Employee surveys are as much useful as employees are genuine with their responses. They rely on the inputs given by employees and take them for granted to be genuine. Just pause for a moment and wonder, how many of these responses would correctly reflect the sentiment of the employees? Moreover, employee sentiment not only changes from day to day, but also on hourly basis, depending on the intensity of work that they are engrossed in. It is, therefore, not tough to guess that daily or weekly pulse surveys do not do as much benefit in understanding employee sentiment as they may promise to. And this is where companies end up losing on effective employee engagement.
But all’s not bad news! With the advancements happening in AI and analytics, the day is not far when organization will have a tab on employee sentiment every minute, every second. And don’t for a moment think that your HR officer is going to stare at you all the time for checking your mood. Artificial Intelligence for employee engagement is going to be the next big thing in the corporate space.
Starting from the day a team is formed for a project to the day it ends on whatever note, AI is going to be an unflinching buddy in the entire journey. Sensing the nerves of employees on a continuous basis is a herculean task. And employees don’t give so many visual clues, as they give verbal clues about their mood. The words that go in the emails, in the chat windows and even in the online posts on Yammer or internal social network say a lot about how the employee is feeling during certain time of the day. Text analytics and sentiment analytics are quite advanced these and there are tools to assess the levels of authenticity, annoyance and positivity by analyzing the keywords that go in the text. So, the next time you send a mail blasting one of your colleagues or type in something nasty in your Skype chat, the AI system may end up figuring out that you are stressed and you need some meditation or exercise to cool yourself down. Suddenly you may find a pop-up at the bottom-right of your screen or a message flashing on your phone screen, recommending few steps for stress management.
AI can also help to monitor employee behavior on a continuous basis and provide real-time insights into how the vital parameters of employee satisfaction or engagement are fluctuating. AI for employee engagement systems can even point out tendencies to quit in employees, which can sound an alert for HRs to take corrective action and improve their processes for improving employee retention programs. Such predictive insights can help HRs to adopt remedies to retain the best talents within the organization. If employees feel valued and feel that someone is taking care of them every moment, they will tend to stay longer in that positive atmosphere.
Historical data on employee behavior, performance trends and competencies can be instrumental in developing a behavioral map of the employee. So, the next time a team has to be formed, the AI systems will assess the pool of available resources, compare them against each other, find out the similarity in values and working style, and map out how their skills complement each other. This will help in creating productive teams through advanced analytics and artificial intelligence.
Productivity also takes a hit because of unnecessarily long list of meetings that eat into people’s already hectic schedule. AI systems on our local machines will analyze our historical data and figure out the time of day when we are most productive for individual work and when we sound most engaging in meetings. Accordingly, the system will block our calendars for meetings and calls with people. The list of the people will be figured out from the contents of our mail or the recipient list.
Even when an employee would show some abnormal signs in performance or team playing, instead of penalizing the resource, the AI system will bring out the appropriate L&D modules, stitch them together so that they sound like a coherent whole and that they fit into our schedule. This will help employees learn the most relevant behavioral skills on the go, and will also give them a regular check on their performance and conduct.
Now, though everything sounds so good with AI for employee engagement, I am sure the very obvious drawback must already have begun nagging your mind. Yes, it’s “privacy”! Doesn’t the entire idea of AI monitoring you sound like forced surveillance? Doesn’t it take away your liberty to be natural and genuine, since you would very cautious of each word you type, lest you are misjudged and are left prone to consequences? Well, yes it is a bit intrusive. But like every other such system, companies must give employees an option to willfully sign-up for this feature in the organization. Moreover, the employees must be able to turn this service on/off at their will anytime infinite number of times. Though, I am sure that some employees may still feel apprehensive about whether they are still under the lens even after manually turning the AI monitor off. Also, this technology may further push employees towards artifice, as they may not express their genuine feelings for any situation for the fear of being marked for undesirable behavior. And in case too many employees opt out of this service, then the infrastructure of AI for employee engagement will remain underutilized.
Though employee engagement remains to be one of the biggest challenges in HR space and though AI promises to address a few challenges associated to it, attitudinal response of employees to such systems remains to be seen. Such systems need to make employees feel more comfortable, rather than be further pushed into discomfort, and this will be the prime factor behind the success or failure in adoption of AI technology for employee engagement.
