AI as a skills enabler: how it can free your team to do what they love

The AI revolution is here to stay. Can it really boost our skills and give us more time for the work we enjoy? Absolutely. Here’s how.

Every day seems to bring new predictions about how artificial intelligence (AI) is going to impact our lives, the economy, and society as a whole. Some headlines make for uncomfortable reading, like the recent warning from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that AI will affect around 40% of jobs worldwide.

However, it’s important to keep perspective and remember that with every technological advance comes a degree of uncertainty. And for every negative prediction about AI, there are many positive examples of how it can improve work and create new jobs. A case in point is the recent study by The Institute of the Future of Work (IFO), which showed that 78% of companies investing in AI have created new jobs as a result.

At Faculty, we believe the future of work is bright with AI. In particular, we see a huge opportunity for AI to make working lives better. Ask a teacher, a nurse, or an engineer what they enjoy least about their jobs, and usually it’s the paperwork and admin that get in the way of the things they’re best at – teaching children, caring for patients, and building and fixing things.  

This bureaucracy isn’t likely to go away any time soon, but across the sectors we work in, we’re seeing AI massively reduce the burden it creates on people in ways that free up their time and headspace to focus on what they enjoy.

Let’s take a look at what this looks like in practice:

Field force optimisation: Giving field engineers more time for problem-solving

Taking notes is a crucial part of a field engineer’s job, leading to many feeling swamped with paperwork. GenAI can help overcome this by enabling field engineers to transcribe notes, auto-fill forms, and identify safety-critical information using large language models (LLMs). In addition, it could be used to analyse data to identify safety trends and determine training needs for individual employees. The potential impact? Engineers have less paperwork to deal with, more time for problem-solving, and richer insights to improve their performance. This is one of the many ways GenAI could improve field operations in the future.

Learn more about GenAI’s potential in the world of field operations and maintenance here.

Call centre optimisation: Allowing agents to focus on higher-value tasks

Bank call centre employees deal with a lot of customer queries, many of which are routine and can take a long time, leaving them little time for more complicated queries. To tackle this challenge, we helped a leading bank implement AI to answer routine member questions efficiently. By successfully transferring these routine queries to AI, they were able to free up their team members to provide more detailed advice and guidance to customers. The result? A higher level of customer satisfaction, increased efficiency, and a happier call centre team.

Learn more about how we help leading financial services companies achieve more with AI

Hospital management: Optimising bed allocation to allow nurses to focus on patients

Trying to plan how many beds are needed and when is tricky and time-consuming in a busy hospital ward. There are many factors to consider, and things can change quickly. To address this challenge, we worked with the healthcare sector to apply AI to optimise the process of allocating beds. By using AI, nurses are able to make better decisions about beds and spend more time with patients instead of performing administrative tasks. The result? More efficient bed allocation, better patient care, and improved job satisfaction for nurses.

Learn how we helped the NHS improve patient flow and provide superior patient care patient outcomes.

Implementing AI with a human-first approach

If you are looking for ways to make AI more valuable and powerful for your people, consider these two key principles:

Build AI around your people's needs and they will follow

To maximise the impact of AI in your organisation, it is crucial to be deliberate and thoughtful about where and how you implement it. The goal should be to apply it to real problems where it can provide the most value to your team, such as removing administrative burdens, making smarter decisions, and achieving better results.

Keep in mind: Well-designed technology implementations that align with customer needs always win out over flashy proof-of-concepts that catch the eye but don’t deliver.

Invest in AI safety now for a brighter future

AI safety is on everyone’s radar right now, topping the agenda at the recent gathering of world leaders in Davos. To prioritise safety with AI, the goal should be to bake in ethical guidelines and principles into your systems from the outset. This will allow your people to use AI freely without exposing them or your business to unnecessary risks. Here are some things to consider in doing this:

• Create rules and boundaries for AI-informed decision-making

• Build the necessary checks and balances for detecting and mitigating bias

• Maintain control by keeping your people in the loop at all times

• Remember, safety is not a one-off activity; it is a continuous process

Embedding these practices early on will allow you to develop AI systems that benefit your team and your business and will help you avoid potential problems further down the road.

Getting started with a human-first AI approach

Everyone, from nurses to doctors, teachers to engineers, is faced with the same daily dilemma of spending too much time on tedious tasks or dealing with bureaucracy instead of focusing on the work they were hired to do and where they can make the most difference. 

We can solve this problem by using AI to handle repetitive and tedious tasks across a wide range of careers today. The payoff? More time for people to focus on higher value work, greater opportunities for businesses, and a more prosperous society overall. 

It’s time to let AI handle the tasks that hold us back and give people the freedom to do what they really enjoy. 

Are you ready to create an AI strategy that puts your people first and delivers the benefits you need (without the risks)? We can help.