#28 AI in the Future of Work

Today we live in a time where trillions of trillions of data points are created every day. How can we make sense of all that? With the help of AI. Workplaces, specifically today with remote or hybrid setups, accelerate the amount of data being created, consumed, and scrutinized daily – and we need to make sense of it, now!

Some statistics around the data we need access to per day:

• 90% of employees want to share more, yet only 20% of all knowledge in an organization is documented.
• 3.6h a day is spent by an employee searching for information of which nearly half end in failure (Venturebeat, 2022)

Person-to-person communication is becoming more challenging with increasingly flexible work environments. Workers must be able to rely on a growing amount of data that is processed and organized across networks. So what can we do? Utilize AI.

How and why can AI help?

AI systems combine large sets of data with intelligent, iterative processing algorithms to learn from patterns and features in the analyzed data. When the AI system runs the data processing, it tests and measures its own performance and develops additional expertise (CSU). AI has the capability to analyze workflows and collaboration tools to provide more streamlined and efficient processes. AI-powered systems can analyze data from hundreds of sources and offer predictions about what works and what doesn't (Marketing AI Institute)

According to a 2020 Gallup research, lack of career growth opportunities is the top reason people switch jobs!! (Fortune)

Remote employees not only desire improved connectivity with their colleagues but also more learning. Here are just a few ways companies can use AI to improve workflow and collaboration.

Internal Talent Marketplace

Consumer goods company Unilever used its internal talent marketplace, FLEX Experiences, to redeploy more than 8,000 employees during the pandemic and unlocked 300,000 hours of employee work.– CIO 

An internal talent marketplace helps address current hiring and retention challenges. A skills-based talent-sharing model matches existing employees to opportunities within the whole corporation based on skills, interests, and aspirations with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

Such a marketplace not only helps the business fulfill its needs but has the opportunity, too, to support employees with their career changes or desires to widen their knowledge by growing and moving their talents.

You are 2.4 times more likely to be high performing are organizations if you are effectively and rapidly matching and moving employees internally to available staff opportunities (McLean & Company)

Besides closing staffing opportunities, it can also reduce internal hiring bias and increase diverse networking which in turn fosters tribal knowledge and employee connection. Another tremendous opportunity for such a marketplace is the enablement of mentorship relationships in all its form and ranges: senior-to-junior, junior-to-senior, peer-to-peer, and expert-to-novice – a further opportunity for company-wide people connections, and meaningful work and retention.

Internal Skill Marketplace

A presentation at the HR Tech conference outlined, that a skills marketplace identifies and maps the skills that employees possess, can or will develop and cross compares it with the skills required for the organization to meet its business objectives. Hence, this marketplace evaluates the current demonstrated skills by a person, the ones they may possess but are not indicated in their profile such as from outside work experiences, and the skills that they are likely to acquire over time through which an in-depth skills profile is created.

Whereas the talent marketplace is a position-based approach by focusing on projects or jobs that need to be filled internally and evaluating which employee could be moved to fill that position, the skills marketplace is a skills-based approach and thus rather focuses on the employee's needs and future should-haves within their current career path.

Why it is important:

• Greater employee opportunities,
• Improved diversity and inclusion outcomes
• Enhanced ability for the organization to adapt to changing market conditions and talent requirements
• Opportunities for connections and social learning (the best way for humans to learn) between employees possessing the need-to-learn skills by another employee

“We see huge investment going into this in terms of AI-driven skills management platforms … to match people’s skills in a more dynamic way,” Pearce says.

How would we actually start building such marketplaces?

This process is aligned with the process provided by the Big Think 

1. Preparation and planning: timeline, how to measure, what data hence collected and analyzed
2. Identify skills needed: Looking forward five to ten years, create an inventory of the skills the organization is likely to need. Map the list of necessary skills against organizational objectives to make sure the list is complete. Lastly, rank by importance and level of skills required (basic, intermediate, or high). The same can be done for employees on an individual level evaluating the need-to-learn skills to continue the desired career path.
3. Measure existing skills: Determine the extent to which the needed skills already exist within the organization by evaluating the data from performance, feedback, resumes, etc. as well as collecting additional data can through a combination of self-assessments, surveys, interviews, focus groups, KPI analyses for teams and individuals.
4. Identify gap: Compare the results of steps two and three to identify all of the missing skills within the inventory of the individual's current skills. Then list the skills needed for success and for each skill, identify its importance, the required performance level, and the actual current performance level, ideally on a five-point-scale.
5. Close Skill gap: 3 options - (1) Acquire the necessary skills through targeted recruiting and hiring, (2) redistribute skills through structural changes and/or redeployment of certain employees, and (3) cultivate the necessary skills within the career path of the employees through learning initiatives (such as we provide at www.instill.so).

I hope you took some learning away. Till next week!

Franzi