Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is here to stay as a performance management trend, and implementing it into your processes will help your business stay ahead of the competition. Utilising AI in the workplace can help employees stay engaged, boost productivity, decrease skill gaps, and improve profitability.
Continue reading for tips and insights on why you should add AI to your business:
1. EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
While it may seem counterintuitive, employee engagement improves with the increased use of AI technology in the workplace. In fact, a recent survey on how AI empowers the employee journey found that more than 50% of workers felt confident in AI tools preventing bias on race, gender, and age.
Employees are also more likely to find AI-generated performance goals to be useful, even going so far as to trust AI more than human HR teams. AI allows employees to be more actively involved in their goal-setting and performance reflection with a specially tailored performance plan. When employees have a say in their career path and advancement, it leads to increased engagement because they feel like they have more control over their careers.
In a study conducted by ADP, employees who feel that there are disparities in equity and pay are 3.4 times less likely than their peers to be fully engaged with their work. Well-trained AI significantly reduces that aspect of the work environment, leading to increasingly engaged employees. AI can also improve engagement by streamlining time-consuming tasks so the employee can focus on the more critical tasks.
Another way to guarantee your employees are engaged is to protect their well-being. Using AI to alleviate burnout and boost morale ensures employees are taken care of while maintaining steady production. Some examples of how AI can help include:
- Sensing when employees are overworked and checking in with them
- Providing solutions to redistribute their workload
- Scheduling employee’s days to maximise their time
- Reminding employees to take breaks and recommending mindful and physical activities for a healthy work-life balance
2. BOOST PRODUCTIVITY
Productivity is one of the main reasons companies decide to invest in AI, and 45% of employees report that their productivity has improved since adopting AI tools and processes. Whether you’re looking to take monotonous tasks off your employees’ plates, gain insight into scheduling more effective meetings, or one of the many other capabilities, AI can help your company make the most of your time.
Some specific examples of how you can use AI in the workplace to boost productivity include:
- Note-taking: Enabling AI tools during meetings summarises talking points that you can save and refer back to, allowing employees to be more present and contribute in real time versus worrying about keeping a record.
- Translation: AI tools remove language barriers for global teams, making communication faster and more seamless.
- Quality: AI tools can detect and correct errors in data, products, communications, and more.
- Talent acquisition: 64% of HR professionals use AI tools to streamline talent acquisition efforts by letting AI tools create job descriptions, screen resumes, and automate talent screening processes.
Using AI tools to boost productivity is possible across a variety of industries. For example:
- Manufacturing: AI can review processes for errors and improvements to increase production on assembly lines.
- Healthcare: AI tools can help doctors diagnose illnesses and develop treatment plans.
- Finance: AI tools can alert customers to fraudulent activity, manage investments, and provide personalised advice.
- Retail: AI tools can share personalised product recommendations with customers, manage store inventory, and optimise pricing strategies.
AI is especially helpful when it comes to data. Not only can the technology help with data entry, but it also comes in handy for processing, analysis, and reporting. Instead of having employees spend hours crunching numbers and discovering key takeaways, let AI do the work for them. They can then put more effort into resolving issues and implementing new processes based on the data findings.
3. BRIDGE SKILL GAPS
Companies hire certain employees for many reasons, perhaps most importantly the skills they bring to the table. But what happens so they progress in their career?
It’s important for your employees to continue to learn and develop their skills. New technologies are released all the time, and learning the latest and greatest solutions for their specific role will help them stay at the top of their game and your business remain competitive. AI can help with this in a few different ways.
First, investing in a skill assessment platform can help your team determine where each employee is in their knowledge level. Then, AI learning platforms can create personalised lesson plans to bring each employee up to speed on the newest skills required to do their job. Employees will also be able to take lessons on other skills that interest them. For example, if a marketing specialist wants to learn more about coding, they could take coding lessons available to the development team.
Roughly 39% of HR professionals claim that AI makes it possible to create personalised learning plans for employees since AI systems can accommodate all learning styles and speeds. So, if a specific topic is taking longer for one employee to grasp, they can go through the lessons at a slower pace. Personalisation results in a narrowed skill gap between teams and the ability for all employees to keep their skills current.
4. IMPROVE COMPANY PROFITABILITY
With all the time saved and productivity boosted through AI use, businesses will likely see both savings and profit. According to research conducted by Fast Company, company profits could see an increase of $4.4 trillion per year by using AI. The real-time data AI provides and the opportunity for optimisation allows business leaders to make informed decisions when it comes to profitability.
Decision-making isn’t the only way AI can improve profitability and streamline processes. It can automatically parse resumes and cover letters to find qualified candidates who are capable of supporting business goals. According to a study by iSmartRecruit, 76% of HR leaders believe that prompt adoption of AI tools within the next two years is essential for long-term success.
Leaders can use AI technology to analyse data to identify cost-saving opportunities. The technology can also review the supply chain for your respective industry to predict any turns, allowing you to get ahead of any dips and prepare for high-demand periods.
CONCLUSION
Now that you know why you should add AI to your company’s workflow, it’s time for investment, implementation, and education. Be upfront and honest with your stakeholders as you roll out AI into the various parts of your business so they can prepare and ask any questions. Start in one area of the business that could benefit most from AI technology before moving on to the next. This will prevent you from overwhelming your teams and allow you to learn from each implementation.
Author: Taylor Pastrick – Senior Content Marketing Specialist, Siege Media
Photo credit: StockCake
