The Future Of Feedback: How Ai Can Foster A Human Connection At Work

For the time being, we can shelve the debate. After all, AI still has a great deal of maturing to do before it reaches its full potential. Skynet may not be poised to take over the planet, but artificial intelligence is already proving valuable in an unexpected business function: HR. At a glance, this may seem like a contradiction: how can robots possibly help with human issues? So far, the discussion surrounding AI has focused predominantly on how it can replace a raft of manual processes.

However, unbeknown to most, AI could also be the key to fostering deeper human connections in the workplace. Mistaking manual for human In order to improve the Employee experience, HR leaders need to understand how their staff are feeling on an on-going basis; they need a clear stream of information regarding motivation levels, engagement, drive and general job satisfaction. So far, attempts to gather information on Employee sentiment have been neither clear nor timely. In most cases, HR managers will send surveys to an entire staff-base requesting quick and honest completion. However, faced with over 50, sometimes even 100 questions to answer, Employees can quickly lose interest. What felt like a fun distraction and an opportunity to vent about cultural or managerial issues within the workplace fast becomes a monotonous exercise that no one can be bothered to fill in correctly. While the first 20 questions may return honest answers, the further 40 show the tell-tale signs of boredom whereby ‘sometimes’ or ‘unsure’ is the most popular choice.

Once complete, the results of the survey are analysed by business leaders – however, due to the amount of time it has taken to reach this stage, the conversation surrounding Employee engagement has, unsurprisingly, stalled. Employees naturally feel as though they took part in a tick-box exercise; a task that will never truly have an impact on their satisfaction in the workplace. This is the traditional method adopted by most organisations and yet, it’s an approach that feels far from “human”. Delivering valuable insight on the Employee experience Fortunately, recent developments in artificial intelligence are slowly but surely innovating the process of gathering and analysing Employee feedback. Already, a handful of organisations are reaping the benefits of real-time analysis, whereby team-level scores and trends do not take months to surface from the results of a survey. In turn, managers have been able to improve engagement in a timely manner, proving to Employees that their opinion can make a difference in the business.

Now, AI is taking this one step further, bringing a level of personalisation previously unimaginable. The majority of HR leaders would agree that the most meaningful insights about Employee’s experiences are drawn from their additional comments as opposed to the boxes they tick in a survey. So far, however, collating hundreds upon thousands of unique comments in order to understand the recurring, underlying issues within an organisation has proven to be an impossible task that most managers have sidestepped completely. AI in the form of natural language processing and machine learning solutions are capable of extracting meaning from open-ended feedback, identifying patterns that put Employees thoughts and feelings into context. Rather than simply looking at the quantitative data, artificial intelligence can help HR leaders to surface themes and trends in concrete detail across a multitude of Employee comments. Not only does this cut the time involved from days to mere seconds, it delivers more valuable insight that managers can put into action right away. AI programmes can seek to identify running themes within the individual organisation; it will tell a story unique to the workforce while reducing inaccuracy and bias that can come from manual assessment.

What’s more, by harnessing the mass amounts of data collected by the business, AI has the potential to predict upcoming problems on the horizon by analysing historic trends and connections. Yes, it removes the human element – but if diminishing human input at this level can help to inspire timely action from Employee feedback, it’s a shift that should be welcomed by HR departments across the world.