The need to ‘make the biggest difference’ post-AI experimentation

Here, Deloitte’s chief edge officer unpacks the difference between businesses utilising AI to improve individual efficiency and those looking to make a collective impact – and how HR can support the latter.

Ahead of his appearance at the inaugural HR Innovation Summit, Pete Williams – the chief edge officer at the Centre for the Edge at Deloitte Australia – spoke with HR Leader about what’s separating businesses stuck in experimentation from those making AI use more foundational, and the importance of creating community-based learning opportunities to better encourage widespread adoption.

In his keynote address at the summit, he will explore how organisations can move beyond AI awareness to meaningful workplace adoption. Drawing on his experience scaling AI in major enterprises, he’ll share practical strategies for embedding AI into workflows, driving behaviour change, improving productivity, and helping teams use AI effectively to work smarter, faster, and better.

In conversation with HR Leader, Williams said the businesses that are thriving are those that don’t just leave individual workers to do their own thing. Instead, they’re asking where the pain points are, whereby the workforce can, collectively, “make the biggest difference”. Now that the business has some capability with new technologies, asking “What do we do next?” is critical, he said.

For HR teams, Williams said, there are a couple of key steps required, including understanding the business’s capabilities and leveraging them, moving away from generic training, and providing guidelines on what workers can and can’t do.

From here, he said, community-based learning initiatives will be imperative, as compared to training sessions, whereby someone will speak to workers about what to do. HR, Williams said, is “perfectly placed” to facilitate spaces that encourage people to share what they’re doing, make it visible, and provide tools to help them. Even hackathons will regularly surface the good stuff that workers can do, and make it easy, he said.

Such community dialogue is all about getting closer to the daily operations and processes of the business and understanding what transformation could truly look like, Williams noted.

“Convening that community is where HR could have the biggest role,” he said.

When asked about roadblocks standing in the way of full integration of AI into workflows and how HR can help overcome them, Williams pointed out that the majority of workers tend to be “cautious beginners” with such new technologies.

About 30 per cent of staff will be reasonably confident users, who will tap into it most days to be more efficient, and 1 or 2 per cent will be “top guns” with AI. But most, he said, are cautious around it, particularly given that HR may not have provided proper guidelines about its use, and so “people are self-censoring [as they are] not sure if they should or shouldn’t do this”.

“There’s this dance between them and HR around whether or not they’ll lose their jobs if they use the tools. The answer is probably not, because it’s going to make them more productive, and focus on the stuff that matters,” he said.

As a result, he said, HR “needs to be in there” making sure that businesses are building the right capabilities, that workers understand the risks and have the right community-based training, whereby they’re allowed to work towards whatever will bring the greatest value.

Pete Williams will be speaking further on these matters and more at HR Leader’s inaugural HR Innovation Summit, being hosted this Friday, 26 June, at the Telstra Centre in Sydney. To learn more, click here. To purchase tickets, click here.

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Jerome Doraisamy

Jerome Doraisamy is the managing editor of Momentum Media’s professional services suite, encompassing Lawyers Weekly, HR Leader, Accountants Daily, and Accounting Times. He has worked as a journalist and podcast host at Momentum Media since February 2018. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of the Minds Count Foundation.