7 OCTOBER | LONDON 2024
SEPTEMBER 12TH - 14TH
The O2, LONDON
Future of Work
Your weekly CogX briefing on HR tech, automation, and the workplace

AI won’t take your job — but people who use it will
Imagine your boss asks you to perform a tedious and time-consuming research task. You know your company has done work like this before — but have no idea where to find it.
McKinsey’s new internal chatbot Lilli solves this problem. Trained on the company’s entire knowledge base — more than 100,000 documents — Lilli can give employees advice on relevant research, data and case studies in seconds. Training AI to learn everything about your business is an incredible way to unlock productivity: it cut research time at McKinsey from weeks to hours. More companies are sure to follow in the consultancy’s footsteps.
This story is just one of several this week that highlight the efficiencies AI will bring to employees. Check them out, alongside new research on why bootcamps are effective for reskilling, in the CogX Must-Reads
CogX Must Reads
IBM predicts 40% of its workforce will require reskilling due to AI
An IBM study found that jobs will be “augmented, rather than replaced” by generative AI tools. It concludes that the most successful companies won’t simply automate existing systems — they’ll completely rethink all workflows and operations with AI in mind.
McKinsey built a consulting chatbot trained on the company’s entire knowledge base
“Lilli” is trained on over 100,000 pages of documents and can give employees expert advice on research, data, relevant cases and more. This could cut down on the time employees spend on research from weeks to hours and change job specifications for junior staff.


Future of the Office
Bootcamps are effective for reskilling, new study finds
New research out of the City University of London’s Bayes Business School found that bootcamps can open doors for people who want to change careers. They do this by making teaching collaborative, leveraging peers as instructors, and encouraging self-learning skills.
The latest office perk? Grandparents’ leave
With people living longer and retiring later, workforces are more multigenerational than ever before. This, combined with the ballooning cost of childcare, has incentivised companies like Booking.com to introduce “grandternity leave”.

AI and Automation
AI jobs on Upwork increase by 1,000% in Q2 2023
The roles on UpWork seeing high growth include deep learning engineers, chatbot developers, prompt engineers, data annotators and Stable Diffusion and Dall-E artists. The surge in related roles suggests that AI can do more than automate jobs: it can also create them.
Should your team use AI?
The benefits are clear: AI can save time, reduce errors and boost capacity. But it can also be biased and inaccurate, and some employees and job candidates are wary of its use — particularly those whose work is vulnerable to automation. Here’s how to build trust in the technology.

Top Stories
In case you missed it
If your employees don’t feel a sense of belonging at work, there’s a high chance they’ll quit, warns author Ryan Jenkins. He discusses how the future of work will be defined by human connection:
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