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Generative AI adoption at work feels like the corporate equivalent of the space race. Everyone is rushing to adopt it, B2B partnerships are forming rapidly (such as NVIDIA and McKinsey and PwC and OpenAI), and employees are scrambling to learn what it means for their roles.
Microsoft and LinkedIn’s 2024 Work Trend Index report on the state of AI at work shows how AI influences how people work and lead worldwide. “It’s just such an interesting time in technology,” says Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Microsoft 365 and the Future of Work. “With this report, we partnered more deeply with LinkedIn so that we could really understand what the state of AI is at work, and what’s happening with AI broadly in the labor force.”
What’s happening is that many — companies and people alike — are struggling to put in place any real plans or strategies for AI adoption. According to the report, 60% of leaders say their company lacks a vision to implement AI. “It’s important to consider the context of AI,” says Ruth Svensson, Global Head of People and leader of the HR Center of Excellence at KPMG. “It’s not your standard technology transformation program because you can’t yet build stable business processes on top of it because it is too rapidly evolving.”
That lack of guardrails isn’t stopping people from using AI — it’s just meant that in some cases, they aren’t doing it in a cyber secure or company-approved way. “What was surprising to us is that 75% of people are already using AI at work, and that’s doubled in the past six months,” says Stallbaumer. “But what’s even more surprising is that there is the ‘BYOAI’ phenomenon, where 78% of people bring their own AI tools to work. People are overwhelmed and under duress at work, so they’re turning to AI to see how it can help lessen their load.”
AI adoption needs a people-first approach
Companies will not get widespread AI adoption — and the associated business benefits that usage brings — without understanding how people react to change.
“We see this spectrum of users from skeptics and novices on one end to power users on the other,” says Stallbaumer. “Power users have different habits. The biggest predictor of whether you’re a power user is if you’re open to experimenting. Our power users are 68% more likely to experiment with AI. And if they get a wrong answer, they don’t give up. They try again.”
Svensson agrees. “The rapid evolution of AI means humans’ willingness to engage with and adopt it is going to be the thing that differentiates an organization’s overall success.” However, she points out several cognitive biases businesses must take into account in their AI change initiatives.
Status quo bias — our preference for the current way of things — can be a large blocker in many change initiatives. “People will say they’re quite happy with how things are going, so they don’t think they need to do something new,” says Svensson. Fear of uncertainty can also block change, as there’s still a fear of job displacement. It’s easy to see where that fear stems from, given that the report finds 66% of leaders won’t hire someone without AI skills, yet only 25% of companies plan to offer any AI training this year. Past experiences must also be considered when coming up against resistance to change. “If people have had bad experiences with technology transformations before, they might not see how AI will be different,” says Svensson.
“Organizations need to understand and lean into those biases and shape their change program on these biases. You need to always show people what they’re going to get and how they’re going to benefit.”
Companies should embrace the art of the possible
Stallbaumer also mentioned that power users are more likely to be found in certain types of organizations. “They are much more likely to have heard from their CEO about the importance of using AI at work. They’re more likely to have heard from their line of business leader, and they’re more likely to have received specific training on AI for their role and function.”
Svensson echoes the important role that leaders play. “Leaders need to understand and embrace the art of the possible. They also need clarity on what this means for their business and how they are going to lead their business through change. If your leaders lack clarity, that only becomes exaggerated throughout the organization. Even if messages are very clear from the top, they become increasingly mixed the further down they go.”
“The majority of leaders are very clear that this is the future and they know they need to adopt it, but 60% don’t have a plan to implement it,” says Stallbaumer. So, what’s going on there? It likely comes down to what is at the heart of every change initiative companies undertake: can they prove a return on the investment?
Microsoft is focused on helping customers see these benefits in real terms. They’ve been able to prove time savings for individuals and are now guiding customers on how that ladders up to unlocking more value. But that means encouraging companies to take a longer-term view. “Organizations using AI solely for cost reduction is a very short-term mindset. It won’t give them long-term positive impacts. AI is about enhancement, not replacement,” says Svensson.
Stallbaumer reflects on what people can do with the time back that AI provides. “Knowledge work is going to change. People will go from spending their time on repetitive, mundane tasks to being supervisors of AI. They’ll be making judgment calls on how to apply it, what to do with AI-generated output, and how to use it for creativity.” There will also be moments of delight along the way. “I still get delighted when I see CoPilot do something that I didn’t know it could do,” says Stallbaumer. “Any tool in our life has to deliver those moments of surprise and delight and be useful. I’m just excited about how it can help people.”