Navigating AI’s impact on employee wellbeing

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by Marisa Pereira

 

 

It is remarkable how quickly artificial intelligence (AI) has become integrated into many aspects of our lives, from virtual assistants to content creation. A recent Goldman Sachs report estimates that 45 per cent of tasks in the legal and administration professions could be automated in the near future. While this provides a competitive edge, companies need to ensure that AI is complementing their employees’ work rather than disrupting it.

While AI has the potential to revolutionise how we live and work, there are some inevitable drawbacks. As we become increasingly reliant on AI technology, there is growing concern about the negative effects on our mental health and wellbeing. Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index Report found that working with AI could make employees lonelier and so reduce their health and wellbeing.

Our mental health and wellbeing have become important topics in recent years. As we are more aware of mental health challenges, employers have more responsibility than ever to ensure the health and safety of their workforce. In the 2022 CIPD and Simplyhealth Health and Wellbeing at Work report, 81 per cent of employers cited an increased focus on worker mental health and wellbeing. Meanwhile, 14.7 per cent of people surveyed by the Mental Health Foundation said they experienced mental health problems at work, which can have a huge impact on output.

While AI can improve productivity by helping us be more efficient, it is important to recognize the relationship between mental health and team performance. Good mental health can have a significant impact on an individual’s performance and productivity. When employers understand the connection between mental health and productivity, organisations can create an environment that complements AI technology with employee wellbeing. Effective collaboration between humans and AI helps to define clear roles and responsibilities for humans and AI systems. Just as AI models need constant updating and adaptation to evolving contexts, employers must cultivate a culture of learning where humans embrace AI technology for empowerment rather than replacement.

There are several steps employers and employees can take to minimise the potential negative psychological impact of using AI technology.

  • Establish clear boundaries when using AI systems, including limiting your exposure to them. This can reduce feelings of depression and anxiety, and help prevent addiction.
  • Seek support if you are feeling anxious and isolated when using AI systems, talk to your employer, friend, family member or mental health professional.
  • Use AI systems responsibly and be mindful of their limitations and potential biases. Avoid making important decisions by relying solely on AI-generated information.
  • Always stay informed of the latest developments in AI technology and maintain continuous knowledge to reduce feelings of helplessness and being overwhelmed.
  • To help prevent isolation and digital addiction, take regular breaks from using AI systems and engage with other people to promote relaxation and maintain social connection.
  • Support efforts to ensure AI systems are used ethically and have appropriate safeguards in place that protect privacy and autonomy.

There’s no doubt that AI can streamline processes and enhance efficiency but it can also lead to job insecurity, isolation and privacy concerns. While offering both benefits and challenges, AI will continue to have an impact on employee wellbeing unless organisations take steps to implement best practices. They must strike a balance between implementing AI-driven solutions while maintaining a human-centric supportive work environment. When employers prioritise employee engagement and ongoing training, the positive impact of AI technology will outweigh the negatives and lead to a thriving, forward-thinking workforce.

Marisa Pereira is vice-president of people and organisation at Storyblok

 

Source: peoplemanagement.co.uk

How Teaming Supercharges Collaboration

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by Stanislav Shekshnia , INSEAD, and Sergey Vorobiev , WH Advisors

 

NASA does it. We show how your organisation can embrace teaming, too.

In the complex, uncertain and fast-changing world we live in, success and even survival require intensive collaboration among individuals, organisations and countries. The outcomes of such collaboration can be breathtaking – consider the growth of Netflix and Amazon, the rebirth of Microsoft and General Motors, the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Yet, most people and organisations fail to collaborate, preferring competition to cooperation. In business, up to 70 percent of strategic alliances fail and more than half of joint ventures do not survive their 10th anniversary.

Why collaboration stumbles

There are good reasons that collaborations often falter: physical distance, time zone differences and unequal access to information, to name a few. However, the biggest obstacles are psychological. 

