Fears around Artificial Intelligence in the workplace remain common, and often well-founded, especially before AI is introduced into everyday workflows. Employees worry about using the technology incorrectly, and more critically, about potential job displacement.
For Angie Tay, GCOO at Transformative Digital Customer Experience (TDCX), however, AI is not something to fear. Instead, she believes the right company culture can help employees feel reassured, supported, and valued as technology continues to evolve.
Easing initial AI fear
Tay observes that attitudes toward AI often differ by age group.
She noted that employees in higher age brackets tend to be more resistant,not necessarily because they oppose AI, but because they do not fully understand what it is or how to use it. Many feel hesitant to ask questions or start learning altogether.
"Fortunately, 80% of my population is the younger generation, who embrace AI. They like AI because they think it's supposed to make their lives easier, so they don't have to do routine work. The younger generation somehow feels that their minds are meant for bigger things. They should not be doing all the admin routine work," she said.
Despite these differences, Tay stressed that TDCX approaches AI adoption with one clear priority: employee experience.
To ensure employees can access, understand, and safely use AI tools in their daily work, she said every AI transformation begins with preparing the workforce.
"Whatever job roles that they are in, we will definitely need to prepare them right to make sure that they are all AI-driven," she said.
Training plays a key role in that preparation. TDCX encourages employees to take part in AI courses and upskilling programmes, helping them move past fear and instead learn how to collaborate with AI.
AI is not here to replace your job. We actually want you to grow with it in your roles. Angie Tay
"We want to tell them that: AI is not here to replace your job. We actually want you to grow with it in your roles," she said.
To support this, the company partners with platforms such as Google Cloud Skills Boost and Databricks, giving employees access to structured learning paths and certification programmes.
"With that professional certification, it actually elevates the way they think as well. That makes it much easier, and our participants are all very happy with it. That's how we make them maybe love AI a little bit more than other people," Tay added.
Job displacement? Human replacement?
For Tay, the concern around AI replacing humans misses a critical point: AI cannot replicate empathy. Instead of eliminating jobs, she sees AI creating new roles and opportunities.
"The escalation specialist is one of the roles that we definitely see emerging. This means that these are experts who manage very complex, very sensitive cases that AI cannot handle independently," she explained.
Other emerging roles include trust and safety analysts or AI monitoring specialists, experts responsible for reviewing AI outputs to ensure they meet ethical, quality, and regulatory standards.
Another role gaining importance is the data annotator or AI training specialist, professionals who curate high-quality datasets to ensure AI models are trained accurately and responsibly.
Fostering a sustainable human-first AI culture
Adopting AI with the right mindset is only the first step. Sustaining that mindset, Tay said, requires structure and participation across the organisation.
She takes pride in combining what she calls “strategic leadership direction with frontline insights.” At TDCX, this is supported by a problem-first innovation model led by Digi Lab, the company’s internal innovation hub.
"This hub explores and tests any emerging technologies that they actually come across before scaling them across all our global operations. Usually, we use it for pilot testing with automation, AI, any data intelligence that we can actually go around doing," she shared
Innovation is not limited to leadership. Alongside a top-down approach, TDCX actively encourages ideas from the ground up through Springboard, an employee innovation platform.
"We empower anyone in TDCX, and for certain projects, we even involve our clients as well, so they can submit any ideas, they can collaborate with whomever they can think of, and they help to shape a new solution. So while talking to clients, or even to my team leaders and managers, since we are handling the customers," she explained.
Striking a balance
One of the biggest challenges, Tay admitted, lies in balancing automation with the human touch.
"We always say that AI is still struggling and might struggle to replicate this kind of empathy, especially for countries with different dialects or languages, or even Cantonese, Hokkien, etc., the AI might not be able to sort of like determine the kind of empathy,” Tay shared.
Because of this, the company continues to focus on empathy and nuance, particularly across markets with different languages, cultures, and communication styles.
Tay said TDCX positions human agents to handle complex, sensitive, highly ambiguous, and sarcastic interactions that require interpretation and context, while allowing AI to manage simpler engagements.
"Human expertise is still essential, the human in the loop. We integrate into the AI lifecycle, making sure that whatever we can do, we do; whatever we cannot do, we make sure the human actually comes in,” she said.
Fear not
If there is one message Tay has for enterprises integrating AI into their workflows, it is simple: fear not.
Do not be afraid of AI. AI is here to stay. We are here to embrace it. Angie Tay
"Do not be afraid of AI. AI is here to stay. We are here to embrace it. We are here to make sure that, as a technology right, it helps human beings work effectively, and it definitely does. Human is still the king."
She remains consistent in her belief that AI will not replace humans, as machines cannot learn many inherently human qualities. In her view, AI is here to “work together and stay happily together.”
Looking ahead, Tay expects more organisations to adopt AI and become increasingly open to how it can improve speed and accuracy.
"If you ace this tool right, you will definitely be a leading leader in the industry," she concluded.
