Month: February 2024

Exploring differences in work preferences between generations, how to recruit top talent and how to ensure organizations can embed a work culture across the workforce.

It has been a year since the launch of ChatGPT, a chatbot that became a global phenomenon overnight, ushering in an era of rapid technological innovation driven by generative AI. The series of AI advancements that followed unlocked a global competition for AI dominance and forced governments, businesses, and consumers to rethink what our world will look like in the era of generative AI.

This technology will have a profound impact on the future of work. While generative AI offers great potential to accelerate productivity and innovation, it poses new challenges to business leaders. For instance, how do organizations prepare their workforce for a future where humans and AI work together to make critical decisions and complete complex tasks? How can they adopt generative AI safely across the business? How do they make sure that no one is left behind?

Business leaders and front-line workers have different views of AI

One concern related to generative AI is that it will create new knowledge divides within organizations. Recent data from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) suggests that these divisions are most conspicuous at the hierarchical layers of the business. According to the research, 80% of leaders use generative AI regularly, versus just 20% of frontline employees. Business leaders also tend to be more optimistic about the potential of the technology, with 62% of senior decision-makers expressing this sentiment compared to 42% of frontline employees.

These disparities in attitudes towards AI could align with people’s understanding of the technology. The research indicates that 44% of leaders have received training on generative AI to sharpen their skills and stay relevant, while only 14% of frontline employees have received similar training. Familiarity with the technology, or lack thereof, seems to be causing further ruptures across the different generations within the workforce. Organizations must act quickly to bridge the generational divide.

Generational differences in AI use in the workplace are another area of concern, with research showing that over half of workers above 35 are not using AI in the workplace, while 71% of younger employees are utilizing these tools. This could create a rift between generations, leaving behind older workers who don’t have a good grasp of the technology. However, one of the most transformative attributes of generative AI is that it is very user-friendly, meaning new users can easily learn to work with the technology and use it to enhance their productivity and performance.

Earlier this year, researchers from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) conducted the world’s first large-scale empirical study of the impact of generative AI on workers. The data showed that lower-skilled workers saw the biggest increase in productivity because of generative AI. This early data on the impact of the technology indicates that generative AI offers huge opportunities for organizations to improve productivity and level the playing field for all employees by freeing up more time for them to focus on more meaningful work. But to benefit from this, businesses must act quickly to bridge the AI divide and equip all employees with the right skills to make the most of generative AI.

Building a safe AI environment and fostering an AI-friendly culture

To realize the full benefits of generative AI, business leaders must empower everyone within their workforce to use the technology safely and effectively. This means building a culture of knowledge, understanding and responsibility towards AI. Before rolling out formal training, businesses should consider how they can protect their intellectual property and their employees from the risks associated with generative AI.

Allowing wide use of public AI applications such as ChatGPT comes with significant risks as all data fed into their algorithms is publicly accessible, which can expose sensitive customer data and business trade secrets to the prying eyes of malicious actors or your competitors. To mitigate those risks, organizations should consider a private AI model, which means all the data, AI algorithms, and IT infrastructure are fully controlled within the business.

In this scenario, AI models are trained exclusively on data the organization owns or has access to. Training data in a private AI environment allows the organization to gain more control over the data and the outcome. By going private, AI models remain with the organization. Therefore, unique algorithms and trade secrets remain protected for competitive advantage. This approach creates a safer environment where employees can use generative AI without exposing their organization to security risks. Most importantly, this protects data privacy of employees, customers, and business partners.

Once you have created a safe AI environment, it is essential to establish clear policies and guidelines for its use across the business and roll out a comprehensive training program that touches every part of your organization, tailored to different technical skills and levels of experience. This strategy will enable you to empower your workforce to make the most of AI and create an AI-friendly culture that nurtures a deeper understanding of the technology and an exponential increase of its benefits for the business.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro’s Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

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Meta Quest Plus is getting a rotating catalogue of 12 VR apps, and new subscribers will get $25 / £25 free store credit, too.

Meta Quest 3 and Oculus Quest 2 owners with a Meta Quest Plus subscription are about to get a lot more bang for their buck as the program is getting a Netflix-style catalogue of rotating software.

Previously, Quest Plus owners got two free games a month that they could keep and use for as long as they were subscribed – the software for March 2024 is shooter Contractors and immersive puzzler Shadow Point. Now, on top of those two free VR apps they’ll also get access to a rotating library of other free titles they can enjoy while they’re available at no extra cost.

The current selection of 12 joining the service in March 2024 includes some excellent sports apps in The Climb and Sports Scramble, as well as some of my favorite VR games with Walkabout Mini Golf and Until You Fall.

The first 12 Meta Quest Plus catalogue titles (Image credit: Meta)

If the deal wasn’t sweet enough for you already there’s an extra offer available for people who buy an annual Meta Quest Plus subscription before May 31, 2024 – this includes people who buy new subscriptions, but also existing users who upgrade from a monthly Quest Plus plan.

That’s because you’ll not only get the best-value Meta Quest Plus subscription – paying just $59.99 / £59.99 a year instead of the $95.88 / £95.88 it’d cost by paying $7.99 / £7.99 monthly – but you’ll also get $25 / £25 store credit to buy any Quest game or app you want.

Unlike the Meta Quest Plus software, you won’t lose access to it when you unsubscribe.