For millennia, people have grown, learned, played and worked in small groups. In modern times, as villages gave way to cities and farms to factories, hierarchy has become the way to organise and manage human and other resources. However, it fosters an individualistic, uncollaborative mindset characterised by distrust of strangers, unwillingness to share information and a strong preference for working independently or with familiar others. It also leads to a focus on personal gains, avoidance of initiative and risk, and shifting of responsibility. 

These behaviours make effective collaboration problematic, even when individuals appreciate the need to work together.

The promise of teaming  Continue reading →

How a Keen Focus on DEI Helped Etsy’s CHRO Exceed the Company’s Social Impact Goals

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By Katy Brennan

 

 

At a time of shrinking DEI commitments and growing cynicism around corporate culture, Toni Thompson is paying close attention to what Etsy’s increasingly diverse and growing number of employees need to succeed.

Since she joined Etsy in 2020, the company has expanded dramatically, transforming into a ‘house of brands’ with offices in Brooklyn, Chicago, London, Dublin, and Mexico City. That includes the company’s original online marketplace connecting more than 96 million buyers and 9 million sellers around the world, as well as Depop, a resale marketplace focused on affordable second-hand fashion, and Reverb, a resale marketplace for musical instruments and audio equipment.

When she took on the role of Chief Human Resources Officer — an increasingly powerful position in today’s C-suite landscape — in December 2023, Thompson doubled down on her commitment to advance the company’s high-performing, equitable, and inclusive culture.

Under her leadership, Etsy has set new standards for employee benefits, advanced gender parity in leadership, and increased diversity among its workforce. Today, the company’s standard benefits include unlimited sick/mental health days, 26 weeks of gender-neutral parental leave, mental health benefits for employees and eligible family members, companywide no-meeting days, transgender health coverage, subsidized backup care benefits for working caregivers, adoption/surrogacy reimbursement, and fertility coverage.

Thompson’s focus on diversity and equity have helped the company set, and, in some cases, exceed its ambitious social impact goals. Last year, women and marginalized genders made up more than 30% of Etsy’s global engineering team and Thompson continues to work towards greater gender parity. She’s also kept her eye on accessibility, setting a goal in 2022 of scoring an 80 or above on Disability: IN’s Disability Equality Index. In just one year, the company proudly exceeded that goal with a score of 100. Continue reading →

The 6 trends CEOs see shaping global business today

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A group of global CEOs recently gathered for a private dinner in a Spanish restaurant in central Tokyo.

Representing a variety of sectors spanning food, insurance and banking, medical devices, semiconductors, and heavy industries like steel, it was the first time they had all been together since the COP28 meeting in Dubai and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier in the year.

Global disruptions were the main topic for these Japanese executives, just as they are in executive conversations around the world.

These are six topics that dominated the evening’s discussion:

1. Sustainability. At Davos, environmental, social, and governance topics were prevalent, even though the acronym “ESG” was rarely, if ever, mentioned. Instead, discussions were much more specific, focusing on areas such as biodiversity, food systems, and carbon transition, among others. Companies are expected to understand the role they will play in helping the world transition to a more sustainable, lower carbon economy.

Japan may have been a slight latecomer to this, but there is no longer any doubt that sustainability is a top agenda item for all C-suite executives. The number of business roundtables and events dedicated to the topic has proliferated just in the last one to two years.

2. A less globalized world with greater geopolitical risk. From wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to ongoing economic tensions between the US and China, there’s plenty of risk to go around. For these executives, an important aspect of this shift is the private capital diversion from China to other Asian markets. Japan, Singapore, and India in particular are beneficiaries of this trend. Additional private capital provides an interesting opportunity for many businesses to become more efficient and accelerate growth.

A second aspect is recent supply chain disruption that has industries such as semiconductors looking for alternative suppliers, creating additional demand in Japan. Finally, as China stimulates its slowing domestic economy, greater manufacturing output is fueling price competition globally in a number of industries, among them automotive, steel, and solar panels. This is putting tremendous pressure on all the executives at the dinner table and creating sharp competition in markets including Southeast Asia, India, South America, and Africa.

