“Artificial intelligence – the term is both inspiring and mystifying. These days, AI can also lead to superlative employee engagement.

One of the unique ability of humans is the way you respond and react to technological advances. Businesses need to shift from traditional modes of operations to modern, innovative and technology-oriented operations, and an intelligent use of AI in your HR processes can save time, money and human effort.

Employee engagement, in simple terms, is the enthusiasm with which employees go about doing their jobs. It is also a measure of motivation and commitment to the organization. The simplest way you can measure employee engagement is by using an employee engagement survey. However, an annual exercise rarely reflects the true picture. Since the picture is constantly changing, the results may differ from day to day. Hence the need to obtain real-time data on employee engagement is the order of the day. You can then respond expediently.

This process can easily be automated with the use of AI. Up to 50% of all executives and human resource professionals feel the need to adopt AI in their HR departments. These days, there are very effective tools in the market to manage resources, measure performance, predict trends and identify problems, and also gauge employee engagement.

As there is a direct link between employee engagement and performance, you need to customize a programme to fit the specific requirements of your business. Engagement at work, when viewed in its totality, covers every aspect of the employees work life. It shows how well you fit in an organization, how well you are working in a team, your focus on goals and prompt discharge of your duties.

AI has tremendous scope in implementing the vision of HR and its four pillars – Attract, Engage, Retain and Develop. Companies generate mountains of data pertaining to employee feedback, through surveys and social media platforms. It would be practically impossible to manually process all that data to draw insights on employee engagement. AI tools help in real-time analytics.

Advantages of using AI for Employee Engagement

Individualized training

Not all people learn things the same way. Some learn faster in large groups, while others may learn better in smaller groups. Some people learn visually whereas others may prefer the printed word. AI helps to decide the framework of courses and schedule lessons tailored to individual needs. Training can also be made interactive with real-life simulations. Analytics will later determine if a person needs to be re-trained in any particular skill.

Automating communication

The larger and more diverse the company, the more time gets spent on searching information. AI and NLP can help employees fish out the relevant information depending on context. Chatbots are programes that can simulate human conversations. This reduces the need for humans for managing communications. Chatbots can handle queries in bulk. This also makes the entire process interactive and fun. These technologies can even be used in pattern identification, behavioral analysis etc.

An equal platform for everyone

Humans have a tendency to hold prejudices and harbor biases. Unconsciously formed, the more number of people involved, the more complex is the situation. Favoritism is eliminated as a resume parser selects candidates based on skill and experience.  AI can recognize patterns of bias. AI tools can be very effective in removing such prejudices and building a bias-free work environment. In this way, you can close the diversity gap and redress grievances swiftly.

Role of AI in benefits and compensation

It can be tough to administer benefits and rewards in a multi-disciplinary business. Or there could be a need to make massive changes in your pay and compensation packages. Variable pay could replace fixed pay component. Personalized pay packages can become the norm. Just as you play a unique role in your company, your company also rewards you uniquely. Without technology, this could be a mammoth task. AI helps to administer pay and compensation with ease. Finally, it is very important to balance the human factor with technology. Embrace AI solutions for an edge over your competitors, but try not to go overboard, as all said and done, AI cannot completely eliminate the need for human intervention.