India Inc not gearing up for a tech future

Although a majority of Indian organisations believe that advanced technologies will be crucial for future growth, few plan to increase their training investment significantly in the next few years, thereby limiting their ability to harness the potential of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Although a majority of Indian organisations believe that advanced technologies will be crucial for future growth, few plan to increase their training investment significantly in the next few years, thereby limiting their ability to harness the potential of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). This has been revealed by a recent survey report released by Accenture.

Accenture’s Future Workforce Study, based on a survey of 1,100 workers across skill levels in India and a survey of 100 senior executives in India, found that while 69 per cent of the senior executives agreed that adopting intelligent technologies will be critical to their organisation’s ability to differentiate in the market, none said their organisations plan to increase their training investments over the next three years. This, despite 59 per cent of the executives identifying skills shortages as a critical hindrance to future growth.

At the same time, a majority of workers expressed the need for training, with 93 per cent saying it will be important to learn new skills if they were to work with intelligent technologies in the next three to five years.

However, four in five executives admitted that their workforce was underprepared to adopt advanced technologies. “We are entering the age of man-machine collaboration, where machines will augment human capabilities, allowing people to focus on what they do best while doing the things that humans would rather not,” said Sunit Sinha, a managing director at Accenture who leads the company’s Talent and Organisation practice in India.

The commitment to using advanced technologies for growth needs to be supported by an equal commitment to transform the organisation for the future.

“This will require not just technology skilling, but also broader organisational changes, including redeploying talent and adapting leadership to the needs of the enterprise,” he added.

Strategies to help leaders shape the future workforce in the age of AI

1. Reimagine work to better understand how machines and people collaborate. More than half (56 per cent) of the Indian executives surveyed believe that traditional job descriptions will become obsolete, and 22 per cent report that they’ve already redesigned jobs to a large extent in their organisations.

2. Teach people to work with intelligent machines. To fill the new and reconfigured jobs of the intelligent enterprise, companies will need new approaches to training. “New skilling” programmes must be rapid, flexible, tailored and scalable to maximise the value that can be achieved when humans and machines work together.

3. Prepare the organisation for human-machine collaboration. To foster this for best results, companies must not only address the skills challenge, but also make organisational changes, including redeploying talent, organising for agility, and adapting leadership to the needs of the intelligent enterprise. — TNS