Is AI a hope or fear to the Thai workforce?

09/08/2023

It’s clear that the workforce must adapt to weather through digital transformation. To be reinvention-ready, technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play an important role in organisation transformation. How does the Thai workforce feel about AI? How has AI been applied successfully in Thailand? What can employers and employees do to prepare for a full AI integration?

For more information, read the Asia Pacific study of the ‘Asia Pacific Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023’ and ‘Thailand snapshots'.

Guest
Transcript

Guest

Dr. Pirata Phakdeesattayaphong
Consulting Partner, PwC Thailand
Email | LinkedIn

Transcript

Piyanat Suanapai
PwC Thailand Spotlight, insights on business and industry trends in Thailand and beyond.

Hello, I’m Piyanat Suanapai, your podcast host.

It’s undeniable that AI technology is becoming more and more prominent in our daily lives. A common example is algorithms in social media that we consume, or ones we often hear of such as chatbots or ChatGPT. The latter was launched in the past year and has created quite a buzz in every industry.

Due to its ability and smart technology, many organisations have integrated AI into the workplace to complete redundant tasks or replace employees altogether. With AI’s evolution and increased capabilities, many questioned how AI affects businesses and the workforce. PwC’s Asia Pacific Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023, launched in June, revealed an interesting outlook on opinions and concerns about the workforce, including AI and other workplace issues from employees around the world, including in Asia Pacific and Thailand.

Today, Dr. Pirata Phakdeesattayaphong, Consulting Partner, PwC Thailand will share with us the aforementioned survey’s findings, trends and strategies to adapt and upskill the workforce that organisations, leaders and employees can adopt to prepare for the inevitable changes AI will bring to our work.

Hello, Dr. Pirata.

Dr. Pirata Phakdeesattayaphong
Hello.

Piyanat
As mentioned earlier, PwC recently launched its annual Asia Pacific Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey which captured many interesting perspectives from Thai employers and employees. Can you share notable findings from Thailand?

Dr. Pirata
Certainly. The PwC Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023 was launched in June. We had great participation, with over 50,000 responses from across the world. Among the responses, there are 1,000 responses from the Thai workforce. Today, I’ll share three to four highlights from Thailand.

The first, something to be joyful about. The Thai workforce rated job satisfaction or happiness at work at 79% in comparison to Asia Pacific at 57%. This is the highest rating in the region. What contributes to high job satisfaction? First, 70% of Thai employees say they can truly be themselves at work. They can express opinions, and their bosses and colleagues respect their opinions. In Asia Pacific, this is 52%. Second, fairness. 71% of the Thai workforce state that their managers treat them fairly and equitably, in comparison to Asia Pacific at 53%. Third, and the most important, is job fulfilment. The Thai workforce rated 71% on this aspect. They wake up wanting to come to work and their job fulfils their personal mission. In comparison, Asia Pacific scored 51%. This is the first highlight, which is wonderful.

Second and surprisingly despite high job satisfaction, is the great resignation. 30% of Thai employees are more likely to change jobs in the next 12 months compared to last year’s survey, which also surveyed 1,000 Thai employees, where only 13% sought to change jobs in the next year. I’d like to caution organisations: while there is high job satisfaction or engagement, beware of resignations. Often, there are still many resignations despite strong satisfaction and engagement ratings.

Third, about work, 50% of respondents have more than one job. Though it seems harmless that people have more than one job, confidentiality is a key concern. Some people use the organisation’s email, templates, or contents for other jobs, so it’s a risk management issue that must be considered. Almost 50% believe that the organisation is unlikely to survive more than 10 years unless they change from their current path. The changes relate to transformation, implementing technology at the workplace.

Piyanat
The information you just shared is useful to employers and the workforce alike. As mentioned in the introduction, we’ll dig deeper into AI and how it’ll impact the workforce. You touched on it a little, that there is some concern on business survival and transformation. Did this survey touch upon AI?

Dr. Pirata
It did. The survey covered digital technology and AI in the workplace. The findings reveal a positive outlook on AI, and how it can improve productivity and efficiency at work. 47% of Thai believe so, compared to 41% in Asia Pacific. Thais believe that integrating AI will create opportunities for them to learn valuable new skills and increase revenue and efficiency. This is a good sign, as it shows that Thai people are open to this technology and not fearful of it. A few years ago, many were worried that AI may replace them at work. This year, they feel that AI will help them at work.

Piyanat
What are the reasons that the Thai workforce views AI positively?

