The culture of work continues to evolve, and the pandemic exposed us to both hybrid and remote scenarios at a massive scale, creating new routes to culture, performance and churn. A recent PWC studyOpens a new window explains that nearly a fifth of all workers now seek only a remote work scenario, and those who look to hybrid solutions are all over the map with their expectations of flexibility.
Employers face more than just the problem of hybrid or flexible work; churn and the labor pipeline are also challenging workflows, and nearly nine in 10 executives say their company is experiencing higher turnover than normal. And while solutions like faster hiring, cultural support for employees and higher wages feel like stopgaps, one system allows for building a strong internal service base and predictive insights for a company’s human resources that help executives bring longer-term changes to the table.
AI Virtual Agents Are Valuable for HR
Artificial intelligence provides initial value, not unlike the prized institutional knowledge of a long-tenured employee who has “seen it all.†Experience cumulates for artificial intelligence, and that data becomes a resource for decision making. What makes machine learning and deployment of decisions from an artificial intelligence agent different is its infinite ability to add experiences and cases.
For an AI virtual assistant that serves enterprise needs across large corporations, it gains infinite examples of customer service needs — from time off requests to common questions about benefits forms, virtual assistants from not only its primary company’s most popular queries, but also from queries across any platform where it is deployed. This massive library of examples and experiences, processed at extraordinary speeds, gives the AI an incredible learning advantage.
AI also frees human HR labor by thriving on inputs like form fills and automated documents. Already popular in contemporary HR workflows, new enterprise software options have enabled the digital transformation of corporate workflow to provide staff with intelligent form fills and intuitive information collection. With these processes in place, delivering data to the AI is easier than ever.
See More: How HR Can Use AI To Boost Employee Wellbeing
Data Delivers Intelligence for Human Decision Makers
As an AI service agent learns, there is no limit to how we ask it to categorize its knowledge. At the most basic level, it can tally and recognize that the primary query of an employee base is benefits forms, or it can recognize peak times where time-off requests flow in. Pair that with other data points like an all-company meeting or the implementation of other new systems or processes, and an AI service agent now delivers aggregated data on employee behavior. This gives HR staff an effective data point to implement programming and training and bring to the leadership table as one measure of corporate health.
One step further, the HR team can begin to implement data collection through the AI service agent that helps to recognize who is most frequently logging in to use training services or other resources. The team can reward that use, use that data to tweak or modify training for effectiveness, or temperature-check overall productivity.
Service Agents Can Help Predict Churn
With so many executives concerned about talent flow in this unpredictable labor environment, using AI service agents for HR services brings the added benefit of valuing the sentiment of employee queries. At the core, the tone in requests can be logged to assess frustration or satisfaction with the service agent’s ability to solve the queries employees bring. Certain words, time engaged in the query or even basics like all caps and mechanics like exclamation points are certainly sentiment indicators. But beyond that, queries and patterns surrounding benefits questions, checking for vestment, promotion schedules, vacation accrual or rollover, and cash-out policies also become data points that an AI service agent can track for patterning. It can pair any series of requests to resignations and begin to track an employee exit pattern, giving executives measurable moments to intervene and solve employee needs.
Going Beyond Corporate Convenience
Of course, much of the learning AI service agents bring to an organization becomes data for executives to create policy decisions and pivot production or workflow for maximum cost-effectiveness. In human resources, however, employee satisfaction is a documented data point in the overall return on investment in any company. AI service agents can also provide value and increased satisfaction to employees.
Automated form fills and pre-fill knowledge certainly help make employee rote processes easier. But AI service agents can also intervene for employees, sending reminders and easy access to regular form updates or registrations. Annual health care opt-ins, for example, may no longer require constant reminder memos from the HR staff if an intelligent agent can provide each employee with specific questions and avenues related to their plans and preferences, reminding them and pulling them directly into the process with their own choices and information. Creating this ease increases compliance and completion of many of a company’s required engagements. From health benefits to systems training to required learning and development courses, an AI service agent can make the administrative portions of an employee’s engagement simpler, creating more satisfaction and overall success.
Artificial intelligence has an additional benefit researchers are just beginning to uncover. AI doesn’t gossip. While HR professionals are trained and trusted ombudspersons in a company, some employees report greater confidence in registering anonymized feedback, queries or complaints through a virtual assistant than through an HR representative. The belief that questions about maternity leave, FEMA or other personal insurance needs are less prone to bias or discovery is also driving acceptance by employees of virtual assistants in HR.
The Bottom Line
Artificial intelligence virtual assistants and bots don’t replace the value of human capital. Quite the opposite, these agents combine and analyze data in ways that human agents cannot, freeing the human agents to evaluate more thoroughly the company’s offerings, employee satisfaction and culture and take actions that support business growth across the enterprise. As companies continue to allocate budgets to internal digital transformation, using virtual assistants and artificial intelligence for internal service and processes is a priority that benefits the bottom line.
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