Overwhelmed by data, 82% of white-collar employees want robots to make their decisions: Study

The Oracle study found that 82 percent admit the sheer volume of data and their lack of trust in data has stopped them from making any decision at all and 94 percent believe the growing number of data sources has limited the success of their organisations.

When most professionals were convinced that having enough data would be a problem solver, a study has found 91 percent of employees in India feel that the volume of data makes decisions in their personal and professional lives much more complicated.

Underlining the extremeness of the situation, 82 percent of business leaders and employees would prefer for all these difficulties to just go away and to have a robot make their decisions, as per a study titled ‘The Decision Dilemma’ by Oracle and author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.

An overwhelming majority—91 percent—of those polled said the number of decisions they make every day has increased 10-fold over the last three years and as they try to make these decisions, 90 percent of them are getting bombarded with more data from more sources than ever before.

This has led to 69 percent admitting they face a decision dilemma—not knowing what decision to make—more than once every single day.

The study has shown that 88 percent of people say the inability to make decisions is hurting their quality of life. It is causing spikes in anxiety (38 percent), missed opportunities (40 percent) and unnecessary spending (42 percent).

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As a result, 98 percent have changed the way they make decisions over the last three years. Over half—51 percent—now only listen to sources they trust and 37 percent rely solely on gut feelings.

“Decision-making has to be with the help of robots but robots are essentially not replacing humans. It's rather supporting people to collect, analyse and harness the massive amount of data,” said Deepa Param Singhal, vice president of applications at Oracle India, told Moneycontrol.

Further, 90 percent of business leaders have suffered from decision distress—regretting, feeling guilty about or questioning a decision they made in the past year—and 99 percent believe having the right type of decision intelligence can make or break an organisation.

“People are drowning in data…People are tempted to throw out the confusing, and sometimes conflicting, data and just do what feels right. But this can be a big mistake. It has been proven over and over again that our instincts can lead us astray and the best decision-making is done with a proper understanding of the relevant data,” said data scientist and author Stephens-Davidowitz.

The study surveyed 14,250 professionals in January 2023 across the globe. The respondents were employees and business leaders, including titles such as president, CEO, chairperson, C-level executive, CFO, CTO, director, senior manager and HR manager, among others.

The Oracle study found that 82 percent admit the sheer volume of data and their lack of trust in data has stopped them from making any decision at all and 94 percent believe the growing number of data sources has limited the success of their organisations.

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Business leaders do not believe that the current approach to data and analytics is addressing these challenges. Up to 88 percent say that the dashboards and charts they get do not always relate directly to the decisions they need to make and 92 percent believe most data available is only truly helpful for IT professionals or data scientists.

They believe the “right data” and insights can help them make better HR (99 percent), finance (98 percent), supply chain (99 percent) and customer experience (98 percent) decisions.

Working with various companies, Singhal has observed CEOs increasingly getting involved with talent management decisions and working closely with CHROs, talent strategists and data on the same.

“We have seen a shift in focus towards talent becoming assets. I am seeing that the talent agenda is a common theme for CEOs apart from ESG and P&L,” she said.