The post-pandemic “new normal” radically reshaped the workplace with an emphasis on flexibility, hybrid or remote working, and digital rather than face-to-face interactions. Now the dust has settled, 2024 is arguably the first full year we’ll see the impact of this recalibration and the impact AI and automation will have on how we work. But a word of warning, the introduction of AI and automation will create new pressures for CIOs being pushed to do more with less/or the same.

The result will be a difficult balancing act for CIOs as they juggle their organization’s need to grow, and embrace new tools, with the need to maintain a good company culture.

Growth and culture: finding the perfect balance

The new workplace is one where automation and AI will be front and center. This has caught the imagination of today’s CIOs looking to move faster and scale. There’s no part of the business that can’t be automated. But how can the CIO build the culture, skills, and mindset to align with this new era of work, while also fostering growth?

It will require CIOs to think differently. What might have worked five years ago will not cut it today.

A good culture is key to an organization running effectively. This is why many of the biggest tech companies invest so heavily in making their offices a nice place to be. Culture is one of the intangible factors that make or break a professional’s happiness – and, by extension, their ability to work well. 

The CIO’s role in managing the organization’s growth is critical. CIOs understand how teams operate and, as a result, are well-placed to support their organization’s hiring and onboarding processes. Here, it’s not just about finding talent with the right skills, but also ensuring they meet the cultural needs of the organization. At a time when skills shortages are still a major challenge, what digital leaders should be looking for are candidates with an open mind and a desire to learn and grow. For example, to streamline the onboarding process, consider getting candidates to identify opportunities to update scripts and other processes, such as incident management or reporting, with automation – something that will help them get used to the new way things are being done.

CIOs that have built trust and goodwill with their teams over the years will find it easiest to strike the right balance between growth and culture. On top of this, they’ll be more able to manage the transition as automation becomes more widespread – although this is obviously not something that happens overnight. But once staff see the impact of automation on their colleagues’ work-life balance, and the kind of tasks they’re able to get stuck into, change management will become an easier task for CIOs.

Time for a new way to think about talent

IT roles are already transforming at a rapid pace thanks to the pace of AI and automation adoption. A case in point is the help desk. Having worked in organizations where ticket deflection via non-human interactions has already reached 40%, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that in five years’ time 90% of service desk tickets will be resolved by machines. In fact, organizations could go further. Imagine an operations cloud capable of intelligently predicting outages, and then firing off automation to pre-emptively fix underlying issues.

That doesn’t mean the days of IT Ops are numbered. It just means that engineers will be able to focus more fully on developing innovative products and services for the business – without interruption.

In a similar vein, marketing teams will find they need fewer employees churning out social content – as GenAI tools are able to take up the heavy lifting for these pieces of short-form writing. They can be instead reoriented towards more creative tasks, and longer-form writing tasks that GenAI models are unable to do to a high enough quality. Similarly, ETL developers will transition into automation and GenAI engineering roles as the technology takes hold in other parts of the organization.

The time for change is now

The best CIOs will manage the ongoing automation of an increasing number of processes as seamlessly as possible by continuously assessing the value of the work each team does. In doing so, they will be able to more quickly identify where and how to optimize, and where the opportunities for their teams to learn new skills lie. Hiring external talent will continue to be important, but investing in existing team members will arguably make for a smoother journey – depending on the stage of growth the organization is at.

Ever-changing technologies have been disrupting the workplace for decades. And now marks an incredibly exciting time for tech development. The CIOs who thrive will be those capable of keeping and optimizing their in-house talent, and ensuring new hires enhance and improve rather than dilute the culture they’re trying to build. It can be done.