The Future of Work Is Managing AI
Enterprise AI frees employees from time-consuming tasks — but the productivity gain comes with a new responsibility: Reviewing results, plans, and suggestions the AI provides. Since the AI can respond to almost any question in less than a minute, the more we give it, the better it performs. The productivity gain can quickly become enormous.
But there is no free lunch — not even with Enterprise AI. Artificial intelligence can eliminate countless hours of searching, researching, waiting, coordinating, thinking, strategizing, monitoring, and conducting repetitive work. Information can flow across departmental and system boundaries almost instantly. Employees can conduct research while working on something else. Exceptions can be identified, actions proposed, and entire workflow steps prepared autonomously. Yet, BlueCallom’s experience with Enterprise Workflow Intelligence shows it creates an entirely new challenge: Employees must increasingly manage the work AI performs. So we still need people to ensure the AI’s output is not only good, but right for the specific company.
Exponential Productivity Growth
BlueCallom has found that Enterprise Workflow Intelligence can free 25%+ of employee working time, even above 35%, almost immediately, with significantly higher gains possible as AI utilization increases. But that does not make employees obsolete. It makes their time more valuable. When managed right, a company with 2,500 employees may get a measurable productivity gain of approximately CHF/€/$ 70 Million per year, ongoing. As AI takes on more operational work, employees increasingly review results, evaluate alternatives, provide direction, make decisions, handle exceptions, and ensure AI activity stays aligned with business goals.
The future of work now looks different
Instead of fearing mass unemployment, we should fear not having enough qualified people to manage and monitor AI. Of course, AI will get better and faster, but that only means it produces even faster than today, and it still must be under control.
The Future of Work is not humans working faster. It is humans managing increasingly capable AI. That future began already this year. AI can execute hundreds of actions while we perform one. Our responsibility is to ensure that those actions make sense, are in our interest and correct!
Therefore, “The future of work is managing AI”
And managing AI is NOT an engineering job or somebody from IT. It requires common sense, domain expertise, intuition, empathy, creativity, critical thinking, and human judgment. Basically, what employees acquired as EXPERIENCE is no longer used to do the job but to ensure that the AI does the job. The more we drive AI utilization, the more oversight we need. This changes the traditional meaning of “management”. Managing AI does not carry the social and leadership responsibilities of managing people, but it requires employees to set expectations, assess outcomes, intervene when necessary, and take responsibility for results.
And employees who have never considered themselves managers may not be left behind: either a specialized AI can help guide them through that new responsibility, or they can perform tasks that would not be economical to do with AI.
Is your HR department ready for Enterprise AI?
- We provide HR-specific education on the skills and cognitive abilities employees need to manage AI.
- Since cognitive abilities play a large role in qualification, the training also covers how hiring managers or HR interviewers can determine whether a candidate brings those matching abilities.
- Age range is another interesting topic in this context. Most job starters lack AI education and domain expertise but can learn fast. At the same time, more experienced managers are available, and they don’t need to learn new tools; they can observe and control AI results. We are addressing both aspects.
Get in touch to explore how our Enterprise AI Development Framework could help you.
Per email: http://bluecallom.com/inquiry or phone: +41 (44) 500-6480