It’s unclear how long apps will be available in the rotating catalogue – if they’ll all change monthly, or if it depends on the specific title title. We also don’t know if you’ll get a discount on the software if you choose to buy it before it leaves (which is a benefit offered by other similar services). 

At the very least, this catalogue will offer you an extended demo for any games and apps you’re interested in – informing you if it’s worth buying once it’s gone, or not. You might even manage to finish a whole single-player adventure before spending a dime (ignoring the subscription cost).

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Iffi Wahla, CEO and Co-Founder of global hiring platform Edge, discusses the best way to structure a remote team.

Since the war in Ukraine started the world has faced a prolonged period of economic uncertainty. Many thought leaders argued that this turmoil would reverse the hybrid and remote working models that became mainstream during the pandemic. The logic being that senior business leaders were generally unconvinced that remote workers were as engaged and productive as their in office counterparts. Similarly, pressure to protect their positions would compel more people to return to the office to show face and directly engage with their managers. 

As it happened, there was no great remote working reversal. There are simply too many benefits for employers and employees alike. It is now pretty clear that this new way of working is here to stay. However, the speed of the transition, and the belief in some quarters that it was only temporary, means that many organizations have failed to fully optimize their remote working structures. The start of a new year provides a great opportunity to fully explore all the options available and determine what strategy will generate the greatest commercial benefit and quality of working life for your team.

Hire global, think local

One of the greatest benefits of a hybrid or fully remote working model is that it enables you to recruit from an incredibly large pool of talent. A business is no longer constrained by the available expertise in its local area or even country. Thanks to the plethora of communication platforms, engagement and monitoring tools now available, any company – no matter its size – can easily manage team members across the world. This is especially important given the high demand and low availability of many technical skills in western nations. There are many countries in the subcontinent, Africa and South America that have a deep, cost-effective reserve of untapped talent.

Of course, many startups have for years have taken advantage of this dynamic by situating development or data teams in places such as eastern Europe. The key difference is that I am not talking about hiring a whole team in one country to act as a satellite office. Instead, it’s about hiring the best individuals from anywhere in the world right across your organization.

There are plenty of companies that can help to identify and, in some cases, support management of these team members on your behalf. Nevertheless, one of the most important lessons for building a global, remote workforce is to prioritize instilling your local company culture. Team members should be onboarded, engaged with, managed and treated exactly the same – no matter where they are.

Hybrid working – hybrid hiring

The pandemic didn’t just upended where people worked – it changed when and how much people work too. In times gone by, part-time workers were relatively rare, usually older employees and more often than not considered a real member of the team. Now, so many more people, of every age and experience are varying their working hours and the nature of their employment contracts. There has been a surge in freelance and self-employed – especially within the tech sector. This creates an excellent opportunity for businesses to consider a blended model for their workforce. A team can be structured between part-timers, consultants, and project-based freelancers – working in office, remotely or a mix of both.

Consider do you actually need any full-time directly employed team members? Sounds crazy, but there’s no hard and fast rule that you actually do. A blended team can be ultra-flexible, cost and time efficient to build and manage, and enable you to benefit from a much broader base of expertise. If you treat everyone equally and instil your company values and culture there is no reason why this type of team cannot have the loyalty, motivation and ethos of its traditional alternative.

Another benefit of having an open mind is that it can really help to diversify your team and give you access to a lot of high value talent for which a full-time gig is simply impractical – women with young families. It’s no secret that a major cause of the gender gap in tech is its failure to adequately accommodate this group.

More hubs less spokes

A lot of business owners I speak to that run hybrid working models tend to think about their organization in terms of a core, local – mostly full-time team – and branches of remote workers. Generally speaking, senior leadership is situated in the core and more junior members or specialist workers put the ‘hybrid’ in the business. While this has obvious advantages of enabling executives to closely collaborate and be accountable to one another – as well as giving a business its ‘home’ – there’s no real reason why this structure should also be subject to reexamination and disruption. After all, if your developers can work together across continents why can’t your senior managers?

Dispersing the top of your team has the benefit of creating multiple management focal points, across timezones from which your business can operate. As mentioned above, it also enables you to pull from a bigger pool of talent for less cost. It can be daunting for a CEO or founder to think that their right and left hand men and women are now hundreds of miles away but if you’re truly thinking about what will be a fully optimized model for your business, you need to consider every option.

Practical steps

Creating a fully optimized workforce strategy doesn’t mean throwing out everything and starting again. A safer, less disruptive approach is to create a plan with achievable, incremental steps that evolves your team into a structure and format that best suits your current and future needs. To do this, consider the following:

Audit your team’s expertise and management structure to determine potential cost-efficiencies, skill gaps, single points of failure and bottlenecks. Align this with your commercial strategy and client feedback.

Review your tech stack to identify whether you have the tools and processes that fully enable remote and hybrid working. Pay particular attention to employee onboarding, engagement, accountability and productivity.

Consult with your team – what is the optimum working model for each employee. Consider putting every option on the table – transitioning to consulting, part-time, fully remote etc..

Begin experimenting with new working practices. For example, a pilot project where administrative and other back office functions are executed by virtual workers can be a safe way to get started.

Talk to businesses that offer remote working recruitment support to get a better idea of the talent out there and how you could being hiring from different countries.

Review, analyze and optimize – keep track of the impact of your new structure as you make changes and don’t be afraid to change course if the results don’t meet your expectations. Constant monitoring can identify weak points such as an incomplete onboarding process or the need to enhance management practices.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro’s Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

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