Empower Canada’s Workers to Deliver AI's Productivity Promise
Canada's C-suite will hold back our productivity unless they collaborate with their workers rather than just look to cut costs
Today, I'm looking at AI adoption and how to do it in a worker-centric way—using AI to augment our capabilities, not automate our jobs.
But first, I’m going to be at the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa this Thursday and Friday. I’m speaking on a panel tomorrow on Building capacity for a mission-driven innovation ecosystem in Canada, so if you are there, please swing by and say hello!
From Top-Down Edicts to Collaborative AI Adoption
AI holds the potential to unleash a productivity revolution. Yet, Canadian businesses will struggle to harness its full potential due to the failings of business and industry leaders. A chasm exists between their optimistic expectations and the on-the-ground realities of AI adoption for workers. A culture shift is needed: from top-down edicts towards utilizing Canadian workers' knowledge and potential to drive AI transformation.
TD Economics argues that AI “can help answer some of Canada’s productivity woes.” They predict widespread adoption could boost Canada’s real GDP by up to 5-8% over the next decade. Other projections have Generative AI adding $187 billion annually to the Canadian economy by 2030. These align with global projections that indicate AI’s capacity to add trillions of dollars to the global economy each year.
However, there are reasons to doubt Canada’s ability to realize these gains. Canadian companies have a poor record of tech adoption, underwhelming returns on innovation, and an inability to effectively utilize existing talent. The buck stops with Canada’s C-Suites.
Statistics Canada has highlighted troubling trends: Canadian businesses haven’t translated their innovation efforts into productivity gains or improved living standards. Research from the Dais underlines this, finding that Canada is failing in “nurturing, developing, and using our digital talent.”
There is an execution and strategy gap. Business leaders have been unable to translate the potential of Canada’s talented workforce and innovative new technologies into meaningful productivity gains.
Recent findings from the Upwork Research Institute get at the heart of the problem. They surveyed 2,500 C-suite executives, full-time employees, and freelancers in the US, UK, Australia and Canada on AI adoption. They found that while 96% of leaders anticipate AI to boost productivity, 77% of workers who are using AI tools have found it decreased their productivity. This disconnect stems from a lack of comprehensive AI training for staff, along with a lack of a broader strategy. Upwork found that only 26% of leaders have AI training programs in place for employees, and only 13% report a well-implemented AI strategy.
These findings mirror broader challenges within Canadian businesses, where digital culture often fails to keep pace with technological advancements. As Dan Breznitz has observed, “our business and public leaders managed to take the world’s most-educated and hard-working people and employ them in ways that so dramatically underutilized their skills and creativity that they became less productive”.
My past work on digital maturity in small and medium-sized businesses underscored the crucial role of leadership, skills, and governance for firms to leverage technology successfully. Unfortunately, Canadian firms trail behind international counterparts when it comes to providing skills development opportunities for employees. Research finds that Canadian firms only invest $240 per employee in training annually.
To fully realize AI's benefits, we need a fundamental cultural shift. The traditional top-down approach to technology adoption must give way to a model that empowers employees. AI’s impact will be most pronounced on knowledge workers, whose typically autonomous and self-directed work tasks differ markedly from the more easily automated work of the past, such as in factories and assembly lines.
A collaborative and inclusive approach to integrated AI in work is needed to give employees ownership over the process and the training they need to understand the opportunities and act as champions. This is especially needed due to the well-known risks of AI amplifying biases and the significant potential for AI to erode job quality.
A Future Skills Centre project on AI adoption in healthcare exemplifies a more collaborative model. The project identified the barriers to adoption by healthcare professionals and then brought together leaders and practitioners from diverse backgrounds through educational programs, certificates and symposiums. This created the kind of collaborative environment that enabled AI to be successfully used - with real, positive outcomes on patient care and diagnostic accuracy. This model of inclusive, collaborative AI integration should serve as a blueprint for Canadian businesses.
Canadian business leaders have a unique opportunity to shape the future of work. But they must close the execution and strategy gap. Only if our C-suite leaders can embrace a collaborative approach to AI adoption, empowering workers with ownership over the process and investing in targeted training, can we unlock AI’s vast productivity potential.
Excellent analysis! In my experience, I’ve often heard C-suite discussions about AI framed as if it’s the ultimate destination. In reality, AI is just a tool and should be treated as such. No one would ever claim that Excel is a strategy!
Your role at CSPC is a fantastic opportunity to champion these ideas and help shape a future where AI empowers, rather than diminishes, the Canadian workforce.