UK business needs AI workers and fintech as well

The UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has published its quarterly labor market outlook, based on a survey of more than 2,000 senior human resources professionals. This shows around one in five employers are having difficulty attracting and hiring candidates, with staff retention seen as the biggest challenge next year. Like many other businesses, given that just one-in-ten employers expect their headcount to fall in the next quarter, while a third still expect it to increase. , it seems like fintech companies will also have to come up with some new strategies.

talent search

In the era of remote work and global talent, you might think it should be easy for fintech companies to hire the talent they need. But for employers, remote work can be both a blessing and a curse. Yes, that means you can hire across regions. That is wonderful. But on the other hand, this means that competitors can also hire across regions. Employers in Manchester used to compete with other employers in the north-west of England, but now they compete with employers in California and Kathmandu. And in any case, the circulation of these workers is decreasing. Earlier this month, the Bank of England said the UK workforce would be “permanently reduced” as a result of the pandemic, citing “increasing apathy” from workers.

Similarly, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research last week warned that businesses are “frustrated” with British workers as more than nine million working-age people drop out of the job market. CIPD Senior Labor Market Economist John Boys made a very good point for me. say that “A sustained return to growth requires a focus on improving productivity by investing in workplace skills and technology.”

He’s right. In order to get good things like raises and pensions, you have to improve your productivity. And when it comes to productivity, Brits are lagging behind. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), our productivity is around one-sixth lower than other G7 countries, and our hourly output growth between 1997 and 2007 was the second fastest in the G7. However, it was the second slowest between the financial crisis and the pandemic.

There are many reasons for this unfortunate situation, but a few stand out. In France (and to a lesser extent Germany), restrictions on working hours, industry wage bargaining and restrictions on dismissal make hiring workers more expensive and riskier than in the UK, resulting in French and German companies Increased investment in automation.

To further illustrate that point, here’s a rather instructive case study to illustrate how we Brits diverge from our continental cousins. It’s a car wash. Car washing is big business (around £500 million a year in commercial car washes), but instead of using a high-tech car wash in your local garage, many of us (myself included) are opting for the most inefficient means available. We pay people to use it and wash their cars. : hose, bucket, water, soap, sweat. At the hand car wash, Captures approximately half of the commercial car wash market In the UK (there are now 20,000 hand car washes), the number of car washes has been cut by more than half. We have succeeded in reversing the industrialization that has made us the seventh most prosperous country over the past several hundred years.

Economist commentator Duncan Weldon said:It’s more like humans are taking jobs from robots.”

Why are we talking about robots? Well, just like in manufacturing, let’s keep up in fintech. Financial services are key to our economy, so invest in AI to revolutionize productivity and create more value with fewer workers.

In fintech, you can start with the low-hanging fruit in the IT field, where early experiments have yielded very useful results. A good example is an experiment conducted by the Australian bank Westpac. They randomly divided his 60 software developers into four different groups. For three of the teams, he used his AI coding tools: MicrosoftMSFT, AmazonAMZN, and OpenAI, while the control group coded by hand. The results were clear. All AI tools have brought significant benefits in the following ways: Increase in average productivity by almost half Across all AI tools. This means turning 200 developers into his 300 developers.

You can then move on to other functions throughout your organization. In my own field of professional services, it is true that consultants are spread across all skills. Big benefits of AI augmentationthose who fall below the average performance standard will see a 43% increase compared to their own score, and those above it will see a 17% increase.

However, please remember ChatGPT is bullshit. If you are a good consultant and know what the answer is to your client’s problem, AI will increase your productivity. But if you don’t know the answer, you won’t be able to spot the illusion and you’ll be much more likely to come up with the wrong answer. This suggests that training your employees to use AI properly should be a priority, as they will be using his AI whether you want to or not. Masu.

don’t panic

Given the question of productivity, it is natural to ask whether AI tools such as ChatGPT will make experts obsolete or complement their skills and improve productivity. I am firmly of the latter opinion. There are many boring tasks that are beyond the scope of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) but still within the capabilities of AI. Free your workers to do useful work!

The researchers conducted an experiment A study that recruited college-educated professionals found that participants assigned to use ChatGPT were more productive, efficient, and enjoyed their tasks more. Similar to the aforementioned consultant, participants with weaker skills benefited the most from her ChatGPT. This has important policy implications for efforts to improve overall workforce productivity.

Fintech is no different from any other sector and we need to be fully committed to this. We need to take advantage of the opportunity to bring AI into our daily work. As Professor Scott Galloway rightly paraphrased the whole complex debate about workers and jobs: Instead of losing your job to AI, you’ll be losing your job to someone who can use AI better than you..

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