ACCENTURE said it is creating more value-added jobs for its employees while giving transactional jobs to new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), as part of the “upskill” needed in the advent of automation and AI.
With the growing adoption of new technologies, Manish Sharma, Accenture operations group operating officer, said the company adopted the philosophy of letting skilled employees take on higher-value jobs, therefore removing the jobs needing repetitive or measurable skills.
“We took a pledge in saying that, our people will not do jobs which are measurable, repeatable, predictable, and transactional in nature,” Mr. Sharma said in a press conference on June 14.
“We want to give our people higher value-added jobs rather than …boring jobs..[and] keep jobs which are intellectually stimulating,” he added.
Mr. Sharma also said these will create new, higher-value jobs in the company. “We will have the best of business advisers and who will solve clients’ business problems, and they will be the supervisors of the robots and AI,” he said.
Mr. Sharma noted new technologies have improved their processes and showed reduction in lead time.
The company did not give specific numbers, but Benedict Hernandez, Accenture operations lead in the Philippines, said the company aims to have a marginal decrease for the less than 50% in their work force which are low-skilled.
The company is also investing in increasing skills of its employees. “There’s been a massive, year-round effort to upskill everybody,” Mr. Hernandez said.
Skills upgrade is seen as a solution by stakeholders in the information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) industry, to adapt to the new wave of technologies, to avoid loss of jobs.
Accenture has around 45,000 employees in the Philippines. — Patrizia Paola C. Marcelo
