How has your workplace gotten smarter? Most companies are now using collaboration tools for online meetings and remote team cohesion, which has been a significant transformation for physical offices. However, just about everything in business is evolving with digital transformation improving operations, teamwork, security, productivity, and knowledge management – to name just a few areas now relying on smart techs like robotics, automation, AI, and machine learning.
Change In Workplace Teams
You’ll find streamlined communications technologies like Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Nextiva are helping workers communicate from a distance.
Smarter data analytics changing everything about consumer market patterns and how businesses use the information in their customer discovery, lead generation, sales, and retention processes.
Plus, safety technologies and worker surveillance is helping manufacturing teams protect their workers. AI is also crucial in cybersecurity systems for managing large volumes of risk data.
AI has already—permanently—changed the workplace. But terms like ‘robotics,’ ‘AI,’ and ‘machine learning integration,’ still bring to mind a future that feels far away, says Zain Jaffer, CEO of Zain Ventures and host of PropTechVC. Jaffer is an entrepreneur, an active mentor, and a tech and real estate investor.
The truth is every team operating today has a connection to enhanced intelligence, whether it’s something they’re encountering in their own operations or the competitive advantage they’re contending with from their industry peers.
Zaffer also believes one of the significant areas of impact for artificial intelligence in the workforce is the quieter effect on workplace teams; how they’re composed, maintained, managed, and engaged.
So where exactly is AI proving a game-changer for workplace teams? There are three core areas of digital transformation including:
- The smart co-worker
- Knowledge distribution
- AI and team composition
Building New Pyramids: AI and Team Composition
Jaffer says agility is a team’s best asset. During the complications of the pandemic, ample research was published regarding the demonstrated success of more agile team structures.
Teams to be lean and agile
Lean and agile teams can better self-distribute their contributions across necessary tasks and take an autonomous approach to the larger goal. The results are often better than what a manager or employer would be able to engineer with a top-down approach, says Jaffer.
Rather than replacing the need for creative, self-led workplace activity, robotics in the workforce will complement a more diffuse approach.
Larger teams will be autonomous under the guidance of ‘robot bosses,’ smart technology-empowered ‘managers’ who will be able to oversee project allocation using AI-empowered algorithms and software.
Smart machines can facilitate better team coordination, track deadlines, adjust delivery schedules, and monitor the results across important verticals like sales, financial outcomes, or client satisfaction.
Robot team leader?
Although the thought of a robot managing a team sounds futuristic, integration with cloud communication systems might ease this transition before the decade’s end.
Giving such technologies the freedom to handle project management tasks included in employee communication would save time and money.
This approach to autonomous team management should boost employee satisfaction and free up managers for other important and innovative responsibilities, even if it is a transition that will come gradually.
Distribution of Knowledge More Wisely
Employees in the same team have had to learn domain-specific skills and designations in today’s business. A social media manager, an email marketing expert, a content writer, a researcher, an SEO expert, and so on make up a content team.
Greater groups may unite under an intelligent management system thanks to the new robotics-powered approach to teamwork. Employee silos may dissolve without halting development since more coordinated teamwork, and bigger teams can work together.
A more wide range of contributors’ talents may speed up development. There will soon be fewer designations across the company due to the integration of robots. Instead of pre-programmed structures and titles, hierarchies will be based on a worker’s whole skill set. Instead of an employment position, knowledge will become the main priority.
Performance of employees
Jaffer also thinks that a more comprehensive evaluation of an employee’s performance and potential might help to establish their pay and job duties inside the company. More AI-driven data will, like virtually everything else, help remove bias from corporate choices and ensure the business makes the most use of all its employees.
The Smart Coworker Phenomena Side by Side
As a culture, we’ve already become used to having robotic aides around. That our voice can activate Alexa’s weather reporting or turn the lights off was significant, if modest, move in that direction. Like smart assistants, robot ‘coworkers’ in the workplace may initially interact with humans.
Personal task management, communication, and data analysis relating to the employee’s project or everyday chores may be assisted by intelligent personal assistants at work. However, there will be a significant development after that.
A robot colleague?
Robotic-powered devices may operate continuously without incurring the typical human expenditures. According to Jaffer, repetitious labor and middle management jobs may happen overnight.
Robots can assist with part of the day-to-day decision-making with efficiency, expertise, and data-based knowledge, including delegating work and prioritizing tasks based on predictive analytics.
Employees will quickly feel as if a knowledgeable and competent teammate has been working on their behalf overnight when they log back into work or arrive at the office in the morning.
The fact that these insights have data as a foundation will be a significant plus. Robotics in the workplace may assist sectors in moving toward the long-held aim of data-based decision-making, free from bias, prejudice, and hierarchy, which is far from the nightmarish “robot takeover.”
Data may assist firms to ensure that their compensation structure accurately represents where the value is coming from and can be used to choose the best team member for the project. Intelligent robots can correctly assess a venture’s performance without interference from other sources or concern for bruised emotions.
The workforce may be a place where people are empowered, talent is rewarded, and the equitable distribution of resources can be programmed for, according to Jaffer’s concluding statement. It’s a positive approach, and every day brings us closer.
