Denisa Cristache, Accenture: “AI is reshaping business because it changes the way the work is done”

“We are all using AI in personal life or in professional life, we all see efficiencies from AI. However, companies don’t necessarily see great value for the moment, for great efficiency. We don’t see the big impact now. And I believe that we don’t see it yet, because AI was treated as technology only. And was treated in silos, IT trying to implement AI somewhere, without a clear alignment with the business and with HR and with the workforce.

How do you train your workforce to work with AI? I was reading recently that if we just accept what AI gives us, we no longer use our brain. We no longer critically think about the results. We no longer develop our brain, which is like muscle,” Denisa Cristache, HR Operations Delivery Lead Europe, Accenture said during Romanian Business Services Forum organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest and Outsourcing Today.

Key statements:

• We see in the market that AI is reshaping business. It’s reshaping it because it changes the way the work is done. It changes the way we develop our skills, our workforce, and as well how we orchestrate the work. And our view is that we need first to start with outcomes, what we want to achieve, what the company wants to achieve, how the company wants to change the work they are doing.

• They need to decide where AI should be put, where human decisions should remain, what activities should go with AI, and what activities should be done with humans. And then definitely, continuously, skill the workforce.

• I believe it’s something that needs to happen every day. We need to change our way of developing people because we no longer count on training programs that are developed in six months and then delivered in another six months. Every person needs to learn from doing it every day with AI, giving feedback, learning from the AI, and so on.

• We will change jobs with skills. So far, a job title or a job description was a proxy for someone’s skills. It will no longer be. And the workforce, our people, will need to accept and acknowledge that they will need to change as well. They will need to learn something new. We no longer need to do whatever is in the job description. We need to do what is needed. Otherwise, we will no longer be relevant.

• We like to talk about AI. Everybody is very excited or afraid of AI. But we forget about automation, simple automation. There are processes in our industry. I’m leading HR. There are processes in HR where automation is much cheaper, much faster, and much better than AI.

• I don’t think that in five years’ time it will be just machines without humans. We will be there for decision making. And I think our generation is the lucky one, because we don’t rely fully on responses from AI. However, we need to help our younger generations to learn how to make decisions, because we will need them for decisions. AI will do a part, but we will still take a decision.

• If we don’t teach them how to do it, they will not know. And then AI will basically fail.

• We did research and only 17% of employees feel psychologically safe to use AI. And I believe that if we don’t manage to create this culture of feeling safe to learn and use AI, we will not get the value of AI. Because people will not use it or will not use it properly. Or they will not adopt it.

• So, what do you want in the end? You want the value. Besides training, we need to ensure this safety and encourage the culture of curiosity, of trying, experimenting and, of course, failing.