3. Technology and Artificial Intelligence. Generative AI has fueled the urgency to better leverage technology for competitive advantage. This is not just a chief technology officer issue—it’s relevant to the entire C-suite. Generative AI has gone from experimentation and proof-of-concept development to real, fundamental business model disruption. The race to scale solutions across large global organizations with complicated, often legacy IT infrastructures, is afoot. This has implications for both enterprise technology and change management. Japan is pushing to keep up. Start-ups and corporate giants like NEC are all making big investments but risk falling behind in a field where agility and speed are paramount—not always the top characteristics of traditional Japanese industry.

4. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It’s become stylish in some quarters to argue that such efforts are losing favor, but not at this table. In a country famous for conformity, those efforts are nevertheless taking hold in very profound and real ways that are influencing the labor markets. In Japan the thinking is broad. It’s not only gender equity, as important as that is, but also global, experiential, and leadership diversity. The share of female board members at Japanese companies is low, but so is the breadth of management experience and global representation.

5. Corporate governance. Around the world, boards are under increasing shareholder and public pressure to address issues one through four above. In Japan, this is a very present topic. While other markets such as the US and UK are rather new to thinking about properly representing the interests of multiple stakeholders, Japan has arguably always been ahead of the game. If anything, shareholders have been somewhat neglected. Building governance that creates value for all stakeholders will require the focus of executives, independent directors, and institutional investors alike.

6. Rising cost of money. The rise in interest rates has increased funding costs for corporations. While interest rates were nearly zero and borrowing costs were minimal until a few years ago, interest rate hikes are now widespread globally, leading to higher borrowing costs. Even in Japan, interest rates are expected to slowly rise. It was national news when the country ended eight years of negative interest rates aimed at stimulating growth and combating deflation.

Any one of these would be a career-defining challenge for a CEO. Tackling all six at once? Well, it’s a hard job. CEOs are expected to have answers to a much broader set of complicated questions but never lose sight of critical business operations like costs relative to the competition, the customer value proposition, and the recipe for driving top-line growth.

CEOs are being asked how they are contributing to making the world a better place—safer, more sustainable, more equitable, more innovative. That may be a good thing, but it’s not a job for the faint of heart.

 

Source: forbes.com

So…How Do You Measure Success?

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Success is something that everyone in any career field would like to achieve. Success may mean different things to different people.

 

 

Here are some perspectives:

It’s an easy path to try and measure success by the numbers, but when asked personally I think of happiness but also my impact on others.  When I am asked about my biggest success at work, it is always the people and who have I helped develop and grow. That is my professional legacy, and the measure of success. On the personal side, I revert back to happiness and creating memories not only for yourself but for the loved ones you surround yourself with.  Something I have to keep reminding myself of is that the journey can be successful, not just the destination.

Steve Rudderham,  Global Leader for Carrier Business Services

 

 

For business I have always measured success on how I help those connected    to me be successful. Who I report to being. an individual or board, the people that report to myself and my peers. If what I am doing is reflecting progress and development of the echo-system around me, then I have no need to check on my success.

David Gai, COO Leadspace

 

Raising my kids to be the best versions of themselves.  They can be whomever they want, no limits. Raise them to be good people and be good to each other.

Be a good partner for Pamela. Supportive, growing with her, experiencing new places together.

We are building a special company at Syniti. We have in a unique space of data at a special time in industry growth. So, success is delivering on our mission creating a place where data professionals can perfect their craft and helping deliver game changing business benefits with our clients.

Always living our/my values – think big, be curious, take action and better together.  After all, at the end it is the friends we make along the way and the memories that we make that we remember.

Building a lasting company, watching and helping people grow, helping   people do more than they think is possible and learning every day!

Kevin Campbell, Chief Executive Officer at Syniti

 

 

We would welcome your thoughts, for our next blog on success.

Thank you,

Larry Janis, Managing Partner, ISSG

Email: janis@issg.net