1 . The Internet has completely changed the workplace over the past three decades. Artificial Intelligence is now all set to do the same, and businesses that don’t take advantage of the technology risk being left behind.

Global tech giants like Amazon have been leading the change, and businesses of all sizes are now using the technology for employing and managing their staff.

Among them is L’Oreal. With about a million applicants for roughly 15,000 new positions each year, the company is using AI to hire.

“We really wanted to save time and focus more on quality, diversity and candidate experience. And AI solutions were the best way to go faster on these challenges,” said Eva Azoulay, global vice-president of L’Oreal’s Human Resources Department.

The company uses Mya, a chatbot, to save employers’ time during the first stage of the process. It handles routine questions from candidates, and checks details such as availability and visa requirements. Should candidates make it to the next round, they’ll run into Seedlink, an AI software that scores applicants based on their answers to open-ended interview questions. These scores don’t replace human judgment, said Azoulay, but they do exclude candidates who might not seem like obvious choices.

Early results have been promising. For one internship program, where 12,000 people apply for about 80 spots, employers claim they saved 200 hours of time while hiring the most diverse group to date.

Other businesses have gone beyond employment and are using AI to help manage employees. Some UK firms have started using Isaak, a system designed by the London-based company StatusToday, to track how many hours staff spend online and the number of emails they receive. London real estate agent JBrown has been using this system since March. CEO James Brown said it helps the firm understand employees’ habits and prevent them from overworking. “It enables us to solve bottleneck problems and relieve overburdened employees,” he said.

Despite these examples of good practice, there is still a long way for AI to reach its full potential, and the technology comes with risks. Another AI danger could be its impact on jobs through automation.

McKinsey predicts AI could add $13 trillion to the global economy by 2030, with early adopters doubling their cash flow over that period. But the demand for repetitive (重复的) or digitally-unskilled jobs could drop by around 10%, the consulting firm said in a 2018 report.

4 . Digital technology -email and smart phones especially - have vastly improved workers’ ability to be productive outside of a traditional office. Even so, most white-collar work still happens in an office. One reason is that, according to findings of a new survey of office workers conducted by Wakefield Research for the IT company Citrix, most bosses are doubtful about remote working. Half of the workers say their boss doesn’t accept it and only 35 percent say it’s tolerated.

Skeptical bosses will likely have their doubts reinforced by the same survey, which shows that 43 percent of workers say they’ve watched TV or a movie while “working” remotely, while 35 percent have done housework, and 28 percent have cooked dinner.

It is true, however, that working at home makes people much more efficient(高效的), because it allows workers to take care of annoying housework while still getting their jobs done. It’s much faster, for example, to shop for groceries at a quarter to three than to stand in line during the after-work rush.

The fact that such practices remain officially unaccepted reflects how far we haven’t come as a society from the days when we expected every full-time worker to be supported by a full-time homemaker.

More broadly the Wakefield survey suggests that employers may be missing a low-cost way to give workers something of value. Sixty-four percent of those survey participants who haven’t worked remotely would rather give up some bonus in order to get even one day a week working from home. Under such circumstances, smart firms need to find ways to let their employees have enough flexibility to manage their time efficiently.

5 . A wise teacher once told me that every teenager needs to experience a not-so-fun first job from working at a grocery store to the fast food industry.

Now I still remember my first day at a fast food restaurant three years ago. I wanted to save up money and buy my own car, so I applied everywhere I could that summer. The restaurant called me right away and I thought to myself, this is going to be easy. Within four hours of my first shift, and I heard the words that no 16-year-old boy or anyone for that matter wants to hear “Mike, there’s a problem in the men’s bathroom and you might want gloves for this one.” I realized right away that working at the restaurant was not going to be a picnic. The manager expected a clean environment and particularly fast service with a friendly smile. 

Over three years later I still work at that restaurant whenever I go home during vacations. I love my co-workers there and all the customers know who I am. Every morning the same senior citizens come in and get their morning coffees. They chat with us workers and joke around. Our smiles have just as much to do with them making us a part of their everyday lives as the coffee does.

From my first job at the restaurant, I learned team work and devotion. I also learned staying positive no matter how rough things seem to get. I will forever carry the experience that I gained at the restaurant with me as I go forward in my life.

8 . I was living in Delta in 2015. There was a man, Boniface, who owned a store which I’d often visited. Gradually we became friends. One day, we talked about the business opportunities in our country at that time, and during the communication, I found the most practical one was starting a barrow (手推车) rental business. Then we had some in-depth exchanges of views on it, and both of us thought there was a strong possibility of succeeding. So we went into the business.

We started as a small business with 6 barrows. The barrow-men gave us 51 cents per day for renting the barrows. It seemed small but later grew and made our life better. But we didn’t stop there. That was because when we first started our business our aim wasn’t only to make money. The most valuable thing for us is to touch others’ lives positively.

In Nigeria, being a barrow pusher is not a very attractive job. But for people who were poor farmers or young people without jobs, wheelbarrow pushing helps them make a living. It doesn’t require much skill. With hard work and vigor, a person can make money daily.

We saw the meaning of this business and then decided to spend money and resources on re-branding barrows. We gave each barrow-man a branded T-shirt to show they belonged to a good brand. We also held small classes for them to educate them on how to make their barrows better transporters and how to be extra polite to people so as to build up a good reputation. We marketed them as polite and excellent pushers to attract more customers. These methods worked. They started getting more jobs and earned more. And a number of them even saved up enough to start businesses of their own.

Today, that little business made us millionaires while hiring over 20 people and touching their lives positively. Over 20 families are fed because two Nigerians decided, despite all the difficulties, to do something.