Why leveraging GenAI to improve company culture and business productivity offers a way through the ‘trough of disillusionment’ 

Bob Graham is the Chief Market Development Officer at Ness Digital Engineering

Digital tools and tech innovations have been streamlining operations and enhancing productivity for years, but I believe it’s fair to say that GenAI has been viewed with much more skepticism and suspicion than other game-changing solutions. 

If 2022 was the year in which GenAI captured our collective attention and imagination, 2024 looks to be when the technology enters its ‘trough of disillusionment’ – phrase coined by Gartner in 1995 as part of its theory of hype cycles in tech.

On the one hand, grumblings about the shortcomings organizations faced when adopting GenAI are typical of any new technology, especially when it’s particularly transformative. However, this mindset has meant that many are stalling or holding back on developing and launching new GenAI initiatives.

Disillusion has been steadily growing for several reasons. Axios cites copyright infringement as AI’s major battlefield in 2024, one fray in which organizations are reticent to get involved is building tools that could fall foul of regulations. Further, there has been significant backlash from the creative industries that created the materials GenAI is trained on. This has led to individuals attempting to sabotage algorithms by embedding poison pixels, along with consumers boycotting companies that actively deploy AI in public-facing ways. 

At the same time, the benefits of Gen AI to business productivity, customer care and experience, and software engineering output cannot be denied. A recent survey by Ness-Zinnov showed a 48% reduction in task completion time for senior engineers when using GenAI. There is a reason more than 50% of companies today with over 5,000 team members use AI, with that number rising to 60% for businesses with more than 10,000 members, according to the MIT Sloan School of Management. 

Lidia Fonseca, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Pfizer, estimates that some of the early use cases of GenAI would help cut costs from $750M to $1B annually, “Leveraging technology is not just about staying ahead; it’s about reimagining how we can serve humanity.”

My company is a leading provider of software engineering services, which has given me a unique vantage point. While the advantages of GenAI are clear, business leaders’ concerns about its internal adoption are also valid. 2023 has shown that applying this tech haphazardly is not the best approach. 

Here are three ways GenAI can be adopted internally to maximize the advantages of the technology while minimizing negative disruption. 

To stem the next wave of the Great Resignation, change the narrative

Implemented correctly, GenAI has proven to provide a major boost to productivity, with the technology improving software engineering productivity by 70%, according to a Ness-Zinnov study. 

This boost is why, according to Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg, the insurance enteprise decided to roll out GenAI across the company, from underwriting to claims, marketing, analytics, customer interface, and customer service. 

However, for the successful adoption of GenAI enterprise-wide, it’s important that this is not the only narrative. 

Yes, organizations benefit very much through increased productivity and new product offerings. However, 2024 should be the year that the conversation in enterprises shifts to how GenAI can benefit the individual employees that form the backbone of any organization, and this shift can’t happen quickly enough. 

Employees feel so bogged down by work that far more people are considering resigning now than during the mass resignations we saw in 2022. A survey from PwC found that 28% said they were “very or extremely likely” to move on from their company in the face of rising workloads. A complementary study from Gallup found that half of U.S. employees (51%) are watching or actively seeking new job. 

GenAI can provide urgently needed support here, but the process needs to be managed carefully. 

The prevailing narrative for many specialist professionals is that leveraging AI, whether in writing code, creating videos, or anything in between, undermines the value of their own role. They fear they are essentially training their replacement as AI gets smarter with each use and might play a proactive role in becoming obsolete.

Leaders must offer clear reassurance to employees that GenAI is there to support them, not replace them. This could take the form of ongoing reports and regular communication on the benefits of leveraging GenAI in the workplace. 

For instance, my company, Ness, recently partnered with a management consulting firm, Zinnov, to analyze the impact of GenAI by studying the productivity data of over 100 software engineers to learn how these tools can best be used to support teams internally. 

Leverage GenAI to improve experience and customer (and team member) care 

Although fun tasks may not have been the use cases that sold investors on the promise of GenAI, our ability to form relationships with tech has been one of the more interesting developments to emerge. This also points to where future adoption is likely to head. 

Individuals talk to AI, say please and thank you, and feel comfortable collaborating with technology as teachers, mentors, and therapists. This highlights one reason why GenAI is a great fit for building a strong company culture, particularly when moving through a period of rapid growth or major change. 

It’s imperative to recognize the impact that culture can have on performance and commit to making it a priority. PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023 found that employees who felt that their priorities aligned with the organizational culture were more likely to report being satisfied with their job and advocate for the company. 

Yet, as companies scale, connectedness can rapidly dissipate, creating silos in the workforce. A clear lack of alignment and separation of priorities is an early sign that a company is outgrowing its culture. In addition, when firms are acquired the cultural shift often results in a wave of resignations from original employees – usually the same talent pool responsible for bringing the company to such a level of success. 

Although  addressing company culture alongside growth isn’t news, current strategies often fall short. Employees may be distrustful of speaking openly with HR for fear of repercussions. Meanwhile, team meetings designed to share ‘pain points’ are viewed as a waste of time if they don’t lead to meaningful change.  

GenAI offers a solution. Companies can tap into our willingness to engage with these intelligent chatbots to brainstorm ideas or share how change affects their daily work in a manner that feels more comfortable than traditional challenges. This approach is also likely to pay dividends with the growing class of Gen-Z workers who find traditional hierarchies archaic. 

For example, Santander, the leading banking enterprise from Spain, is using GenAI in an enhanced chatbot to automate customer service partially. The company also uses the technology internally in certain departments. At a panel at the Febraban event in São Paulo, Santander Brasil CEO Mário Leão said the financial institution has achieved at least a 20% gain in productivity using GenAI. “We hope to reach 40%, 50%, or maybe even more, as we saw in a recent [internal] implementation,” said Leão.

By creating and respecting these ‘safe spaces’, leaders can identify the root cause of organizational issues, repair these fractures before they cause top talent to jump ship, and develop a dynamic way to manage culture for the long term. 

To boost business and software engineering productivity, re-imagine training and development with GenAI

Leaders can also consider leveraging GenAI to transform how training and development is delivered across the organization. 

Training is often a key driver that both attracts new employees and retains talent. It’s also something that can have a major impact on overall company performance when it comes to how well employees understand policies and strategy. Unfortunately, training is often delivered using outdated training portals that fail to engage employees with the source material. 

GenAI can support HR and team leads when tasked with recreating these courses into dynamic presentations, interactive videos or even a conversational chatbot. 

What’s more, the speed and agility of GenAI means that these materials can be updated rapidly alongside company growth and rapidly tailored to deliver more specific messaging to specific teams or departments. 

Some companies are also taking a different approach to mentorship and training. For example, this past August, Universal Music Group and YouTube introduced their AI Incubator, which will jointly develop tools to support artists and entrepreneurs. UMG’s CIO Dan Moreales overseees the company’s global technology platforms and is developing new systems to expand its advanced analytics and data platforms.

Rethinking GenAI’s future 

The lessons we’ve learned from the rapid adoption of GenAI in the past couple of years are important. Although the expectations associated with this technology may differ from the current reality, this doesn’t mean that leaders can’t leverage it to unlock value. 

Company culture and business productivity are just two use cases that we will likely see moving forward as we find new ways to mitigate the challenges of GenAI without sacrificing the many benefits. 

This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company