5 Critical Steps to Boost People Productivity Right Now At Work

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“Your estimated wait time: 45 minutes.” It’s the last thing a customer wants to hear.

I found myself in that frustrating spot recently, when I had to call to redeem credit for a flight canceled years ago due to Covid. But then I was given another option: Chat with an AI agent. Five minutes later, the problem was solved.

That, in a nutshell, is the existential challenge facing businesses right now.??

Customers’ expectations are higher than ever. New tech is changing everything. But at the same time, companies are wrestling with a “performance erosion crisis” — flatlining productivity, rising costs, poor employee engagement and a talent shortage have stacked the odds against them. Adding fuel to the fire: AI, which is poised to transform work beyond recognition.?

So, how can companies fight back against performance erosion? It’s all about connecting their people with business results — and making AI part of the solution. Taking these five steps will help turn the tide.

1. It’s AI or bust

The fundamental problem that businesses must solve today? Driving productivity by doing more with less. The good news: That’s exactly what AI does.??

Research shows that when workers use AI as a copilot to help them out, it can boost productivity by two-thirds on average. Even better, the gains are bigger for more complex tasks, and less-skilled employees raise their game the most.?

But capitalizing on AI isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. Companies can’t just hope for the best. The AI adoption process requires monitoring, testing and iteration. It's key to track team performance “before” and “after” AI implementation, which is exactly where people analytics can help.

At a call center, for instance, that means plugging into employee data such as number of calls handled, wait times and customer satisfaction. By seeing how each team member impacts the business, leadership can decide what changes they should make to optimize productivity with AI, which could mean keeping certain employees and replacing others with virtual agents.

2. Expect more of the CHRO

As performance erosion takes hold, many chief human resources officers (CHROs) remain stuck in the past. At too many companies, the HR department is still a glorified help desk — an outlet for employee questions and grievances, from vacation days to pay grades, but not a driver of business results.?

That no longer cuts it. Today, the CHRO’s real job should be to make people more productive and redeploy them the right way.?

To do that, they need a better window into how people actually impact business results today — so they can make suggestions to drive productivity tomorrow. That calls for using new AI tools to connect people data with results. Building stronger ties with the rest of the C-suite is crucial, too. The CHRO must share actionable insights with fellow executives on a regular basis, in the language of business, not HR.?

3. Embrace reskilling?

I won’t candy-coat it: Thanks to AI and other tech disruption, roles will be eliminated in the future. Four out of 10 companies plan to replace workers with AI during the year ahead, one survey found. Besides being transparent with their employees about what’s coming, businesses need to be ready. What will you do with the people who face obsolescence?

What’s critical for employers here is to have a firm grasp on the underlying skill sets of their team members, and then to chart out a plan to reskill and redirect that talent.?

A great example here is DHL, which is upskilling some 160,000 employees through a new career marketplace that uses AI to match workers and their skills with internal job and growth opportunities. For the German logistics giant, it’s a bid to retain talent.?

Of course, the onus is on employees too. Besides a sense of personal responsibility, they need a growth mindset that frames AI as an opportunity to be more productive.

4. Engage employees at a precarious time

All of this adds up to tremendous uncertainty for workers. Three-quarters are fatigued from change, and roughly the same share are disengaged. It’s a problem that won’t be solved by just sending out another employee survey.

Companies will need to retain and engage their best employees more than ever — and know the difference between those who are fully bought in and those who are one step out the door. After all, highly engaged teams are almost 25% more profitable on average.

For the frontline managers who?bear the brunt of this challenge, the solution to keeping employees engaged starts with better visibility into team members’ contributions and buy-in. Here, AI can also play a key role, offering a real-time window into workers’ engagement that old-fashioned performance reports and surveys never could.

5. Connect people data with business data

For businesses tackling performance erosion, all roads lead back to one thing: finding ways to close the loop between people data (the performance and contributions of team members) and business data (bottom-line metrics like revenue, customer satisfaction and profitability.). Historically, this information has been siloed. People data has been seen as the exclusive property of HR, for instance. Sales and marketing jealously guard customer data. The CFO restricts access to financial metrics, and so on.

Enough already. To understand productivity, you need to bring people and business data together. That starts with democratizing access: rescuing data from locked spreadsheets and hard drives and using it to make business insights accessible to the managers who need them. The good news here is that AI and natural language processing are making this dream possible. Who are our top salespeople? Who has one foot out the door? Where are we bleeding revenue? Tapping people and business data, new AI platforms can instantly answer those questions in plain language.?

This year and beyond, the performance erosion crisis will remain a challenge for companies of all stripes. Fortunately, they can push back and regain lost ground — by connecting the dots between people and business outcomes. With a little help from AI, higher productivity needn’t be a thing of the past.?

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you’re seeing in your own industry, so please share your thoughts into the comments below. For more news and ideas around people data in the workplace, be sure to subscribe.