AI and the Employee Experience
AI and the Employee Experience
Today, much of the discourse surrounding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in a business capacity focuses on AI’s transformative abilities in the realm of customer interactions. With the rise of large language models (LLMs, think ChatGPT) frontline customer service for many operations can be handled by an automated bot. Equally significant, however, is AI’s potential to impact a company’s employee experience, or EX.
While hiring and recruiting professionals can no more predict the future than anyone else, they should at least make an effort to cut through the media hype and understand the true scope of AI’s current abilities so that they can leverage these emergent tools as effectively as possible.
Addressing Employee Anxieties
The current AI buzz is an exciting prospect for business owners and entrepreneurs in many different lines of business. Workers in many industries, however, may have mixed feelings about some of the same technological advancements you’re excited about. Increased automation can be perceived as a threat to livelihoods, after all.
You can help ease your staff’s concerns by implementing a robust, company-wide AI policy. This document can address the ways in which your company will use AI, and the scope of that use, so that employees know exactly where things stand. As technology advances, you will likely need to update your AI policy, but it’s important to have it official and in writing.
It could be difficult to determine what exactly this policy will say and to what extent it is okay to use AI. These choices will vary from person to person and will depend on your industry, your business model, how much you want to invest in AI tools, and the ways in which AI can best support your staff.
AI at Work: Enhancing Efficiency and Automating Personalization
The integration of AI in the workplace today goes beyond the obvious application of automating mundane tasks (although that ability remains a primary selling point). AI-powered chatbots, for instance, can resolve common employee queries, just as they can do for customers, providing a more user-friendly front end for employee resources and documentation. These technologies can also be customized and personalized for each employee, effectively giving each member of your team their own digital assistant.
In fact, personalization is a critical component of building a positive employee experience. Advanced AI technologies can analyze individual preferences, needs, schedules, and at-work activities, then use this data intelligently in a variety of ways, such as by serving users appropriate training modules based on their job duties, or helping managers put together more effective schedules.
AI Creates More Efficient Employees
Increasing employee efficiency is, of course, another main benefit of integrating AI into your day-to-day business operations. Rather than taking jobs away from human workers, AI can be leveraged to take care of the simpler, more redundant parts of their workflows, freeing up your team to do what humans do best: creative problem-solving and important, detail-oriented tasks.
Never think of AI as a potential replacement for people. Instead, think of it as another tool that can increase your employees’ productivity and multiply their value to your operation, like a forklift or a laptop.
It’s worth noting that work-from-home and hybrid work models have also become a permanent reality in many modern workplaces. To respond to this new trend effectively, companies must ensure their employees’ experiences are consistent and seamless, regardless of their physical location. AI technologies are highly portable, often running through a cloud-based service, which makes them well-suited to help build this sense of consistency.
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