Artificial Intelligence (AI) is advancing at lightning pace, finding its way into experiences and daily life like never before. From improving the way we converse with technology to influencing our worldview, AI has a lot of power

And as we all know, with great power, comes great responsibility. This is no different for anyone working to include AI in their business strategy, whether it is customer experience or employee experience.

In this article, we explore how you can leverage AI to truly enhance your employee experience while also highlighting its core concerns.

How can AI enhance Employee Experience?

Artificial intelligence has the power to transform the way we work. With numerous applications in every aspect of the employee experience, when used right, AI can improve employee engagement and job satisfaction, enhance productivity, and boost efficiency!

Here are some ways in which AI can improve employee experience:

• Automate repetitive tasks
  Whether it’s responding to frequent queries, speeding up payroll calculations, sending out emails at the right time, or even sending notifications to management with regular reports – AI has got your back!
• Personalize training and development
  Not every employee is the same. And in the same vein, not every employee has the same strengths and weaknesses. So, why do they all receive the same training? AI can help personalize your organization’s training and development strategy based on individual employees’ strengths, weaknesses, and interests. This not only makes work a lot more engaging, but it also improves employee productivity and loyalty!
• Improve performance management
  Gamify the learning experience with AI. With the right tools, you can help employees track progress, identify areas of improvements, and even offer incentives as employees complete key milestones, keeping them more engaged and excited about the work they do. This in turn impacts the customer experience your employees provide, making AI the secret weapon to improving employee experience.
• Support employee wellbeing
  Make it easier for employees to take breaks by nudging them to do so. With the right input, AI can help employees find a balance that keeps them motivated in the long-run and combats burnout.
• Combat bias
  Sometimes, human bias can impact judgement. AI can be designed to be unbiased, helping you evaluate candidates and employees based on their merit. If used right, it can be a great tool to improve diversity and inclusivity in the workplace.

What are the ethical implications of AI in Employee Experience?

AI seems like the answer to all our concerns, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it isn’t as straightforward as that.

AI can be extremely powerful, but that power needs to be wielded with caution.

As businesses look to include AI into their employee experience strategy, it’s important to keep some ethical considerations in mind. Ensure you’re taking the right steps not just for your business, but also for your employees.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Micro-management
  Implementing AI to monitor employee activity can feel like an invasion of privacy. It can increase stress and impact employee performance in a bad way. Imagine software being used to track every keystroke, record your screen throughout your workday, monitor when you take breaks, and so on. It can make employees lose trust in their workplace and stress about the outcome – after all, while AI can be used to monitor “productivity”, every job is different. Consequently, productivity can look different for different people, too. With software like this, employees are always left feeling uncertain and micro-managed, with a lot more pressure to perform in the conventional way instead of actually doing good work!
• Manipulative behavior
  It can be tempting to increase productivity and output by having your employees work more. Using nudges to help employees take breaks is a great way to keep them engaged. But in the interest of work, businesses can reduce these nudges, inadvertently leading to overwork and burnout, directly impacting employee wellbeing.
• Discrimination
  AI can inherit biases based on all that it has learned and how it was programmed. If not monitored regularly, these biases can go unchecked. For example, AI might be trained to recognize effort over outcome. This might bias it in favor of newer or inexperienced employees who are learning the roles while marking experienced employees as less productive. Depending on the way it is programmed, it might also be biased in favor of certain cultures, races, or even ages, thereby impacting the DEI within an organization, reducing morale, and causing employees to leave.
• Lack of accountability
  Who do you blame? The buck often stops with AI, leading to a lack of accountability by leadership teams that implemented the solution in the first place. It’s important to hold businesses accountable to ensure regular monitoring, thereby reducing bias that could cause unfair practices to otherwise go unchecked.
• Unfair distribution of benefits
  This is yet another consequence of training. As mentioned above, different teams and individuals work differently. When AI is trained to provide benefits, recognitions, and incentives for certain kinds of goals, other teams might feel disheartened. For example, the Sales team has clear targets to achieve, whereas the legal team needs to be work with Sales and Marketing to identify which strategies work and which could have potential ramifications. And the Design team works with both Sales and Marketing to create collaterals – the demand for which is entirely dependent on the respective teams. If AI is trained to only respond to numerical achievements, the recognition for teams beyond Sales might be significantly impacted.

Artificial Intelligence opens the door to numerous opportunities, paving the way for improved efficiency, enhanced experiences, and creating a better lifestyle for all. However, all of its benefits are only applicable when AI technology is leveraged responsibly.

To better understand how your employees feel about using AI in EX, identify their interests and preferences as well as their concerns, and take the best next step – explore SogoEX!

We help you get to the heart of your employee pulse, empowering you to make informed decisions that make a difference.