Job roles should be AI-proof in changing times

Employee wellness and loyalty have been intrinsically related from the days of industrial revolution. Businesses take care of their employees and in turn, employees stay loyal to the businesses. This established norm seems to be slowly losing its relevance in the current era.

With the advent of AI (artificial intelligence), many companies despite solid growth in their financials are willingly shedding their headcount as many of their operations are now executed through AI tools. So, gone are those days, when businesses despite not being at the pink of their financial health, only fired employees as the last resort. So, many traditional business values are a passe in the current era.

Take for instance the case of Microsoft. The US-headquartered technology giant is offering buyouts to about 60,000 employees as part of its severance package. The company’s memo shows Microsoft staffers in the India, US, Canada & UK are eligible for applying for this severance package and they have been given time till December to decide on thecourse of action. This is Microsoft’s second such buyout this year after several rounds of layoffs earlier.

If this voluntary exit programme is executed, then more than 80,000 employees would have left the company since last two years. And this is not a small number. Not only Microsoft, several highly profitable companies like Google, Meta, Apple, Oracle, Accenture and hundreds of others have cut their employee count in last two years. This shows that the old code of employee-employer relationship is somewhat broken.

In the AI era, companies are realizing that they can execute tasks by AI tools, which used to be undertaken by human beings. AI also improves efficiency level multiple times as compared to human beings apart from saving costs for businesses. Therefore, companies across the world are replacing human employees with AI tools.

According to experts, such trend is going to accelerate than fading down in coming years. Increasingly, businesses will utilize AI tools to improve efficiency and cost advantage, leading to exit of several workers. In this perspective, employees- especially operating in the technology space- are going through a tough patch.

When the old code of employee-employee relationship is broken, they have to prepare for facing a complex world. The current generation, no longer, can rely on job stability and a happy retirement life like their parents. In the AI era, they have to stay prepared for facing any career disruption with confidence.

For this to happen, employees in the tech sector have to upskill themselves in the ever-changing AI skills. Interestingly, while AI is leading to several job losses, it has also started creating several new jobs pertaining to these skills. So, life-time upskilling is the answer to navigate such complexities.

For workers in the non-tech sector, it is better to find those kinds of jobs which AI can’t disrupt. That is the reason, several workers in the ‘operations’ segment have lost their jobs, while sales jobs remain the least affected and the reason being human relationship.

In the operations segment also, professionals can move up the value chain which AI can’t replace than sticking to routine tasks as AI-led automation will kill those jobs sooner or later. However, AI like, any technology is likely to end up creating more jobs than it will destroy. It is just that employees with those specific AI skillsets will be able to leverage the emerging dynamics.

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The Hans India