5 Principles To Make Generative AI Your New Work Buddy

Today, “how” we work and “who” we work with are the defining transformations in the workplace. Soon, every human team member across departments as varied as human resources, sales, customer service, and engineering will have their own GenAI co-pilot, customized to their role and key responsibilities. Conversational AI has led to a myriad of new use cases where GenAI is our new work buddy.

We have several specialized AI powered assistants working side by side with human workers. Teachers have copilots for homework grading, such as Class Companion, architects have an AI assistant for design, SketchPro. Online learners studying at Kahn Academy have Kahnmigo to help them become better learners, while learners on the Uplimit platform have CoBot as their AI powered teaching assistant.

In the corporate world, we are seeing early adopters such as Deloitte, McKinsey, Microsoft, and Walmart launching enterprise AI powered work buddies to help employees be more productive.

While workers experiment with GenAI, some companies discourage usage. A BCG Digital Acceleration study of 2,000 global executives found more than 50% discourage GenAI adoption. This seems like the debate we had in 2009, when, according to a Robert Half survey, 54% of U.S. companies banned workers from using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn while on the job. Today, can you imagine being banned from using LinkedIn at work?

Workers will use new technology on their own, regardless of whether it is adopted by their organization. A recent survey by Fishbowl reports that 68% of 5,067 workers use ChatGPT at work, but they do not disclose this to their manager. Instead of debating new technology usage, leaders must develop a plan for GenAI’s adoption aligned to their strategic business priorities.

Five Principles to Follow as GenAI Gains Traction in the Workplace

Leaders can start their GenAI journey with five principles for ensuring safe and responsible usage of GenAI.

1. Lead the GenAI transformation in your organization

2. Understand the employee sentiment for using GenAI

3. Train all workers on safe and equitable usage of GenAI

4. Pilot use cases with involvement across cross functional executive teams

5. Redesign job roles where automation will have the most impact

Lead the GenAI Transformation in Your Organization

The only way to lead the GenAI transformation is to roll up your sleeves and start using GenAI to understand how this will you impact both you as a leader, and every employee in the company. Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, says, “CEOs who are not using Generative AI will fail.” They will fail, because GenAI will change the way leaders think, communicate, and strategize about the business.

The best way to determine GenAI use cases is for senior leaders to experiment with GenAI and share what they have learned company-wide. Leaders can start their journey by forming cross-functional executive teams, so GenAI is aligned with the organization’s key business priorities, current AI capabilities, and key business problems.

Understand the Sentiment for using GenAI Among Workers and Leaders

International Monetary Fund estimates AI will affect almost 40% of global jobs, replacing some and complementing others. Some employees are experiencing a fear of becoming obsolete. Others are actively embracing AI to improve their productivity and creativity. A BCG survey of 13,000 people in 18 countries—from executive leaders to middle managers and front-line employees—finds leaders are much more optimistic than front-line employees about AI (62% vs. 42%) and how to incorporate it into one’s job, with 80% of leaders feeling optimistic, while only 20% of front-line workers felt they understand the impact of AI on their job.

This discrepancy on using AI between workers and leaders can negatively impact morale and productivity. Almost a third of job seekers said they are looking for new positions because of GenAI disruption. The American Psychological Association reports workers who are worried about AI disrupting their role are 57% more likely to feel that their productivity is declining and 40% more likely to feel ineffective at work.

A commitment to frequent employee pulse surveys is critical is understand worker sentiment and take action to address employee fears of becoming obsolete.

Train All Workers on Safe and Equitable Usage of AI

The explosive use of GenAI is uncovering a need to up-skill the entire workforce. BCG research finds workers expect their employer to provide AI literacy and this is true of 80% of white-collar workers, 76% of blue collars, and 74% of pink collars. Almost one-third of workers across 16 countries report they are pursing learning opportunities on their own in response to AI disruption, because their company training was inadequate.

The large professional service companies are the early adopters in GenAI training. PwC is committing $1Billion over three years to train 75,000 workers in GenAI so they can safely incorporate this into their work. Genpact is another company that has developed a GenAI training program, giving employees instant access to the collective intelligence of the company. To date, 60,000 have gone through the self-paced training immersion and 22,000 have completed. This is in addition to a 12-week immersive program for developers, including a deep dive into prompt engineering.

Pilot Use Cases With Involvement of Cross Functional Executive Teams

McKinsey’s launch of Lilli, a GenAI solution, is one example of how an AI powered work buddy can provide streamline searching and synthesizing more than 100,000 documents and a network of experts across 70 countries. This process kicks off a new project at McKinsey and often takes about two weeks of researching and networking. Now Lilli streamlines this quickly and efficiently. In addition to increasing productivity of team members, McKinsey team members can use Lilli as “thought sparring partner” anticipating client questions sand creating an enhanced project plan.

McKinsey’s lesson in piloting Lilli is one we all need to be aware of; Phil Hudelson a McKinsey partner who leads the development of our technology platforms said that “the technology was the easy part, the bigger challenge was bringing the right team together from functions such as HR, talent development, cyber security, and risk management to address all the angles in launching the GenAI solution.

Redesign Job Roles Where Automation Will Have the Most Impact in the Workplace

GenAI is already transforming job roles. Take the role of a customer service representative. A global retailer recently introduced a work buddy to answer nearly 50% of customer inquiries. But this did not translate into job losses among customer service representatives. Instead, nearly 8,000 of these customer service representatives were re-skilled as virtual interior design advisors. The global retailer now charges for this service, and it is a new source of revenue.

GenAI is in the early stages of experimentation at many companies. The first question leaders will deal with is, “Will GenAI lead to job loss?” But the far bigger question is how will companies adapt to GenAI which is becoming more intelligent, more functional, and more ubiquitous to how employees work each day. A leader’s answer to the impact on jobs needs to focus less on job loss and more on how jobs must be re-designed, as GenAI improves exponentially. Leaders must embrace GenAI, and build a “test and learn” culture, so workers know how GenAI can enhance their productivity and creativity.