April 3, 2018
Nearly half of large organisations will adopt artificial intelligence in the workplace by 2019
Chatbots and voice assistants powered by artificial intelligence are starting to gain traction in the workplace of large organisations, according to a report from tech firm Spiceworks. The report, based on a survey of 500 IT professionals in organisations across North America and Europe, found that within the next 12 months, 40 percent of large businesses – those with more than 500 employees – expect to implement one or more intelligent assistants or AI chatbots on company-owned devices, compared to 25 percent of mid-size companies and 27 percent of small businesses. The findings indicate that although adoption is on the rise, some organisations are holding back due to a lack of use cases in the workplace and privacy concerns.
It should come as little surprise that graduates who have undertaken an internship are more likely to have honed the skills businesses needs, one of the main findings of the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) annual Development Survey, which launches today (28 March 2018) at the ISE Student Development Conference. The report found that 63 percent of employers believed graduates who had undertaken work experience had the required soft skills, yet less than half (48 percent) thought this of graduates in general. According to the report the five most common graduate skills gaps are; managing up (5 percent of employers believed graduates had this skill); dealing with conflict (12 percent); negotiating/influencing (17 percent); commercial awareness (23 percent and resilience (31 percent). This is why closing skills gaps is a priority for businesses with 74 percent of employers taking specific actions to tackle the issue in 2017. Changes to recruitment and on-the-job training were the most common actions and 16 percent of organisations improved their internship development programmes specifically to close skills gaps.
Over half (52 percent) of workers in a new poll have admitted looking for a new job because of frustrations over what they see as outdated ways of thinking around work practices and automation at their current company. The 
UK office workers are under a tremendous amount of stress, and much of it is directly related to the way their work is being managed. That is the conclusion of a report by Workfront, which finds that office workers are becoming frustrated and burned out by poor work tools, processes, and communication. Four out of five office workers confessed that they feel burnt out and 73 percent expect their stress levels at work to increase in the near future. Nearly three quarters (74 percent) admit to feeling unrecognised and un-useful at work. With lack of communication and not knowing what others are working on (37 percent) cited as the number-one pain point across the board for stressed UK workers, it’s clear that businesses need to break down current silos, allowing people to engage more freely with senior staff members and see how their efforts impact the wider team. The study found that poor communication and visibility into work is UK workers’ number-one pain point in terms of work stress. It also reveals that 42 percent of office workers put in more than 6 hours of overtime per week and that 7 out of 10 office workers expect their stress levels at work to increase into the future.
Artificial intelligence systems need to be accountable for human bias at AI becomes more prevalent in recruitment and selection, attendees at the Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion’s annual conference have been warned. Hosted by NatWest, the conference, Diversity & Inclusion: The Changing Landscape heard from experts in ethics, psychology and computing. They explained that AIs learnt from existing data, and highlighted how information such as performance review scores and employee grading was being fed in to machines after being subjected to human unconscious bias. Dr David Snelling, the programme director for artificial intelligence at technology giant Fujitsu, illustrated how artificial intelligence is taught through human feedback. Describing how huge data sets were fed into the program, David explained that humans corrected the AI when it used that data to come to an incorrect conclusion, using this feedback to teach the AI to work correctly. However, as this feedback is subject to human error and bias, this can become embedded in the machine.
March 21, 2018
There are at least some reasons to be optimistic about the UK’s tech sector post Brexit
by Gary Chandler • Comment, Property, Technology, Workplace design
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