The risk that Artificial Intelligence (AI) may impact jobs is far outweighed by the gains it brings to the vast majority of employees. In a recent survey of about 3,300 US-based workers, the respondents said they expected AI would improve the efficiency of their tasks by 41 per cent. The study also found that employers were willing to pay substantially higher salaries to employees with AI skills, across functions. The premium was highest (47 per cent) for IT workers and ranged from 35-43 per cent for other employees. Salary and productivity aside, AI benefits employees by enhancing their experience at work in several ways.
As it happens, great employee experience is also in the interest of employers, since it is linked to 31 per cent higher revenue growth. Here are some ideas on how employers can leverage AI for this purpose.
First millennials and then the Covid-19 pandemic underscored the importance of people-centric employee experiences. Employers can use AI models to build employee profiles, acquire insights into what really matters to today’s employees, and initiate appropriate actions to meet those expectations, which can range across a sense of identity and purpose; social and emotional well-being; work-life balance; and having agency at work. Organisations can also use AI tools to gather and analyse feedback to understand employee sentiment, get ratings for training programmes and other initiatives, identify improvement areas, and more.
This applies equally to employees who work from home as to those who work from office. Remote workers face specific challenges, such as having to set up and manage IT infrastructure on their own, without expert assistance or service. AI can assist helpdesk agents in identifying common issues found in remote working environments and sharing the learnings from employee interactions to speed up problem diagnosis and resolution.