Experts from Accenture, BearingPoint and Workhuman discuss how AI and automation can positively impact working life.
For many professionals artificial intelligence (AI) and automation have the power to transform day-to-day work. David Burke, a senior director of global talent acquisition and the employer brand at Workhuman explained that this transformation is effective not because it is ‘futuristic’ but because it meets the needs of an evolving workforce.
“It’s much more practical than that,” he told SiliconRepublic.com. “We’re using AI across our internal systems to reduce manual work, improve decision-making and help teams move faster. The goal isn’t to replace roles, it’s to remove friction.
“In areas like hiring, performance enablement and cross-functional collaboration, automation is taking care of the repeatable tasks and surfacing better data. That means our teams spend less time chasing information or managing processes and more time solving problems and focusing on work that actually moves the business forward.”
This is a viewpoint shared by Wendy Walsh, a talent and organisation lead at Accenture, who noted that AI and automation have not only altered the tools she uses in the workplace, but have actually changed how she personally “shows up at work”.
She said: “On a very practical level, I use AI every single day to think better. I use it to explore ideas, challenge my own assumptions, shape early thinking and get to a stronger point of view before anything ever becomes a document. For me, it’s less about productivity shortcuts and much more about cognitive support.”
Walsh added: “It helps me move faster to insight and clarity, not simply faster to output. The biggest difference is that my time has shifted away from preparing information and towards interpreting it.”
For BearingPoint’s Barry Haycock, who is a senior manager of data analytics and AI, when it comes to the topic of AI and automation, one subject that has dominated the conversation is agentic AI. He explained, he has noticed in the last 12 months or so, more and more people are choosing to use AI as an augmentation tool as opposed to automation.
He said: “In my personal day to day, I use AI to draft code I plan to write, or as a sounding board to discuss and tease out ideas before I start developing a slide deck or a document.
“In many areas, people can use AI to perform a detailed search, for example of in-house documents, or to summarise their upcoming week and help them plan their goals. I find it useful too for flagging upcoming deadlines and prioritising them every Monday.”
For Walsh, Burke and Haycock, amid the evolution brought about by the proliferation of advanced technologies and processes in the working ecosystem, comes the need for a modern upskilling strategy.
New day, new challenges
For Walsh, soft skills have grown in importance, with AI acting as a core reason why. She said: “As AI becomes part of everyday work, the qualities that really differentiate people are human ones. Skills in AI and data are important and technological literacy will increasingly be expected of everyone. But they’re not enough on their own.
“Looking ahead to 2030, many of the fastest-growing core skills are deeply human. AI can analyse, generate and optimise at incredible speed. But it can’t build trust. It can’t create belonging.
“It can’t decide what matters most in a moment of uncertainty. Technology is a powerful enabler, but it still needs people to shape it, question it and use it with purpose. The organisations that thrive will be those that invest just as seriously in human capability as they do in AI.”
Haycock said that in software development, MLOps and AIOps roles, business analytics is becoming the most important skill. He explained that, while the latest frontier AI models are excellent at coding or creating a script that a developer might need, the developer really needs to explain what’s required clearly.
He said: “This is traditionally considered a soft skill and in times gone by a developer might write the code to explain their thoughts. I’ve noticed that ‘explain-in-plain-language’ skills are developing across many technical roles lately.”
“Technical skills will always matter,” said Burke, “but they’re increasingly learnable at speed. AI can help people acquire knowledge and capabilities faster than ever. What’s harder to automate and therefore more valuable, are human skills.”
Skills such as judgement, communication, the ability to trust, context-setting, ethical decision-making and leading through ambiguity are among those that should be prioritised, especially as professionals are further expected to adopt and understand tech advancements.
“As technology accelerates, the differentiator won’t be who knows the most,” said Burke. “It will be who can interpret, connect and lead. The irony is that the more advanced AI becomes, the more deeply human capability becomes alongside it. That’s what ultimately drives sustained performance.”
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