Published on the 21/06/2023 | Written by Heather Wright

A majority of employees believe adopting emerging technology is beneficial for their organisation, but that senior leaders are too slow to embrace those potentially game-changing technology.

At least that’s according to an Ernst & Young (EY) report, which found today’s workforce is awaiting tomorrow’s digital capabilities, but concerned about senior leaders lack of enthusiasm.

The EY Emerging Tech at Work 2023 survey ­– which it should be noted was a US only survey – found that while 89 percent of those surveyed believe adopting new technologies would benefit their organisation, 59 percent said senior leaders, including C-suite and executives, have been slow to embrace the technologies, and 48 percent believe the senior leaders just don’t see the value in adopting them.

“Relevant use cases and purposeful upskilling can demonstrate how emerging technologies could be applied for work, not just play.”

That reluctance flies in the face of reports that nearly half of organisations believe the ability to keep up with technological innovation compared to competitors is one of the greatest threats to their organisation in the next 12 months – well ahead of inflation and the potential of an economic recession.

That global survey, by solutions integrator Insight Enterprises, which has offices in Australia and New Zealand polled senior business leaders working in large commercial businesses with more than 1,000 employees, across all industries, and public sector senior decision makers.

But EY’s report also shows very differing opinions, with 85 percent of senior leaders saying they recognise the benefits of adopting emerging technologies.

And while 59 percent of employees overall believe emerging technologies are advancing fast enough to meet their organisation’s needs, 52 percent of employees also say technologies are typically outdated by the time their company does fully implement them – something senior leaders feel even more strongly.  

Enterprise adoption of new technologies has traditionally lagged behind consumer adoption. Case in point: ChatGPT, which first made its presence felt in the consumer sphere.

The EY report highlights that divide, with 79 percent of respondents saying they consider themselves familiar with emerging technologies shaping digital transformation today.

The survey asked employees about their familiarity with and expected impact of 12 emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, augmented reality and virtual reality, biometrics, digital twin, edge and quantum computing.

Employees were overwhelmingly positive about the role of emerging technologies on their roles. Among respondents familiar with each technology, the vast majority say having a digital twin (87 percent) or edge computing (86 percent) would change their role or job function for the better.

Even the still futuristic quantum computing got the thumbs up (84 percent) from employees. There’s no mention of how many thought their organisations were being too slow to adopt that technology – still very much in nascent phase and out of the reach of most businesses (which does also raise the question of how these respondents were able to become familiar with the technology, other than in an academic, rather than practical, sense.)

EY says more respondents said quantum creates opportunities for business growth than any other technology polled, and those who say their company would benefit from it associate quantum computing with an ability to drive speed (58 percent), creativity (43 percent) and quality work (63 percent).

When it comes to generative AI, those familiar with it viewed it as one of the emerging technologies with the capability to improve efficiency (61 percent), speed (62 percent) and productivity (60 percent) in their current day-to-day work.

It, along with the metaverse and AI/ML were among the technologies employees expected to be most widely used in business within three years. Quantum was perceived as being the most futuristic.

EY says tech leaders should take note of their employees’ perceptions about emerging technology, saying when they do so they are better positioned to implement the ones seen as most effective and valuable, in a timely manner.

Despite the report’s overall pessimism about emerging technology adoption, 74 percent of employees noted their company has started to adopt, or fully adopted, at least one emerging technology in the past three years.

And it found some are experiencing emerging technologies at work already, from using AI/ML to automate repetitive tasks (23 percent), onboarding or training using VR (18 percent), having meetings in metaverse conference rooms (20 percent) or company gatherings in the metaverse (17 percent) and using generative AI to draft emails (18 percent) to using digital twin technology to build digital models of products (18 percent) and collaborating with colleagues on documents housed in the cloud (45 percent).

“By asking the right questions, technology executives can gain clarity into the opportunities and potential barriers to adopting emerging technologies and business transformation,” EY says.

“These efforts present opportunities to create more human-centric models of technology adoption that will support business success, with more clear messaging and relevant upskilling – driving results today that will redefine tomorrow.

“Relevant use cases and purposeful upskilling can demonstrate how emerging technologies could be applied for work, not just play, to help bridge the adoption gap where there is a strategic business case for the new technology.”