The fear of AI taking over human jobs no longer prevails. Research proves that Augmentation technologies emphasize the need for human-in-the-loop AI to maximize the benefits of AI innovations. Augmented working helps redefine and enhance the way we work, driving growth with productive and innovative work methods.
From Process-Driven to Human-Machine Collaboration
The first wave emphasized streamlining manufacturing activities with a process-driven approach. The second wave gave impetus to the automation of repetitive processes by minimizing human intervention. In the third wave, a human and machine intelligence collaboration is envisioned for the Augmented Workforce. In this approach, collaborative bots (cobots) and Human workers act together to drive business activities.
Industries witnessed a three-wave phenomenon before landing at the current stage of Human-Machine collaboration for enhancing productivity and better employee, and customer satisfaction.
According to the World Economic Forum’s recent statistics around 85 million jobs will be disrupted globally between 2020 to 2025 and it will make way for 97 million new job roles. This new era belongs to an augmented workforce contributing to the boost in productivity with exponential growth in business values.
This blog answers a series of questions—
What is Augmentation?
What is an Augmented Workforce?
How does an Augmented Workforce help in bridging the talent gap?
What are the benefits of implementing an Augmented Connected Workforce?
And finally put forth a three-phase approach to implement an Augmented Workforce along with three specific scenarios highlighting the advantages and limitations of Augmentation.
What is Augmentation: A Three-Layered Description
let’s try to understand Augmentation using a three-layered approach. The innermost layer or core represents what people can do with their natural abilities. The next layer indicates what people can accomplish with the help of augmented technologies. And the outermost layer indicates what exactly people like to do. People-centric characteristics drive the entire process of Augmentation.
In a nutshell, Augmentation provides an integrated and assistive environment for human workers to perform specialized tasks with utmost care and precision.
Today it is easier to realize an Augmented Workforce as Human resources can readily access real-world data from machines and enable the machines to operate with precision through informed decisions.
Salient Augmentation Technologies
Augmentation technologies drive how organizations empower the human workforce to be productive and relaxed at the workplace. Here are some prominent Augmented Technology examples:
| Augmentation Technology Name | Description |
| Augmented Reality (AR) | With AR digital visual, audio, and other stimuli are used to enhance the physical world experience. |
| Virtual Reality (VR) | VR provides a three-dimensional immersive image using computer technology. |
| Mixed Reality | An environment where virtual and real elements coexist and interact is Mixed Reality. |
| Computer Vision | It is a subdomain of Artificial intelligence in which systems derive inputs from videos, images, and other visual inputs. |
| Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) | An industrial environment is driven by numerous sensors and other connected devices and machinery. |
| Wearables | Embedded electronic gadgets that can be worn in the form of accessories like goggles. |
| Exoskeletons | External anatomical feature (artificial one) that helps the human workforce to carry out various tasks in manufacturing setup. |
| Collaborative Bots (cobots) | Robots with embedded intelligence can act upon inputs provided by human operators. |
How Augmented Workforce Helps Bridge the Talent Gap
Augmented workforce is helping manufacturing, IT, Healthcare, and many other industries to address labor shortages. In the manufacturing industry AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) have helped the human workforce to work alongside intelligent machines seamlessly to alleviate labor shortages. In the IT sector software developers are leveraging the benefits of Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini AI to speed up the coding process. A recent Forbes article highlights that programmers using AI can code 126% more projects per week. This development offers them the privilege to focus on strategic and innovative roles like architecture design, integration, and product management.
With Generative AI tools entering the mainstream democratization of software coding is witnessed on a bigger scale. Non-coders in different businesses are also contributing to the software development activity and we are witnessing a substantial increase in the contribution from the citizen developer community.
Healthcare professionals are utilizing RPA tools to minimize administrative tasks and streamline document management. RPA bots ease the activity of maintaining patient data procured from various formats, and also claim processing can be streamlined with these RPA bots, Improving overall patient experience.
Fostering Augmented Workforce – Key Steps
- Nurturing a culture of continuous learning: Upskilling and Reskilling the workforce to decrease the turnover rate is vital for modern-day businesses to thrive. Moreover, the traditional approach of hiring people for a specific task based on their existing skill sets is proving to be less effective in the modern workplace. Augmentation Technologies like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality can be leveraged to train employees on soft skills, leadership skills, and conflict resolution abilities.
- Adopting the right technologies: Organizations can adopt relevant Augmented Technologies to suit their organizational goals. For instance, if your organization is keen on enhancing the speed and quality of customer support activities, building AI chatbots can be the right answer. If your organization is eager to revamp the employee training activities using AI tools you can rely on AI-enabled video learning platforms.
