DailyPost 3034
MANAGING HYBRID WORKFORCE (Humans & AI Agents)
Covid made online work / work from home / work from anywhere a compulsion for the businesses and for the world to remain afloat. The tech workforce got used to it and even after the end of the pandemic they wanted to continue with it, given the conveniences it provided. It was presumed by the younger tech workforce that work from home does come in the way of output and quality. Nonetheless, this was not the thought process of the management and senior most employees and hence a hybrid mode was worked out in different combinations, depending on the industry, nature of job, sector, organisational culture, delivery mechanism et al.
The management model of corporate IT enterprises were not able to deal with it efficiently and now too are struggling with it. The simple solution is to come back to the office on all working days. It is easier said than done. No efficient management / business model has been worked on and hence adhocism rules the roost, where a clear system of work should have emanated by now. While this still remains in a flux, the managers, big and small and the company management will have to deal with a totally different workforce reality, enabled by AI, in 2025 itself.
From hybrid work, the transformation of work ahead is truly mind boggling. This is termed a hybrid work. How did we reach here and what does it mean? All of us by now have become aware of the strides that AI has made in the last two years and how it is getting integrated in all the offerings the multinational IT behemoths are providing. The current stage of AI is known as the generative AI and it is being used for generic work and it still has to get deep into enterprises, real domain, corporate departments and specialisations. Same would be applicable to other types of organisations too.
To make it a reality, the future development trajectory of AI is termed as Agentic AI. From information and LLM solutions, the AI agent will deliver the work end to end. It would be an AI specialised tool pre-trained on that area of domain and specialisation. It is an AI enabled domain basket of uses, where tasks can be handled in a very short period of time. AI agents can also work in tandem based on the nature of collaboration required. So the future of work would include a large number of AI agents working in an organisation. The workforce thus would compromise AI Agents and the human workforce. How would the work be divided or what is the nature of value add and expertise the humans will bring to the table. The managers and management have to figure it out sooner than later in their own interest. What would be the salary and other compensations and how does work and performance be evaluated? The business and the management model for the AI age and hybrid work has to be evolved at the earliest, if we want to reap the huge benefits of the AI revolution.
WE NEED PROFESSIONAL MANAGERS TO MANAGE HYBRID TEAMS OF THE AI AGE, A TOTALLY DIFFERENT REALITY.
Sanjay Sahay