Employee experience covers a wide range of areas: personalised learning paths, career growth plans, performance feedback, and organisational feedback to improve the work environment and employee retention. AI can be a valuable addition to employee experience strategies for a number of reasons: personalisation, automation, and collaboration.
“Employees are at the heart of any organization. After all, a highly motivated and engaged workforce drives business growth. To change radically, businesses need new ways of thinking and adopting new approaches to work. One clear way to do this is to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can help create a new future of work that's more flexible, diverse and well-being-oriented than ever before.” - Forbes
Although there are many arguments against AI, there are a lot of organisations that see AI as a co-pilot to their talent retention and employee experience strategies. Instead of seeing AI as the enemy, it can be used for good!
What role can AI play in improving employee experience?
Personalised learning plans: The beauty of data enables AI to work incredibly quickly, utilising said data to create learning plans for employees that are personalised based on their experience, as well as areas that they need to improve on. Having a one-size-fits-all approach to training and development should be seen as a thing of the past, and creating L&D plans that are tailored is crucial.
Career growth plans: Along with personalised learning plans, career growth plans can fall into the same bracket. However, career growth plans are more aligned to the succession planning and growth of the whole business, rather than a personalised learning plan for training and development purposes.
Performance feedback: A huge benefit of AI is the automation opportunities that it offers. Whether it’s scheduling out performance feedback at scale or simply organising next steps for reviews - AI enables you to elevate your performance feedback due to the multiple features platforms offer.
Employee onboarding: Onboarding can be a laborious task, and also has the potential to be clunky and ineffective over time.
“AI algorithms can analyze employee feedback, surveys, and sentiment data to gauge the overall employee experience during onboarding. This allows HR managers to identify any potential issues or areas of improvement and take proactive measures to address them” - [Source]
This gives businesses the power to continuously improve their onboarding efforts. For example, let’s say a platform allows for small feedback touchpoints throughout the onboarding process - this can then be used for the next cohort of new employees to incrementally improve the onboarding experience. Additionally, it’s important to note that feedback will not always be negative, and AI is also a great way to gauge what you’re already doing well, not just areas of improvement!
Organisational feedback: Finally, AI can be a valuable tool for organisational feedback, which will enhance retention as a by-product. AI can empower employees to give their feedback frequently, which encourages honesty as well as gives leaders and business owners valuable information on how their organisation is operating (and what their employees really think).
“AI allows companies to optimize their workflows, ensuring they run efficiently and effectively. AI-based tools can help businesses streamline their processes and systems by providing insights into operations’ functions and identifying improvement areas.” - [Source]
Although this list isn’t exhaustive, it’s clear that AI can revolutionise (and streamline) many areas of employee experience, thus improving employee engagement and retention as a by-product.
What does this also mean for company culture?
Having a positive and fulfilling work environment is paramount, and AI can have a direct impact on this as well as your company culture. We’ve already spoken about how AI tools can directly impact employees as well as aid leaders and business owners to operate in a more streamlined and data-driven way - but how can AI actually improve company culture?
The bottom line - or main motivator - which keeps employees happy aside from work-life balance is feeling like they have a voice in the workplace. In larger environments, this can often become harder as there are more layers to permeate to get to management and have your voice heard.
If you give employees AI-powered tools that give them control and give them an opportunity to voice their feedback regularly (whether this is good or bad) then you are giving them a platform to be valued. This will directly impact your culture as your employee satisfaction will be boosted, and your working environment will become more harmonious and collaborative as centralised communication points are available to all!
However, as the old saying goes - “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”: Don’t force AI tools upon your workforce if you already have great systems in place. See AI as an addition rather than a replacement, and don’t assume that you have to implement AI tools just because everybody else is doing so. Shop around, see what is out there - and make a measured judgement on what will help (rather than hinder) your workforce when looking at AI holistically.
