Here are our keynotes from Dr Boris Altemeyer’s talk at the Bath Digital Festival.
Although AI and machine learning are popular buzzwords I don’t think it’s a fad. They are really revolutionising the way we work, how we position ourselves and understand the world of work. If you have seen AI modelling at work there is real potential to build models which have an impact on people’s lives.
How to make work more meaningful.
We want to get people in the right position so they are productive and happy, which will make them stay longer. Which is ultimately good news for both the company and the person.
So how can we measure it?
These are areas that measure what makes work meaningful. Individually we can rate how important each of these areas are to us.
- Achievement driven
- Recognition driven
- Building relationships
- How much support we expect in our work environment
- Working conditions
Collecting the data
- If we gather this applicant data we can predict how they would behave in work-related situations before they are hired.
- If we know a candidate is driven by these motivational areas, we can compare it against the company’s current culture. This will assess if the hire is a good fit for the person and the organisation.
- After they are hired we can track them over time to see how they grow alongside the organisation.
- It means we can give a company live feedback. They can understand how the organisation and the people within it have changed. This gives them an opportunity to change in order to make work meaningful again.
What is meaningful to people right now?
At Cognisess we are able to track which of these factors are meaningful and important for each generation at work.
- Recognition has increased over time
- The level of support needed has grown – with machine learning we can track and tailor it over time, as the support you need at 21 is different to when you are 40.
- The need for relationships at work has decreased – our relationships with our colleagues are becoming purely transactional. It is less important to network and work with the right people.
The future of work
At present, even the most abstract things can be automated to be quicker and more efficient. Some may worry that AI and automation will make work obsolete. However, what humans excel at is really difficult to automate.
Humans are able to hold multiple and completely different options about themselves at the same time and think they are true, for example, I’m corporate, conscious and also a rebel. From a psychological point of view this is completely fine, but from a data and AI point of view it’s highly frustrating as we can’t model it. At the moment there are attributes humans are just better at like creativity and situational judgement. It’s not that we are not trying, it’s just really hard.
At the moment, AI, automation and machine learning have made the more menial tasks in certain jobs redundant. This means we can focus on redefining how we work and how we can make work meaningful.
If you would like to watch the full talk, click here.
If you would like to discuss this further please contact us below.
