While machine learning (ML) and artificial Intelligence (AI) may raise concerns of humans being displaced in the workplace, these technologies can in fact support people development and put people at the centre of business transformation.
This is according to Workday's enterprise architect, Auralia Edwards, who was addressing a webinar on applying emerging technology to drive business progress last week.
The webinar outlined challenges facing organisations as they transformed digitally, managed change and worked to build the capability to rapidly innovate, enhance employee experience and elevate human and enterprise performance.
Edwards outlined Workday’s model, which uses ML to continually learn from outcomes from over 50 million workers and over 265 billion transactions in over 8 000 customers. “Workday has access to a lot of outcomes with consistency across the data, which allows us to refine the models. Customers contribute to the models, but in turn they use the models to solve multiple unique business problems across HR, finance and planning,” she said.
Workday is helping customers to gain visibility into the skills and talents within their organisations, as well as to identify skills gaps for talent acquisition and people development, to improve the employee experience and improve business. It is also enabling improved financial management, enterprise planning, and analytics and reporting. “Customers are sharing data in a trusted way to help improve the model, and continuously getting more accurate results and better predictions,” she said.
People are key to the transformation of a business and its culture, the webinar heard, therefore the technologies and change management approaches companies adopt should be people centric.
Amanda Budler, COO of Analyze Consulting, said: “Organisations today need to understand what inputs from people and technology are needed, and how they will transform to valuable outcomes. Being able to understand the skills needs of the organisation is a gap and hampers their ability to innovate without knowing what skills they have, where they are and where they need to be. AI/ML can enhance what you already know and take it to the next level.”
Cathy Banks, co-founder and CEO of Analyze Consulting, said: “Bringing machine learning into business is an opportunity rather than a threat. There is a real opportunity to use machines to do the mundane things and let people do the things that differentiate business. But enabling a culture shift needs to start at the top. Without a culture based on solid principles, the technology is unlikely to be effective.”
In a poll of webinar participants, 52% said executive sponsors own and manage the change in the organisation, while 24% said people must change when the systems change and a further 24% said project managers must manage the change impact.
Said Edwards: “People are at the heart of business progress, so a people focused approach is critical. Connecting people to purpose increases productivity, helps with reengineering processes and improves the bottom line.”
Share