In a bid to cut costs by automating various job roles with Artificial Intelligence, technology company IBM decided to cut off nearly 8,000 employees from its workforce, most of whom were from its HR division.
The firm then installed an AI-powered digital HR employee, named AskHR, capable of handling most regular HR duties, such as queries, leave approvals and documentation, but was still unable to take on nuanced duties that required subjectivity, empathy and judgement.
This gap created operational issues, which made it necessary for the company to begin hiring for all the positions that had been let go. The company has been doing so quietly over the years, despite reporting a net increase in jobs related to the management of AskHR.
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“While we have done a huge amount of work inside IBM on leveraging AI and automation on certain enterprise workflows, our total employment has actually gone up, because what it does is it gives you more investment to put into other areas,” CEO Arvind Krishna said, as per a Wall Street Journal report.
Those “critical thinking” focused domains—which include software engineering, sales and marketing—involve people performing tasks that “face up or against other humans, as opposed to just doing rote process work”.
Yet, the company, that has essentially seen a reorganisation in its workforce—rather than an intended reduction—continues to add to its workforce, so as to address organisational gaps and productivity, emphasising the need for balanced AI integration.
IBM also launched services that allow businesses to build their own AI agents, earlier this month, in a bid to assist companies with AI integration.