Artificial Intelligence at Work: How to Enhance the Employee Experience

Increase employee engagement and boost morale by implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.

Engaged employees are essential to an organisation’s success. Employee engagement is the emotional investment employees make in their role and organisation. This personal investment is reflected in how employees execute their responsibilities and contribute to company culture. Unsurprisingly, organisations with high engagement outperform those with lower engagement levels.

Organisations have traditionally struggled with defining and quantifying engagement. Despite sincere efforts and investments of time, effort, and money, achieving high employee engagement can remain an elusive goal that is difficult to measure. Thankfully, artificial intelligence (AI) technology is changing that.

AI tools are revolutionising the workplace landscape by changing both employer and employee expectations. The benefit most quickly recognized is increased productivity. However, that’s just the beginning of how AI-power tools can enhance the employee experience. This article will explore other benefits AI can provide for the employee experience like expedited access to support, data-driven insights into employee sentiments, and personalised learning and development opportunities.

Four Ways AI Enhances the Employee Experience

1. Increased Productivity

By automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks, AI tools give employees more time to focus on complex matters. The majority of their energy can be devoted to problem-solving, innovation, critical thinking, and relationship building. For example, AI algorithms can analyse large data sets and generate insights, saving employees numerous hours of data collection and entry. Using AI for this type of task also offers the added benefit of reducing inevitable human errors.

Streamlining administrative tasks is another way AI can increase employee productivity. Virtual assistants can organise documents and schedule meetings, enabling teams to focus on more meaningful tasks. Algorithms can also analyse team members’ skills and availability to recommend employees for upcoming projects.

1. Expedited Support

Chatbots are a valuable resource that can help employees instantly access critical information. These tools can search through the organisation’s repository of knowledge and policies, reducing time spent searching for information or waiting for colleagues to respond. If an answer is not available, the chatbot can alert the appropriate Human Resource (HR) team member to answer the employee’s question. AI chatbots also help HR teams deliver information like policy updates, professional development tools, benefits information, and more.

In addition to expediting HR services, AI chatbots are an efficient way to collect anonymous feedback. AI can easily synthesise this feedback with data from other sources like performance reviews and exit interviews to generate insights about areas of concern or opportunities for improvement. Regularly monitoring feedback data ensures employees remain engaged and enables organisations to identify potential red flags early.

1. Data-driven Sentiment Insights

Employee engagement efforts are traditionally focused on promoting positive morale. Prior to AI-power technologies, organisations had very few ways to gauge employee engagement beyond surveys and other types of self-reported feedback. Through data mining and machine learning, AI tools can analyse and predict employee needs and behaviour.

Sentiment analytics software offers detailed insights into what impacts employee morale across various themes like compensation, professional development, and benefits. As themes are identified, comments on surveys can be categorised and compiled. Then, comments in each category can be tagged with a sentiment–positive, negative, or neutral–offering the HR team a useful data set to review and act on. Automating the process of compiling and analysing data gives the HR team more time to focus on personal interactions and strategic initiatives.

1. Personalized Learning and Development Programs

AI-powered learning platforms offer an unparalleled level of personalisation. Each employee’s skills, pace, and learning methods are assessed by the platform. Based on that information, the platform generates a customised study program for each person, recommending relevant courses and resources.

As employees advance through their training, the platform continuously adapts to their progress, suggesting new content and challenges to keep them engaged. Such a tailored approach ensures that employees acquire the necessary skills for their role, keeps them motivated, and enables them to effortlessly take ownership of their professional development.

Organisations using AI-based learning platforms often notice the added benefit of promoting a culture of continuous learning. The platform can automatically generate recommendations for additional opportunities once a study program is complete. Because the platform understands the employee’s preferred learning method and desired skill set, these recommendations are personalised to their needs and preferences, increasing the likelihood that they will continue training.

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Factors to Consider Before Launching AI

Before introducing any new technology or tools to employees, there’s a lot to consider. With such incredibly powerful AI-based technology available, organisations need to carefully vet platforms to minimise security and privacy risks and develop training resources. Organisations that wait too long to introduce AI-power technology may find that employees are using these tools on their own or that their competitors are already reaping the benefits of this technology.

To successfully integrate AI-based tools, carefully evaluate how well they will fit employees’ needs. Here are key factors to consider:

• Ease of Use: Ensure the platform is intuitive and will not require extensive training to use. Assess how well the platform will integrate with other software systems already in place. A positive user experience will expedite adoption across the organisation.
• Scalability: Tools need to be able to serve employees’ needs today and grow with the organisation. Finding a platform with robust and flexible features will ensure the technology has long-term value and aligns with the organisation’s growth trajectory.
• Data Analytics: Confirm the selected platform has the ability to capture the desired data. For example, is the motivation primarily to collect data on employee sentiment or provide more personalised professional development opportunities? It may be necessary to launch several tools, rather than expect one platform to meet all of the organisation’s needs. Defining metrics for success will help evaluate the technology’s impact.
• Internal Trust: The prospect of automating tasks is often associated with the idea that jobs will be eliminated. However, these tools are meant to support employees, not replace them. Organisations can reduce anxiety about job displacement by clearly stating the purpose of launching these tools and implementing reskilling and upskilling programs to equip employees to thrive once these new technologies are in place.
• Maintenance and Support: Someone in the organisation will have to manage this technology and troubleshoot when issues arise. Identify and properly train that person or team before all employees start using it. Create on-going training opportunities for the support team to ensure the technology scales along with the organisation to fully maximise its capabilities.

