HR professionals have to deliver on many roles. They are the new health managers, trauma counselors and remote employment coordinators. New artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology help automate tasks so HR can focus on more skilled work. Richard Carriere, SVP & General Manager, CyberLink, talks about how enterprises can leverage AI technology and offerings to provide smarter, conflict-free employee health management.
The past two years’ events have stretched HR professionals to become health managers, trauma counselors, remote employment coordinators, and so much more. Heads of HR who were once able to focus more directly on employee well-being and job satisfaction now have to write company vaccine mandates and redesign office plans to meet social distancing health guidelines. The asks on our HR departments have never been so demanding, and never has the role of HR been so necessary.Â
In today’s frontline industries, workforce management now carries life or death consequences as individuals must rely on their employers to offer them a safe working environment despite the new risks abounding. Today, many employers across sectors are embarking on implementing their return to office plans, making clear the continuing necessity for risk-minimizing employee health management programs.Â
Challenges in Employee Health ManagementÂ
Protecting workers ultimately hinges on identifying & isolating sick employees so they can leave the workplace and quarantine without risk of virus spread to other employees. However, as those who have attempted programs to achieve this know all too well, it’s much easier said than done.Â
HR professionals must tackle the first challenge to accurately identify sick or non-health compliant employees without putting others at risk. Asking a health manager to take temperatures as employees enter each day puts that individual at a higher probability of contracting the virus. Once they do, they also interact with every staff member who enters, multiplying infection potential.Â
Another major obstacle is dealing with conflicts that arise from managing non-health-compliant staff. We’ve all seen a health monitoring employee addressing a non-masked or fever-running customer. The risk for interpersonal conflict regarding health mandates at any organization remains high.Â
Powering Intelligent Health Programs
TalmaOpens a new window , the largest airport services provider in Latin America, was faced with many of these same issues mentioned above while managing a large staff in a frontline industry during the height of the pandemic. As an airport services company, employees were in an environment where they came into contact with hundreds, if not thousands of people each day. Maintaining a consistent number of healthy employees was vital to smooth airport operations.Â
Talma turned to an AI-based solution, leveraging facial recognition to create a comprehensive employee health management system that helped identify sick individuals and promoted better safety culture in the workplace.Â
As employees enter the workspace, the facial recognition-powered system performs instant checks. First, identity verification ensures the individual showing up for work is, in fact, an employee. The system then checks for mask compliance, and the employee’s temperature is scanned. If they pass all checks, touchless access control grants them entry, reducing contact on shared surfaces and thus dramatically reducing the potential for virus transmission.Â
See More: How HR Can Use AI To Boost Employee Wellbeing
Automating this process decreases not only virus transmission risks, but also reduces the potential for conflict with non-health compliant employees. Employees who aren’t in compliance aren’t granted access to facilities and can take a sick day or return with a negative COVID test. The objectivity and accuracy of the system help reduce potential conflict or negotiation from employees to stay at work despite not following health & safety protocols.Â
Along with the HR benefits that AI technology like facial recognition provides, companies can also leverage the technology to protect their physical and virtual assets while safeguarding their employees’ personal data. With as little as one chance in a million of falsely recognizing the wrong individual, this technology offers far superior protection to physical spaces, equipment, goods, and data.Â
One common concern about facial recognition is that hackers could steal someone’s face and usurp their identity. Leading facial recognition solutions don’t store images of people’s faces in their databases. Instead, they create and use an encrypted template that contains several data points derived from images provided at registration. Nobody can make sense of these data points outside the system for which the template was created. And even if they could, it is impossible to recreate a face from the template’s data.Â
While some employees may have reservations about using emerging technology like facial recognition, HR can empower employees with the knowledge that it is designed to keep them safe and secure while also creating a new and convenient way for them to clock in and out, perform health checks, and make their jobs easier. HR must provide their employees with clear policies for using and implementing the technology while obtaining their consent to be enrolled into the system. Employees must have a transparent understanding of how the technology will be used and if and where their data will exist. With that knowledge, most employees will be relieved to have the technology implemented at their workplace.Â
Applying AI with Heart Â
Artificial intelligence is being readily adopted by businesses to fuel the bottom line. Executives don’t blink to make significant capital investments in AI to help make better supply chain predictions, replace administrative jobs or drive sales. In HR, AI helps identify and recruit new employees, can solve the logistical puzzles of managing increasingly popular flexible work arrangements and makes the overall time spent at work safer, personalized and more enjoyable. Where we’re skimping on investing in innovative technology, it is bettering the working environments of our employees.Â
HR keeps every business running, and it’s time we apply the benefits of advanced technologies like AI as readily to how we manage our employees and better their working environments as we do to increasing sales and improving the bottom line.Â
How does AI fit into your employee health management undertakings? Share with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to know all about it!