Put your people in the driving seat

Why the modern supply chain much be human-centric

You can use ChatGPT for holiday restaurant recommendations, writing a white paper or learning how to code. AI technology already underpins many business processes. In areas such as operation and supply chain, AI-enabled tools are helping businesses to make ever faster and smarter decisions.

Yet, as powerful as AI is, it will never replace the intuition, insight and intelligence you can gain when you pair it with a knowledgeable human partner. Put simply, your people are still very much in the driving seat.

Whether you use ChatGPT, as an example, or AI in general, the strength of its use case is only as powerful as the input you give it to begin with. To get the best results, it needs guidance, careful coercion and, most importantly, a special human touch.

But here’s the problem

According to a recent study by LinkedIn, 93% of companies worry about staff retention.

Coincidentally, approximately 66% of large UK businesses said they struggle to recruit new people who have the skills they need.

Worryingly, a similar number (58%) of employees have reported a lack of digital skills, citing a lack of training from their superiors.

So, to summarise the challenge, most companies are worried about losing staff. The majority of them struggle to recruit new people with a greater skill set. And the staff they do have, who they’re worried about losing, feel underprepared to do their jobs.

And so in this age of AI, businesses face a very real human problem.

To swing the pendulum in your favour, you’ll need to adopt a way of working that puts people at the forefront. Manage that, and any AI you introduce will add to your strategic edge.

But how do you do that?

How do you empower your people through human-centric work design?

Whether it’s a hangover from ‘the great resignation’, an increased desire to work from home or simply a collective re-evaluation of career journeys, times have changed.

To survive and thrive, the way you manage and motivate the people that run your supply chain must change with them.

That change has to come from above. From you and your leadership team.

You need to create empowerment. You need to use technology to enhance that empowerment. And you need to take tangible steps to train your staff to be the best they can be. Because if you don’t, someone else will.

Time to empower your people

Human-centric work design simply means designing your business around the needs, strengths, weaknesses and wellbeing of the people in your company. On paper, this sounds simple.

But it might be more complicated than you envisage. It might mean you need to re-design your processes, systems and environments entirely. Changing the way your entire business works is no mean feat.

Developing a human-centric work design, or a human-centric supply chain means valuing your people. It means looking at organisational psychology, human-computer interaction, ergonomics, and organisational behaviour.

It means realising the value your people bring to the table while acknowledging their worries. Aspirations, dreams and goals can’t be achieved if you leave them out of the process of designing your supply chain.

Start with the basics and you will soon see both your people and your supply chain thrive!