New Study: 93% of People Would Trust Orders from a Robot at Work

HR leaders and employees want to embrace AI, but organizations are failing to prepare the workforce

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Jun 28, 2018, 08:00 ET

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., June 28, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- People are ready to take instructions from robots at work according to a new study conducted by Oracle and Future Workplace, a research firm preparing leaders for disruptions in recruiting, development and employee engagement. The study of 1,320 U.S. HR leaders and employees found that while people are ready to embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI) at work, and understand that the benefits go far beyond automating manual processes, organizations are not doing enough to help their employees embrace AI and that will result in reduced productivity, skillset obsolescence and job loss.

According to a new survey by Oracle and research firm Future Workplace, 93 percent of employees would trust orders from a robot. Clearly people’s views on robots/Artificial Intelligence are changing. Science fiction and Hollywood have long painted robots as a threat (i.e. the Terminator series) and we’ve all seen movies or read books about robots taking over the world. Well now we’re recasting the part robots play in that screenplay as AI takes a more prevalent role in our daily lives.

The study – AI at Work – identified a large gap between the way people are using AI at home and at work. While 70 percent of people are using some form of AI in their personal life, only 6 percent of HR professionals are actively deploying AI and only 24 percent of employees are currently using some form of AI at work. To determine why there is such a gap in AI adoption when people are clearly ready to embrace AI at work (93 percent would trust orders from a robot), the study examined HR leader and employee perceptions of the benefits of AI, the obstacles preventing AI adoption and the business consequences of not embracing AI.

Employees and HR Leaders See the Potential of AI

All respondents agreed that AI will have a positive impact on their organizations and when asked about the biggest benefit of AI, HR leaders and employees both said increased productivity. In the next three years, respondents expect the benefits to include:

Employees believe that AI will improve operational efficiencies (59 percent), enable faster decision making (50 percent), significantly reduce cost (45 percent), enable better customer experiences (40 percent) and improve the employee experience (37 percent).
HR leaders believe AI will positively impact learning and development (27 percent), performance management (26 percent), compensation/payroll (18 percent) and recruiting and employee benefits (13 percent).

Organizations are Not Doing Enough to Prepare the Workforce for AI

Despite its clear potential to improve business performance, HR leaders and employees believe that organizations are not doing enough to prepare the workforce for AI. Respondents also identified a number of other barriers holding back AI in the enterprise.

Almost all (90 percent) of HR leaders are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI as part of their job and to make matters worse, they are not currently empowered to address an emerging AI skill gap in their organization.
While more than half of employees (51 percent) are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI and 71 percent believe AI skills and knowledge will be important in the next three years, 72 percent of HR leaders noted that their organization does not provide any form of AI training program.
On top of the skill gap, HR leaders and employees identified cost (74 percent), failure of technology (69 percent) and security risks (56 percent) as the other major barriers to AI adoption in the enterprise.

Not Embracing AI Now Will Result in Job Loss, Irrelevance and Loss of Competitive Advantage

Despite all the talk about people being worried about AI entering the workplace, the study found the opposite to be true with HR leaders and employees (79 percent of HR leaders; 60 percent of employees) believing a failure to adopt AI will have negative consequences on their own careers, colleagues and overall organization.

Respondents identified reduced productivity, skillset obsolescence and job loss as the top three consequences of failing to embrace AI in the workforce.
From an organizational standpoint, respondents believe embracing AI will have the most positive impact on directors and C-Suite executives. By failing to empower leadership teams with AI, organizations could lose a competitive advantage.

Supporting quotes

"As this study shows, people are not afraid of AI taking their jobs and instead want to be able to quickly and easily take advantage of the latest innovations," said Emily He, SVP, Human Capital Management Cloud Business Group, Oracle. "To help employees embrace AI, organizations should partner with their HR leaders to address the skill gap and focus their IT strategy on embedding simple and powerful AI innovations into existing business processes."

"AI will enable companies to stay competitive, HR leaders to be more strategic and employees to be more productive at work. If organizations want to take advantage of the AI revolution, while closing the skills gap, they will have to invest in AI training programs. If employees want to stay relevant to the current and future job market, they need to embrace AI as part of their job."
– Dan Schawbel, Research Director at Future Workplace, author of Back to Human

Methodology

For this survey, 1,320 HR Leaders and employees were asked about their views regarding AI implementation and usage in the workplace. The study targeted HR Leaders and employees who work across different sectors and in organizations of different sizes. All panelists have passed a double opt-in process and complete on average 300 profiling data points prior to taking part in surveys.

About Oracle

The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.

About Future Workplace

Future Workplace is an executive development firm dedicated to rethinking and re-imagining the workplace. Future Workplace works with heads of talent management, human resources, corporate learning, and diversity to prepare for the changes impacting recruitment, employee development, and engagement. Future Workplace is host to the 2020 Workplace Network, an Executive Council that includes 50 plus heads of Corporate Learning, Talent, and Human Resources who come together to discuss, debate and share "next" practices impacting the workplace and workforce of the future. For more information, please visit: http://www.futureworkplace.com/.

SOURCE Oracle