Making AI more approachable for employees using psychology

As some organisations make major headway with AI transformation, it remains a pain point for many others; one psychologist has explained why humans are at the centre of success or failure.

About two in three employees believe that their leaders have the skills, knowledge, and abilities to lead, and behave in a way that is consistent with their values, said Dr Benjamin Granger (pictured), chief workplace psychologist at Qualtrics’ XM Institute, in a keynote at Qualtrics Experience Live on 29 April.

“Employees who trust their leaders are more engaged and contribute positively to organisational outcomes … Underinvesting in employees and resources can negatively impact financial outcomes,” Granger said.

“By focusing on trust from the inside out, leaders can prepare their organisations to navigate the uncertainties of the future successfully. With trust as the foundation, organisations can achieve scale and sustainability in a rapidly changing world.”

Granger told HR Leader that companies are ignoring the human aspect of the AI transformation. “Companies are not seeing a return on the vast majority of [their AI use] … that’s largely because they’re forgetting the human factor – they have to work with and through humans,” he said.

He added that largely, these organisations are treating AI as a tool rather than a human-centred organisational transformation.

“What I’m most concerned about is that companies are going into this blind, and they’re not thinking about the psychological effects that [AI is] going to have on employees in the longer term and how that’s going to manifest,” he said.

“Organisations are fundamentally human institutions where a group of people is trying to meet the needs of other people. You cannot remove human psychology from that.”

“I think the first and most critical place for companies to invest is in their leaders, because that’s the leverage point. They have to start investing in their leaders and investing in their skills.”

Next, he stressed that as AI begins to take over menial tasks, traditional soft skills become more important in the workplace. “If you teach people to have a growth mindset … [it is] always going to be in style ... If you know how to learn it, you know how to adapt and you know how to be resilient and you know how to leave people and influence people, and you know how to build relationships … [these skills are] going to help you adapt to whatever the hard skills that we do need to develop,” he said.

After developing the soft skills necessary in the workplace, Granger said, HR leaders must ease their workers into AI upskilling. He pointed to a strong positive correlation between the frequency of AI usage and workers’ comfort with the technology. “The more comfortable people are, the more they use it, the more frequently they use it, the more comfortable they are,” he said.

“Start specific, start small, get people comfortable with it, show them how useful it is to them, their comfort, their mindset will come along, and then new tools won’t be so scary.”

Carlos Tse

Carlos Tse is a graduate journalist writing for Accountants Daily, HR Leader, Lawyers Weekly.

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