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Conclusion

Organisations are still in the early phases of adopting AI-powered tools in the workplace. As a result, the list of benefits and possibilities are constantly expanding. This huge potential means it’s even more important for leadership to have a clear understanding of why the organisation is implementing these tools. Ultimately, any technology is only as effective as the strategy behind it.

While the implications and applications of these technologies are constantly evolving, one constant is how these tools enhance the employee experience by giving them more time to focus on strategic initiatives. This shift fosters innovation and creates a more enriching work environment. Many employees are pleasantly surprised when they see that introducing AI-based technology in the workplace actually makes it more human.

People Strategy: from talent management to strategic workforce planning

What do HR leaders need to consider when creating, or recreating, their people strategy?

Leading organisations across the globe are forced to transform rapidly – and continuously – in order to remain purposeful, relevant and stay ahead of competition. This in turn means that the very definition of people strategy is itself evolving at pace. The role of HR leaders is changing too, and the number of challenges they are asked to solve is increasing. Most likely, when answers are found, the questions themselves will change.

Despite these complexities, it’s worth unpacking the concept of people strategy in terms of definitions, roles and challenges a little better.

People strategy: three definition that you need to look at

People strategy has a myriad of different definitions – it depends what you read and where you look. Top Employers Institute’s HR experts and auditors propose three broad lense

1. Invest in talent

Let’s first look at people strategy through an investment lens. In this sense, it is seen as a battles for talents. If an organisation matches its investment in talent to business objectives, it is more likely to get the right people with the right skills focused on the right initiatives. The return on investment that this then creates will drive the business forward and accelerate results.

2. Align hr strategy with business strategy

The second lens defines people strategy in relation to its alignment with business strategy. To think in terms of alignment allows us to ask important questions, such as “What capabilities do we need?” and “Where do we need them?” This simple approach sharpens our understanding of the gaps (or overlaps) in aligning our strategic workforce planning and other HR strategies to the business needs.

Our research shows that 97% Top Employers demonstrate the importance of aligning their people strategy with their business strategy. Yet it is worth noting that only 77% of Top Employers translate their people strategy into key HR metrics and related targets.

3. People strategy is the business strategy

The final lens moves beyond alignment to the complete integration of a people strategy within the business. By this definition, your people strategy IS the business strategy. Here, forward-looking leadership teams explicitly reject thinking about their people as assets.

Rather, it is the employees who are the “investors”: they call the shots and choose to invest their precious time, energy and talent. It is the organisation that needs to work hard to keep them engaged and motivated.

Leadership cannot take their talented employees’ hard work and commitment for granted.

A strategic role for the HR leader

The definition of people strategy vary greatly across organisations of different shapes and sizes, but research from the Top Employers Institute global survey shows that HR leaders are taking on a more strategic role. In the past, business strategy has been driven largely by the CEO and the CFO. This has been because the twin drivers of organisational success were firmly rooted in strategy and finance.

Now, however, organisations are increasingly moving from this “Dynamic Duo” to a “Transformative Trio”. According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), the CEO and CFO are being joined more and more regularly by a CHRO who together need “to fuse the strategic, financial and people issues into business strategy”.

Challenges and priorities in people strategy

To play their full role in the triangular alliance with CEO and CFO, there are four challenges that the CHRO needs to meet:

1. Being able to look ahead and identify strategic workforce challenges that will come about as a result of the changing business world.
2. Creating talent supply chains that can support innovation and growth.
3. Developing the talent management skills of business leaders.
4. Provide insights through greater use of metrics and analytics to show the effectiveness of their people strategy.

Significat data obtained from 1.679 certified Top Employers organisations globally, closely resembles the challenges set out in the HBR. When asked to rank their Top HR priorities the majority of Top Employers indicated:

1. Supporting cultural and organisational change;
2. The development of talent strategy;
3. Leadership development;

And the role of technology in providing metrics and analytics within all HR disciplines is, according to Top Employers Institute research, moving up the priority list for HR leaders as way of underpinning significant  changes in people strategy that we are seeing within so many of our Top Employer organisations. Amid the changing HR landscape, the need and the consequent move towards a broader and more holistic scope of people strategy is obvious.

It is no longer something that only focuses on talent management but encompasses strategic workforce planning to future-proof the skills and capabilities gaps and is supported by concrete metrics and the likes of predictive analytics.

As a result, HR leaders are also expected to devise and execute people strategies that align with the current and future business needs.