Artificial intelligence will drive growth - employees hope for benefits

A study by consulting firm Accenture predicts that artificial intelligence could increase enterprise revenues worldwide by an average of 38 percent as early as 2022. For the global study, Accenture surveyed Accenture Strategy 14,078 employees and self-employed persons as well as 1,201 managers in eleven countries (Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, USA) on their attitudes toward and expectations of artificial intelligence. Business leaders attach great importance to this technology: More than two-thirds of them (72 percent) believe that the introduction of intelligent technologies is crucial to their organization's ability to differentiate itself in the market. In addition, 42 percent are convinced that all innovation in the future will be based on artificial intelligence. This is one of the reasons why more than half of companies (61 percent) plan to automate more tasks and processes on a large scale in the next three years. According to the study, automation is being pursued very systematically in the USA (92 percent) and the UK (84 percent) in particular, while in China only just over half of the companies surveyed (56 percent) are aiming to do so.

Artificial intelligence raises expectations among employees

Employees and freelancers view the transformation of the working world and the use of intelligent technologies with great confidence: Well over half (62 percent) of the employees and freelancers surveyed expect artificial intelligence to have a positive impact on their everyday working lives within the next three years. Respondents even highlight that smart technologies will create new opportunities for their work (62 percent). "Artificial intelligence has the potential to further boost growth and employment, especially in industrialized countries. However, companies will only benefit if they use the technology in such a way that their employees can take on new tasks," says Thomas D. Meyer, Country Managing Director of Accenture Switzerland. "In the working world of the future, humans and intelligent machines will work closely together. Many tasks can be done better as a result, because human skills will be supported by artificial intelligence. The decisive factor for the economic success of companies will be whether they succeed in qualifying employees and adapting previous job profiles to the new circumstances."

Nevertheless: reluctance to invest

According to the study, almost one in three companies (29 percent) has significantly redefined employees' areas of responsibility and role descriptions in order to cope with the technological changes in everyday working life. According to the executives, firmly defined role descriptions will soon be a thing of the past, as work will be much more project-based in the future and new technologies will require the constant acquisition of new skills. Under these conditions, firmly defined fields of activity and rigid work routines are an outdated model.

It is therefore all the more surprising that companies have so far shied away from major investments in preparing their employees for this new working world. Only three percent are planning significant additional spending on staff qualifications over the next three years. In contrast, 67 percent of the employees and self-employed people surveyed believe that they will need to acquire additional skills in order to be able to exploit the full potential of smart technologies in their day-to-day work. "In the working world of the future, the machine will not dominate the human. Rather, smart technologies are the key to more productive employees who can get rid of routine tasks and devote themselves to those with higher added value," says Thomas D. Meyer. "Companies must invest in the qualification of their workforce out of their own interest, for example by using the additional profits generated by higher efficiency for this purpose. In doing so, they will secure a competitive advantage in the long term, because only where humans and machines collaborate does productivity continue to rise and a basis for the business models of the future emerge."

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