Dr. Pirata
Thailand is still in the early stages of adopting digital and organisational transformation. In this stage, we still need both people and technology to build the foundations. As a result, there’s still a lot of work to do. Thus, Thais are more open to AI when compared to countries that have fully transformed to automation or have fully integrated technology from end to end. Thailand still has room to mature.

The survey also found that the Thai workforce is confident that their organisations or CEOs will support them in digital upskilling and will also invest in new technology such as cloud and AI. So even with AI becoming more prevalent, employees believe their employers will provide upskilling support.

Piyanat
If we move beyond the early stages of adopting AI in organisations and businesses, is it possible that AI will replace our jobs and cause unemployment? As you mentioned, years ago, we were worried that technology would steal our jobs and make us obsolete. What is your opinion on this matter, do you have any cases in Thailand or abroad that illustrate this concern?

Dr. Pirata
I view AI as a supplement not a replacement. There are many jobs that require people, such as those that contain complex decision making, critical thinking, empathy or minimal bias. Similar to when machines and computers were introduced, there was fear about being replaced, but they actually helped us to work faster and more efficiently while reducing cost and resources. They didn’t cause unemployment. AI is the same case. It’ll help us analyse and crunch data. Once we have those results, people will still need to refine them further as insights and plans. That’s complex decision making from people. AI will help with efficiency and save time for different tasks.

Piyanat
So AI can work alongside people in the workplace and is beneficial to organisations. Many organisations are integrating AI into work. From your experience working with many Thai clients, are there cases where organisations have implemented AI successfully or an apparent change in the workforce is evident?

Dr. Pirata
A popular case is using AI as a virtual assistant or chatbot, or now ‘enhanced chatbot’. Before, the questions asked must be exactly as they were programmed. Now, AI can process more natural language. The same question can come in several forms and the chatbot can respond. For example, banks use AI to help customers find products. Customers or prospects can chat with the AI, share their age, income and financial needs to find suitable loans – long term, short term – or types of credit cards. AI can suggest options based on benefits and features. It’s a virtual assistant helping customers find the right products.

Another case within an organisation, AI can answer questions relating to company policies. What can be reimbursed and what are the exceptions? It serves as the company’s knowledge management centre.

Piyanat
It looks like AI is both a hope and fear for both employers and employees around the world, including Thailand. We can’t deny that AI will be a part of our work life. From a business perspective, what should workforce strategies be in today’s world?

Dr. Pirata
Organisations must be prepared. We cannot assume that everyone will know what to do once AI has been implemented. What preparations must we consider?

First, bring people along on the journey. Get buy-in so employees can be a part of driving transformation.

Second, create a culture of experimentation and willingness to accept small-scale failure. Dare to do and dare to fail so you can learn from failure.

Third, build transformative leadership, with an emphasis on being a people-centric leader, to drive change with their organisations.

Lastly, organisations must consider ethical implications and manage those risks. With AI comes risks due to massive amounts of data, so we must be cautious of data compliance, leakage and bias. If we feed AI a lot of information, it will learn a lot. But if we want to be biased, we can upload a certain type of data to yield certain results. So we must be responsible and ethical when using AI.

Piyanat
Finally, how about from the workforce perspective? How should workers adapt to AI and are there any particular skills we should adopt?

Dr. Pirata
I’d like to share and encourage the following to the workforce:

First, be open to AI. Don’t be scared that it will replace you and you feel you need to join protests against it. Instead, view AI as a friend that will come to help you work better, not replace you. See in which areas you can embed AI.

For learning and upskilling, there is a lot to learn, whether it be data analytics or data collection. These skills should be learned to prepare, alongside critical and logical thinking. What does AI learn from, if not our critical and logical thinking.

Be open and upskill.

Piyanat
Based on the information that Dr. Pirata has shared, we can see that businesses cannot continue on the same path if they want to stay afloat in this digital era filled with continuous disruptions. In addition, employees, or the workforce, must also adapt. Adapting as you go may be too slow for this era, we must reinvent our businesses and workforce immediately to work alongside AI.

I’d like to thank Dr. Pirata for joining us today and sharing interesting and useful information on our podcast.

Dr. Pirata
Thank you.

Piyanat
For more information on the Asia Pacific Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2023, please visit our website at www.pwc.com/th or follow PwC Thailand social media channels on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for the latest updates.

Don’t forget to like and follow the PwC Thailand Spotlight podcast series so you don’t miss out on our new episodes.

That’s it for today, thank you and goodbye.