- Investing in AI: According to Forrester by 2030, an annual expenditure of 79 billion USD will be used by organizations to create specialized applications aimed at enhancing automation and productivity, in domains like security, healthcare, and content marketing. Such investments are bound to create a huge talent pool and opportunities for organizations.
A PwC Research says in the long run, these types of investments can boost economic growth, with an estimated contribution of 15.7 trillion USD to the global economy by 2030.
Benefits of Augmented Technologies and Use Cases
Deploying Massively Scalable Employee Training Programs
Augmented technologies help organizations deliver massively scalable employee training programs. For instance, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality training, mobile learning, or smart workstations help organizations to conduct on-the-job and off-the-job learning.
According to World Economic Forum findings a pioneer in automotive supply Aptiv with 175,000 employees had a critical mission of training 135,000 employees in the manufacturing section in lean-production methods.
The organization roped in Gemba’s immersive learning as well as state-of-the-art hardware (Oculus Quest 2, Microsoft HoloLens 2), enabled Aptiv to deliver training at a much higher depth and breadth, with an 80% higher efficiency than real-world instructor-based training.
Aptiv, otherwise required 400 Plus skilled trainers to accomplish this upskilling task.
Enabling Organizations to Afford Accessible and Inclusive Work Environments
With Augmentation Technologies organizations can minimize or even nullify the entry barriers to jobs on a global scale. Often employees find it difficult to comprehend the instructions provided in formal language. Augmentation technology-based tools can enhance the range of tasks and jobs accessible to new employees, by providing flexibility, productivity, and equity, and enabling the integration of people with disabilities in shop-floor activities.
Mariasteen an NGO located in Belgium had a massive challenge of providing right access to 750 plus disadvantaged employees to carry out their tasks without hindrance. They collaborated with an organization called LightGuide which provided workstations with projection-based AR to provide accessible work instructions. In this way, the organization was able to provide a more inclusive work environment thus increasing employees’ well-being and improving their safety.
Improving Safety at Work Environment
Working in a manufacturing setup is often physically demanding. Employees must put in laborious physical hours and do a lot of heavy lifting. Augmentation Technologies like Collaborative Bots and Exoskeletons enable the human workforce to carry out tasks with more comfort.
A typical example is DB Schenker a global logistics organization that took the initiative to create a more ergonomic and worker-friendly environment for their workers. As part of this initiative, they tied up with Ottobock Bionic Exoskeletons and MotionMiners. Along with them, they deployed exoskeletons capable of lifting 23 metric tons per employee per working week. Thus, ensuring workers a better work environment.
Improving Industrial Operation Efficiency
Augmented Technologies provide vivid opportunities to enhance operational efficiency in Industrial setups. It helps in machine diagnostics, performance inspection, data capture, and information management through wearables, smart devices, decision-making, and support systems.
Siemens, a global industrial manufacturer, has come up with an intelligent, wearable human-to-X communication and coordination application for smartwatches. The organization did not want to compromise its cybersecurity policies and standards to come up with in-house applications. The major challenge was to exclude any external services and operate without the Internet. The purpose of such a system was to facilitate workers to contact their colleagues who can best support them without having to notify the managers or supervisors.
Hone Innovation Mindset to Develop New Solutions
Organizations implementing Augmented Technologies such as intelligent decision-making systems, connected worker platforms, smart workstations, and computer vision to capture the workflow processes at manufacturing floors often help in building better and innovative solutions that are customized.
Schneider Electric a multinational pioneer in energy, automation, and digital solutions took the initiative to further improve its operations. To accomplish this, it developed an augmented digital system for capturing the ideas originating from employees on shop floors.
This process has benefited the organization in quantifying the resulting gains in efficiency, quality, ergonomics, and safety.
Supporting Human Connection and Collaboration, Overcoming Travel Restrictions
Remote working with better collaboration and cooperation can be achieved with AR and VR technologies. Such technologies enable organizations for remote assistance, ad hoc expert feedback, or spatial annotations.
Schaeffler a global automotive and industrial supply pioneer with 75 plants worldwide with its aim to improve operations, communication, and collaboration embraced Augmented Technologies to integrate remote works to collaborate and contribute across the globe.
Challenges in Implementing Augmentation at Workplace and Viable Solutions
Nurturing an Augmented Workforce can be a fascinating and rewarding initiative for organizations. At the same time, it comes with various challenges. Here are the salient ones:
Cost and Integration Challenge:
Implementing AR and AI technologies can be expensive as it requires substantial initial investment in hardware and software. It also incurs ongoing training, maintenance, and custom development costs. Moreover, Integrating AR and AI with existing systems might incur additional infrastructure set-up costs.
