How AI and digitalisation are determining the future of workplace experience

From being perceived as a threat to human forcesto being seen as a supporting tool, AI has fundamentally changed the world of business. AI and digitisation have become unavoidable in the workplace, especially due to emerging workplace challenges like higher turnover, disengaged employees, and decreased productivity.
According to Gartner, the number of companies investing in AI increased by 270% between 2015 and 2019. The global AI market is valued at over $136 billion in 2022 and is estimated to grow by 38% in 2023. By 2030, the market is predicted to reach $1.81 trillion. These numbers make it obvious that the workplace looks fundamentally different today compared to a decade ago.

AI capabilities have become particularly critical in HR functioning. From planning processes and performance management to maintaining relationships, AI has not only unburdened HRs but is also making them more efficient and accurate in their actions.

Changing role of HR and workplace experience
Thanks to AI, creating a nurturing environment for top talents and delivering a stellar employee experience has now become much easier. While some HRs are losing competitive advantage by not adopting technological advancements like AI, others are already on the bandwagon. The result is a visible shift in all HR functions, including recruiting, engagement, and organisational decision-making.

The use of AI-powered recruiting tools saves time, money, and effort by integrating automation into the hiring process. From pre-screening potential candidates to analysing their sentiments on job descriptions, AI can assist HRs in every step of the hiring process. It can assist in screening resumes, reviewing referrals, and filtering profiles from a large pool of candidates to shortlist the best ones.

AI provides data-backed insights on employee performance as well as individual and team progress. It predicts and identifies areas of improvement, streamlines the organisational workflow, automates data collection and analysis, and gathers insights HRs wouldn’t have had access to before. With AI and predictive analytics, it is now possible to mine intensive data and analyse them with greater speed, leading to better and faster decision-making. Thus, making it easy for HRs to take action based on real numbers like- why engagement rates are going down or why an individual employee is becoming less engaged in the workplace.

With the increasing emphasis on creating an employee-focused workplace, businesses are trying their best to keep employees happy and engaged. Most of them are investing in taking measures, policies, and programs to improve their engagement levels. But only 32% of US employees are engaged, one of the reasons being the traditional approach of HRs.

Setting policies does not change the game unless the administration constantly analyses the numbers and actively works on the shortcomings. This is where AI comes in. It can scan through all employee data and help HR leaders gauge employee satisfaction, well-being, retention, or fatigue rates in a blink of an eye. It can measure and analyse employee sentiment and predict what exactly they need to do to improve engagement. HRs are only required to prioritise the issues that need attention and respond with action.

Adding a new dimension to employee wellness
The growing presence of AI is making wellness among employees achievable. It enables HRs to design customised well-being programs for employees depending on their present health condition, health goals, and preferences. The advanced AI-backed programs can also leverage the employees’ goals and challenges to increase participation and reward their achievements. This is something me and my team are also trying to achieve as well.

AI-powered wearables are efficiently helping employees track their health with step counts, heart rate, count of calories burnt, and such. AI has also been emerging as an effective solution in managing mental health issues among employees with real-time chatbot assistance.

L&D programs have also got the much-needed reboot with the intervention of AI. It is now possible to cater to each employee with a personalised learning program relevant to their individual needs. This content matching helps HRs create agile and adaptable development programs. In addition, it provides data that illustrates how it is contributing to the overall business performance. Coaching chatbots are there to offer leaders the additional support they need in their learning journey with real-time responses to the FAQs.

Organisations are also utilising AI coaches exponentially to help their managers engage with the team members as success coaches. These AI coaches can also assist leaders to better understand the psyche of their people by keeping track of the tone and frequency of communication.

To conclude, AI is no more the ‘future of the workplace.’ It's the present reality and is already occurring now. Its integration into HR administration will only make organisations perform better with up-to-date and error-free data. AI has, in fact, become a strategic asset in the hands of HRs for richer workflow innovations.

The writer is CTO & Co-founder – Vantage Circle.