have a program in place to help their employees build future skills, whilst only 18% actively state that they provide their employees with the opportunity for self-development.

“Jobs will go away,” says Kalyan Kumar, CTO and CVP of HCL Technologies. “However, the onus is on both how companies create opportunities for rescaling people, and also on the individual him or herself.”

“There’s a big difference between the capabilities of human and AI. AI needs lots of data to train itself, whilst humans can do a lot of things with little data. With this in mind, you have to start to identify those augmentation roles and begin to rescale.”

“It’s the responsibility of the individual themselves to adapt, and also the responsibility of the company to create the right avenues for people to be able to do so.”

With jobs roles set to inevitably change over the coming months, companies need to both help employees more with learning the necessary skills, as well as better providing the opportunity for self-development, with less than one fifth of business currently doing so.

Whilst both the report from Deloitte and Kumar himself agree that automation will create new roles and alter existing jobs, a lack of training and education in this field from both the individual and companies will only lead to a further widening of the digital skills gap.

For the full exclusive interview with Kalyan Kumar, see the May edition of Gigabit Magazine.