In The Era Of AI And Automation, We Need An Employee Experience Bill Of Rights
Q&A with J.P. Gownder, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester
Posted on 03-13-2020, Read Time: Min
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Despite 2019 marking a year of historically low unemployment, worker anxiety over the possibility of job loss due to AI and automation remains high. This makes it an ideal time to articulate and commit to an employee experience (EX) bill of rights that outlines foundational principles of employee experience to which workers should always be entitled, even when circumstances evolve.
HR.com recently spoke with Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst J.P. Gownder about what an EX bill of rights should entail and what something like this means for C-level leaders.
Why should C-level leaders consider adopting an EX bill of rights?
J.P.: C-level leaders who adopt an EX bill of rights prove to employees that they are committed to establishing a sense of security and long-term stability, which drives psychological safety and signals an authentic employer commitment to the well-being of their workers. In turn, higher EX will drive higher customer experience and top-line revenue.
What should an EX bill of rights look like?
J.P.: We propose five rights companies should commit to on behalf of their workers:
- The right to technology that adapts to me
Working collaboratively with robots is a key dimension of the future of work. However, this world will not immediately yield collegial collaboration between humans and machines. Companies must privilege the human impact of technology, rather than investing in technology for its own sake. One element of this environment should be honoring what makes us human. People will remain in the loop on automated business processes for the foreseeable future, and they bring unique judgment, creativity, and cross-domain expertise to the job. Guaranteeing that AI and automation will adapt to them allows employees to add their humanness to the overall human/machine dynamic.
- The right to technology that empowers me versus monitoring me
The sad reality of most data collected about employees is that it is used for surveillance rather than enlightenment (e.g. AI used for criminal background checks; email data being analyzed to understand worker collaboration patterns). Employee-generated data is fair game for employers to use, but that doesn’t mean they should – at least not at an individual level. Instead, companies must treat employee-generated data as a useful source of insight that will help employees improve their own performance, and limit leaders’ access to aggregate, not individual, data
- The right to resources to help me adapt to automation-driven changes
Leading-edge companies are building increasingly adaptive workforces that can flex and respond to changing customer needs and market conditions. AI and automation play a key role in enabling this adaptiveness – but as they enter the workplace, employees’ roles are being transformed. Forrester predicts that by 2030, 80 percent of all human jobs will be transformed to some degree by automation, as people work side by side with intelligent bots. Therefore, companies must be proactive about creating a holistic set of resources that build change capacity in employees independent of any specific change initiative and that increase the success rate of all planned transformations.
- The right to focus and flow
One of the biggest problems with managing modern workplace distractions is organizational norms. Most employees think nothing of stealing a colleague’s time by asking a question or creating a meeting. And in most companies, it’s rude or inconsiderate to ignore an email or meeting request. These interruptions come at a great cost. Granting employees the right to ignore distractions and focus on work reverses this trend. Companies can fulfill this right by switching on technology features that help employees manage distractions. In an AI and automation context, this means bots will be deployed to help take rote tasks off employees’ hands, allowing the latter to reclaim time for focused, creative, and strategic work requiring flow.
- The right to a clear human/machine career path
Forrester predicts the rising tide of automation will eliminate 1.45 million jobs in 2020. Additionally, the rapacious nature of modern capitalism that demands layoffs as a ritual sacrifice for every bad earnings call is another reason employees fear job loss. The rise of AI and automation has also created huge uncertainty for employees. Yet the response to fear of automation-driven job loss shouldn’t be to guarantee workers jobs for life. Companies will benefit from clarity around how workers can advance in the organization or migrate to new and emerging areas if their old jobs are no longer needed.
What recommendations would you suggest when considering implementing an EX bill of rights?
J.P.: We know companies can’t adopt a proposed EX bill of rights overnight. Yet if companies work toward these principles in good faith, they’ll improve employee experience along the way. The good news is most companies are already doing some of the activities necessary to fulfill these rights. For C-level leaders wanting to get started creating a better employee experience, some steps to take include:
- Investigating yourself as a leader as leaders too need time to reflect, enter the flow state, and continuously improve.
- Quantifying the quality of your current employee experience. If employees don’t feel empowered, inspired, and enabled by their current experience, they are even less likely to be open to automation.
- Helping employees work with AI and automation. Invest in the functions that will help you improve, like learning and development, change management, and center of excellence capabilities that are oriented toward helping employees work side by side with robots.
Author Bio
| J.P. Gownder is vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, serving CIOs, CTOs, and other technology and business leaders. He leads Forrester’s research into the impact that automation technologies like artificial intelligence, smart software, robotics, and customer self-service have on the future of work, the future of jobs, and the economy. J. P. has held numerous roles across Forrester since 2005. He has served as vice president of business development in Forrester’s data organization and as a custom quantitative research expert. He has also served as a research director, managing a team of analysts who served consumer product strategists. Visit www.forrester.com Connect J. P. Gownder Follow @jgownder |
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