AI in Action: A New Paradigm for Employee Engagement

Did you know that according to Gallup’s?State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report?only 21% of employees worldwide are engaged with their work? That means the remaining 79% either don’t care or are actively disengaged — costing businesses billions each year in lost productivity, turnover costs and absenteeism.

As a business leader, you likely understand the significance of employee engagement to your company’s success. Engaged employees tend to be happier, more productive and support an environment of loyalty within an organization’s culture — plus they help attract and retain top talent!

How can employers achieve high levels of employee engagement in the current fast-paced and competitive business world? How can employees remain motivated, satisfied, and aligned with your company culture, vision, and values??

And what role does Artificial Intelligence (AI) play in our efforts?

AI isn’t limited to large corporations or tech-savvy people; it is also an extremely useful tool that People Leaders will rely on in greater significance to increase employee engagement across all size organizations and fields. From streamlining communication channels and offering personalized assistance to offering custom training opportunities and objective data reports — AI provides CHRO’s and People Executives with the resources necessary for building more engaged and empowered workforces.

In this post, you’ll gain an understanding of AI in employee engagement, its benefits for your workplace environment and best practices for implementing AI solutions. Furthermore, real life examples from some of the world’s top companies using AI are demonstrated which show its transformative power for increasing employee engagement and shaping workplace cultures.

“Harnessing machine learning can be transformational, but for it to be successful, enterprises need leadership from the top. This means understanding that when machine learning changes one part of the business — the product mix, for example — then other parts must also change. This can include everything from marketing and production to supply chain, and even hiring and incentive systems.” —?Erik Brynjolfsson?(Director of the MIT Initiative on the digital economy)

How AI Can Increase Employee Engagement

Artificial Intelligence can be leveraged in multiple ways to increase employee engagement in the workplace. Here are some common and useful applications of AI within workplace environments:

Chatbots and virtual assistants:?Bots and virtual assistants are software programs designed to interact with humans using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML). Chatbots/virtual assistants offer personalized assistance, answering frequently asked questions and making it simpler for employees to access information regarding benefits, training courses, performance reviews and more.

In the real world:?Phia?is an employee engagement chatbot developed by peopleHum that can simplify certain aspects of employee engagement. It can conduct surveys, update tasks, apply leave requests, answer FAQs and access data from various sources — it also has the capability of integration into popular platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and WhatsApp.

Paradox, an intelligent conversational AI platform designed to assist companies in hiring and retaining talent, offers another example. Paradox can automate tasks such as screening candidates for interviews, scheduling candidates, answering certain queries that arise during those interviews, sending reminders about follow up steps or collecting feedback; furthermore engaging employees from onboarding through career development to offboarding.

Chatbots and virtual assistants provide many advantages for employee engagement, including:

• Assigning work to virtual assistants can save employees both time and resources by automating repetitive and mundane tasks; increasing communication by offering immediate responses and improving collaboration; as well as saving employee attention spans by automating mundane and time consuming processes.
• Enhancing employee experience through personalized and relevant information delivery; increasing employee satisfaction by decreasing frustration and confusion.

However, chatbots and virtual assistants can present certain challenges, including:

• Ensuring data security and privacy by adhering to a set of clearly defined and attributed regulations and policies
• Maintaining accuracy and reliability by updating data sources and algorithms
• Align human and machine interactions by knowing when and how to escalate or refer issues.

“We’re going to see tremendous occupational shifts. Some jobs will climb while others decline. So how do we enable and support workers as they transition from occupation to occupation? We don’t do that very well. I worry about the skill shifts. Skill requirements are going to be substantial and how do we get there quickly enough?” —?James Manyika?(Chairman and Director Emeritus, McKinsey Global Institute and current Senior Vice President of Technology and Society at Google).

Personalized Training and Development

AI can also help customize training and development opportunities to the specific needs and preferences of employees. By analyzing data such as employee profiles, performance reviews, feedback surveys and learning histories it can provide personalized learning paths tailored specifically for each employee.

Real Case:

IBM Watson Talent’s?Framework?can assist employees in discovering skills gaps and career aspirations gaps, recommend personalized learning content tailored specifically towards meeting these goals and interests, track progress over time, as well as offer feedback along the way. Furthermore, this platform uses AI technology to track employee progress as they work toward meeting those aspirations goals.

Deloitte ConnectMe, an AI-powered platform which gives employees instant access to personalized learning resources 24/7 is another example. Additionally, Deloitte ConnectMe has the ability to link employees up with mentors, coaches, peers, and experts who can guide them along their learning journey — while rewarding employees with badges, points or certificates.