The Solution:
- Initiate with Small Prototypes: The best solution to handle cost and integration challenges is to start small by implementing AR and AI technologies in a single department. Execute a small prototype and later integrate projects from different departments before full-scale rollout.
- Explore Cost-Effective Options: Look out for cloud-based solutions that are available on a subscription basis (Pay as You Go offerings) to minimize upfront costs. Research extensively for vendors who offer pre-built solutions that are aptly suited to your organization’s requirements.
- Invest in Upskilling: You can train your internal human resources so that over-reliance on external consultants for technology integration can be minimized or even eliminated.
Change Management and Adoption:
Your current workforce might be reluctant to accept the changes in technology.
The Solution:
- Bring transparency in the system by educating internal stakeholders on the advantages of embracing change and also create a conducive environment for learning and adaptation. Rigorously roll out training programs to upskill the staff. In a nutshell, Transparent communication, Focus on upskilling, and rolling out pilot programs for employee involvement are key factors to overcome this challenge.
Data Security and Privacy:
Implementing Augmented solutions requires the collection of real-time data and organizations have to build robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data and ensure privacy and compliance adherence.
The Solution:
- Prioritize Cybersecurity: Implement robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive data. This includes data encryption, access control protocols, and regular security audits.
- Comply with Regulations: Ensure your data collection and processing practices comply with relevant privacy regulations like GDPR or CCPA.
- Transparency with Data Use: Be transparent with employees about what data is being collected, how it’s being used, and how their privacy is protected.
Ethical Considerations:
- AI algorithms are always prone to biases if they are not properly trained and designed. Factual errors or racial discrimination can make the entire system unreliable in areas like performance evaluation or job selection.
- The Solution:
- Transparency in AI Development: Organizations must ensure that data collection is accomplished from diverse dataset sources while training the AI models to avoid biases. Regular and rigorous auditing of the algorithms also plays a crucial role.
- Emphasize the Role of Human-Machine Collaboration: Take the workforce into confidence and educate them that AI and AR technologies are meant to improve Human and Machine Collaboration and not a replacement for human resources.
- Foster an Ethical Framework: Ensure to prioritize fairness, transparency, and human well-being are key pillars of your organization’s Augmented Technology philosophy.
Augmented Workforce: A Three-Phase Implementation
Practitioners have proposed a three-phase approach for implementing an Augmented Workforce.
The concept phase:
The conceptualization phase is divided into two sub-parts. Technology-driven approach and Value-driven approach. In the technology-driven approach, organizations explore the feasibility of using emerging technologies and assess how well they fit into their existing organization. Finally, it integrates the technology with workflows, and scales it up in the production process.
The value-driven approach weighs the benefits and disadvantages of embracing the technology from the perspective of the value it generates. It also provides an opportunity to exploit off-the-shelf technologies to minimize the time taken to enter the scaling phase from the pilot phase.
The pilot phase
The second phase focuses on assessing the level to which the prototype use case is selected, attempting to provide a basis to succeed in the real world. It also tries to find out whether the technology performs as anticipated. Though a pilot is typically conducted at a small scale, it needs to be borne in mind that not all the anticipated features of a full-scale solution can be put into production..
The scaling phase
In the scaling phase, the focus shifts from assessing the prototypes to the final execution and evaluation of a strategy. During this phase, the technology is put into action for multiple use cases and in multiple application scenarios. These use cases will be intensively context-specific, and some of the learning from the pilot phase will not be applicable in all situations.
Boon or Bane?
Finally, to conclude if we are asked the question, Is Augmented Technologies and AI technologies a boon or a bane? A straightforward answer can be given through the following three scenarios:
Scenario 1: AI augments work and boosts productivity.
AI technologies undoubtedly help organizations to boost productivity and relieve human expertise from working on routine repetitive tasks and focus on highly cognitive skills like strategy making and designing.
Scenario 2: Generative AI creates a flood of cheap content that drives out human creatives.
What we fear is that Generative AI and other AI technologies may put the human workforce out of the equation. As AI can scale rapidly and deliver tasks at a cheaper cost, In some domain’s human workforce fears loss of jobs.
Scenario 3: Human-made creative work demands a premium.
The counterargument to Scenario 2 is more and more Generative AI content and AI-made projects are available, and human-created content is available at premium costs. This has created a huge demand for human expertise in certain domains.
