Bosses, here's how to get your employees using AI

• It's the era of generative AI, and more companies are integrating it into their businesses.
• Not all employees are eager to use the new tech, however.
• Leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos explained how they convinced their employees.

Companies are increasingly looking for ways to use AI to improve their business. But change is hard and not all employees are excited about learning a new technology.

Some 31% of organizations reported that employees are reluctant or even outright resistant to using AI, according to the Cisco AI Readiness Index. Published in November, it surveyed over 8,000 business leaders in organizations with more than 500 employees.

At the same time, some 97% of respondents said that the sense of urgency to use AI-powered technologies has increased at their companies in the last 6 months.

So how should employers get their employees on board?

Company leaders at the World Economic Forum told Business Insider there's one simple thing bosses can do: be clear about what you want to use AI for.

"Start with use cases," said Liz Centoni, chief strategy officer and general manager of applications at Cisco.

Centoni suggests outlining the potential benefits of using AI and providing specific examples of how it might be used. A big reason AI has caught on strongly across different teams at her company, she says, is because there are many different clearly defined use cases for the tech that are making people's jobs easier.

Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, says it's important to explain to employees how AI might make their jobs better or more enjoyable.

Many workers are understandably afraid of being replaced by AI. Maggioncalda says it can be helpful to frame the inclusion of AI as augmentation rather than automation.

"The things that the technology is really good at are the kinds of things that people don't like," Maggioncalda says.

He suggests framing the AI experimentation as an adventure to figure out how to be more productive, free up time, and "enjoy your job more." By pushing into that new frontier, employees will ideally grow and create more opportunities for themselves, he told BI.

Paul Knopp, CEO of KPMG, says that his company emphasizes to employees that while integrating and adapting to emerging technologies might change employee roles, historically it's resulted in a net growth in the workforce. And over time, he says he expects AI to lead to both revenue growth and growth in the workforce.

"We expect it to be true of generative AI too, not just because you need people to create the generative AI solutions, which requires a lot of people and effort, but you need the people to ensure that it can be trusted," Knopp says.

Another thing that seems to resonate with people, Knopp says, is telling employees "you think it will make their jobs ultimately more interesting."

So while it's a good idea to address employee concerns about how their work may change due to the new technology, those at Davos are betting that pitching staff on specifically how that change can be positive — hopefully making them happier and more effective in their job — to get their buy-in.