Training and development programs tailored specifically for each employee can bring multiple advantages that increase engagement, such as addressing skills gaps by developing competencies, increase employee retention through offering career growth opportunities, reduce employee disengagement through tailored learning styles, and nurturing an environment for continuous improvement measurements.

Performance Feedback using AI

AI can provide objective data and feedback that can aid managers in making more effective decisions about performance management and recognition. AI software can analyze employee surveys, performance reviews and other sources to detect patterns that would otherwise remain hidden to humans. Just keep in mind that you will likely want to anonymize your data before seeking insights.

Real Case:

Microsoft Viva?employs AI technology to assist managers in understanding how their teams collaborate, providing insight and suggestions on ways to increase productivity, engagement, and wellbeing for employees. In addition, this tool also assists managers in identifying top performers as well as potential leaders or at-risk staffers within an organization.

Performance management and recognition offer numerous advantages for employee engagement, such as:

• Enhancing employee performance by setting clear expectations, guidance, and support
• Improving feedback by offering timely, specific, constructive criticism on employee performances in real time
• Motivating employee recognition by offering meaningful, fair, and consistent recognition

However performance management and recognition also present various challenges, including: Ensuring data accuracy and validity by eliminating biases, errors, manipulation or over-dependence on data or automation; maintaining human touch by not over relying on data; respecting employee privacy by seeking consent, transparency and control over data collection and usage practices.

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning, as a dominant discipline within AI, is an amazing tool. In and of itself, it’s not good or bad. It’s not a magic solution. It isn’t the core of the problems in the world.” — Vivienne Ming (Executive Chair and Founder, Socos Labs)

Ensure a successful AI implementation

1. Determine Your Objectives:?Before using an AI solution or tool, it is critical that your objectives for employing it are clear. What goals and initiatives exist around employee engagement? Where are there pain points or challenges within your organization that need addressing? Additionally, how will you measure its success or measure its impact?
2. Select a AI Solution:?Once your objectives have been defined, the next step should be selecting an AI solution or tool which meets them. While there may be numerous AI products on the market today, not all will fit your use case exactly; when selecting your tool take into consideration features, functionality, cost, integration requirements and security as part of the decision-making process.
3. Integrate AI Tool(s) Into Existing Systems:?Once you’ve selected an artificial intelligence solution or tool, the next step should be determining the level with which you want (or can) to integrate it with all existing systems like HRIS, LMS or CRM to ensure data consistency across platforms as well as making access easier for employees who use different apps or devices to use AI Tools simultaneously.
4. Train Your Employees:?Once you’ve integrated an AI solution or tool into existing systems, it is critical that employees learn how to utilize it effectively. Explain its purpose, benefits, limitations and demonstrate its uses while showing its beneficial aspects such as improving work performance or experience for staff members. Provide resources like manuals, videos or FAQs so they may consult these sources if any questions or issues arise.
5. Measure Your Results:?Finally, it is important that your AI implementation results are measured. Track metrics like usage rates, satisfaction scores, engagement scores, productivity rates and turnover rates as indicators of its success. As part of your evaluation strategy for AI tools or solutions, compare results against baseline or benchmark measures established before using an AI tool/solution and identify areas for enhancement or improvement.

AI in Employee Engagement

Artificial intelligence holds great promise as an aid in employee engagement, and more companies will look toward adopting AI tools over the coming years, but it is important to maintain that it should be used with human interactions in mind rather than replacing it altogether.

Companies should strive to strike an appropriate balance between?technology and human interactions?to ensure employees feel valued and appreciated. While AI may help streamline administrative tasks and contribute to day-to-day people management duties, this must not come at the cost of manager-employee relationships — human leaders remain essential in making sure AI does not negatively affect employee engagement.

According to the Dale Carnegie article?“Why Trust in Senior Leaders is Key to Successful Digital Strategies”, 75% of employees said that using artificial intelligence in support of their work would increase trust between themselves and their immediate manager; 34% felt this same trust would increase as well if AI replaced some tasks on a jobsite. Employees want their managers to use AI as an adjunct tool rather than replacing human managers altogether; employees still require guidance, feedback, recognition and support from human managers as well as empathy, compassion and understanding from colleagues.

“AI can assist employers in building more engaged and productive workplaces, but it cannot replace human interaction as the source of?meaning?in work.” —?Theresa Fesinstine (Founder & CEO, peoplepower.ai)