Organizational Restructuring with AI is transforming how businesses adapt to change.
Restructuring in the past primarily looked at roles, teams, and hierarchy in making changes.
With AI, organizations can take it to the next level with enhanced analytical capabilities that enable them to leverage data for rational decision-making, anticipate future changes through prediction, and fully utilize agile and future-driven workforce design.
AI enables organizations to evaluate data almost in real time, looking at performance like engagement patterns, employee sentiments, and skill level, revealing potential improvements to eliminate wastage and manage talent more effectively.
It also supports scenario planning by providing the ability to run simulations that help provide valuable modelled outcomes before taking action to reduce risk and aid decision-making.
AI can also significantly enhance employee engagement by having moves to actively assess employee sentiment and feed into a change program. AI can even highlight skill gaps, recommend steps for targeted upskilling, and enable teams to remain ready and equipped when roles and relocations are modified.
Finally, AI provides a model for organizations to combine AI with human skill and judgement, for organizations to be better prepared for when workforce disruptions occur, creating a more dynamic and agile workforce, ready for change!
AI will change how organizations restructure by providing actionable insights and aiding strategic decision-making. Some of the main drivers that make AI essential to workforce transformation today include:
AI analyzes the organization's workforce metrics, trends in performance, and inventories of skills at scale.
The leaders understand clearly what the organization does not need, where there is redundancy or underutilized talent. The leaders can make the right decisions to allocate resources effectively and implement organizational development changes.
Organizations can anticipate workforce demands and skill gaps before they disrupt the routine work.
Utilizing AI-powered simulations permits organizations to consider various restructuring plans to test feasibility and reduce risks from bad decisions or implementation failures that result in costly errors.
AI enables teams to operate using flexible structures as well as agile resource management.
Companies can adjust roles if workloads shift, redistribute work, and reassign a person or group of people within minutes as market conditions, priorities on new projects, or operational contingencies present new circumstances.
AI can track the feelings of employees and collect feedback in real time during transitions.
Leaders can utilize this data to create effective communications plans, fast-track the unresolved issues of employees, and assist with the adoption of new structures.
AI will identify emerging roles and outline the tasks and responsibilities of these roles.
They will also recommend courses or upskilling activities that are personalized to employees. Employees will have the ability to build the skills required for their new roles, which will result in greater overall output and retention.
Overall, these two drivers will allow organizations to improve in transitioning their workforce to new roles while creating agile organizations with the ability to respond to ever-changing business conditions and continue to thrive.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not just a distant daydream anymore. It is impacting the work environment of today.
According to AIPRM, in 2024, three-quarters (75%) of workers surveyed reported regularly using AI at work.
AI is being adopted rapidly; the striking finding from our data shows how eager employees are to adopt AI. Of the surveyed employees, almost half (46%) had been using AI for less than six months, indicating how the rapid pace of AI adoption is happening under the pressure of immediate business need rather than long-term strategy.
One result of AI's rapid increase, companies are responding in a strategic direction.
The greatest concentration of early adopters is in the marketing and advertising sectors, with over one-third (37%) of employees reporting that they had used AI tools.
The workers also have a mixed reaction to AI. Their first instinct was to note that, although efficiency has improved, 45% of workers in 2024 expressed some anxiety that AI would replace them, and therefore indicated some anxiety within the context of technology disruption.
Although the tremendous opportunities AI can create in organizational change are evident, integrating AI with respect, intention, and purpose is a considerable undertaking.
Organizations need to move beyond risk and possibility to now act to include AI in responsible and effective ways.
The following summarizes key best practices:
AI tools should be selected and implemented to achieve clearly defined business outcomes. Whether the objective is anticipated improvements to efficiency, agility, or engagement, achieving the desired AI implementation must align with a broader transformation strategy.
Introducing AI-enabled change involves more than new technology and processes; it involves a change in mindset and approach.
Organizations should expect that their investment in developing change management programs will account for employee worries, transparency, and trust if they expect to position AI as a co-pilot rather than a disrupter or replacement.
As all AI is dependent on employee data to provide \"insights,\" data governance policies must be created.
Ethical use of AI matters when it comes to transparency in how decisions are being made and keeping employee trust and rights secured.
Organizations want to build internal capacity in each department by training HR and leadership to understand and analyze AI outputs in the context of their organizational issue.
Human judgment was, and should still be, first in the decision. The AI is an aid in the process.
If an organization is using AI restructuring tools in some departments (perhaps marketing or HR), it would be wise to pilot just the departments in a limited sense to see how they function overall before administering the rollout of the tools.
The organization can learn more about the tool in a limited environment while minimizing overall operator (organization) risk and maximizing potential upside over time.
IBM has implemented multiple AI-powered initiatives to support workplace transformation, including personalized learning and internal mobility.
They have multiple initiatives, including AI Skills Academy, Your Learning, and Watson Career Coach, which are connected to reskilling employees for their shifting business needs.
IBM expects that ~40% of its workforce will need to be reskilled within a few years to be able to keep up with the valuable transformation from AI.
AI-powered Skills Profiles that identify skill gaps and suggest new skills that could be developed.
Watson Career Coach, which connects employees to internal job offers aligned with their skills and career interests.
IBM's broader SkillsBuild initiative is free, AI-powered learning paths, targeted at underrepresented communities, with course offerings across AI, cybersecurity, data analytics, etc.
West Monroe illustrates how AI can produce real transformational change in the workforce through a skills-based redesign and ultimately drive productivity and the organization’s ability to adapt to changing roles.
West Monroe showcased the real benefits of combining technology with workforce strategic planning:
$320M of annual labor cost managed in just 8 months
30% reduction in people spend
$90M of annual realized savings
If organizations utilize AI to analyze workforce capabilities, identify skill gaps, and allocate resources accordingly, the likelihood of successfully responding to markets and workforce requirements increases.
This case study demonstrates that AI is not only a mechanism for efficiency but also a facilitator of sustainable, adaptable, and future-ready organizations.
AI is improving decision-making, increasing employee engagement, and improving workforce agility and ability to meet the constantly changing market and reduce risk.
If AI is integrated with human decision-making, there will be an agile and resilient organization enabled to leverage both technology and human resources to achieve sustainable growth.
AI is no longer an option for organizational reorganization; it is a matter of strategic imperative. When organizations use predictive analytics, real-time workforce data, and a skills-based approach to optimize, they can build agile, future-ready teams.
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