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Eimear Gunn of Kyndryl tells SiliconRepublic.com how workers can keep up as tech continues to advance and why automation, while helpful, is not a ‘silver bullet’.
Last year, an OECD report showed that despite having significantly higher levels of tertiary degree holders, Ireland is falling behind some worthy EU competitors – such as Sweden and Finland – in terms of preparedness for the dynamic world of work.
As workplaces become increasingly digital and new technologies such as artificial intelligence and advanced automation become more pervasive, how can workers keep up with the pace of change and reinstate their relevance in the workplace?
Eimear Gunn says the answer lies in “reviewing and rewiring” the process of introducing new technologies into the workplace to ensure the process is built with workers in mind.
“As the pace of technical development advances, those that are unprepared for changes in the world of work will inevitably be left behind,” explains Gunn, who is the digital workplace services practice leader for Ireland and the UK at Kyndryl.
“While technological change can help organisations drive productivity and overcome skills shortages, it also means that many people will have to upskill in their existing roles or develop new skills for new roles to keep pace.
“If workers are struggling to keep up with digital advances, however, introducing new technologies into the mix can have the reverse effect, widening the skills gap and alienating the workforce.”
AI will be baked into core services
Ever since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT to the world, there has been a renewed and sustained interest in AI from both consumer and tech companies with the capability to develop it. The technology is already being integrated into workflows, leading in most cases to reduced manual work, increased accuracy and greater scalability.
“Going forward, AI will be baked into all core services, from accounting through to predictive analytics, sales and marketing and even proactive maintenance, where AI can be used to identify potential equipment failures before they happen,” Gunn goes on.
“Successful AI implementations should be seamless and transparent yet add value and boost employee productivity and effectiveness by, for example, dynamically adapting workflows to remove unnecessary steps and automating functions that do not need human intervention.
“This reduces the overhead of repeatable tasks and enables workers to focus their efforts on higher value-add activities.”
Gunn gives the example of her own company, which has developed a generative AI-powered orchestration technology called Kyndryl Workflow Orchestration – which is designed to improve how services are provided to customers and to help them provide their own services.
“The technology is a way to put low-code/no-code platforms to use for customers to extract more business value than IT value. It helps to level the playing field and put the power of transformation into the hands of the workforce.”
Automation is not a ‘silver bullet’
But the increasing prevalence of AI is not the only challenge workers face. Other problems such as lack of skills, inefficient workplace practices and just plain burnout can lead to major errors such as data leaks. So is more automation the answer?
According to Gunn, while automation can certainly play a role in assuaging some of these problems, it is by no means a “silver bullet”.
“Redefining the processes to align with a new modern workplace will in itself simplify the workflows, eliminate unnecessary steps and simplify the work, which in turn will reduce errors,” she explains.
“Marketing and data analytics provider Kantar is a prime example of successful digital workplace transformation. Kantar was relying on legacy infrastructure that was limiting its ability to innovate and offer quality service.”
After being acquired and spinning off as an independent company, Gunn says Kantar partnered with Kyndryl to modernise the digital workplace environment and capabilities for more than 26,000 employees in 90 regions.
“The project involved migrating Kantar’s digital estate to the cloud, advancing technology across its infrastructure to fully predictive management, and creating an ‘evergreen’ approach for infrastructure services products to avoid future technical limitations.”
As the volume of data created by organisations continues to increase exponentially, Gunn argues that the challenge of protecting that data also increases.
“Automation and AI can help analyse both structured and unstructured data to identify and implement robust policies that restrict access to legitimate users – not only to allow the right people to access data, but also the systems and applications that have a legitimate need. As autonomous systems become increasingly prevalent, having such automated controls becomes even more important.”
Simplifying workflow
Of course, Kyndryl’s Workflow Orchestration isn’t the only automation tool people can use.
Gunn says that organisations looking to leverage low-code/no-code tools will often be able to make use of existing technologies such as Microsoft Power Platform and ServiceNow as well.
“To boost productivity overall, organisations should look to deploy generative AI tools and technologies to automatically create content, summarise complex interactions and automate repeatable process flows with autonomous decision-making,” she explains.
“Whether this be Microsoft Copilot for end-user workflows, or technologies like OpenAI, Bedrock or Vertex for embedded AI use-cases.
“I love that the new [Kyndryl] Workflow Orchestration tool can be adapted to the organisation’s needs. It compliments the client’s technology choices and can be applied across the business as needed.”
Gunn said that her team has taken all of the work they’ve done on the Workforce Orchestration services for both Kyndryl and its customers and have turned them into a “library of reusable assets”.
“Some of these assets have generative AI embedded into them, whereas some are more traditional, task-orientated automations,” she says.
“The idea behind this is that we can start to compose the assets into future use cases, creating a library of modules that we can delve into to create new workflows that are simple to set up and quick to add value.”
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