The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is already widespread in many businesses. In addition to the approved instances of its use, “shadow AI” — employees using AI tools informally — inevitably exist. While it sounds innovative, informal uses of AI lack oversight. And without proper guidance and controls, it can introduce unexpected risks to your business.

Fortunately, when rolled into a formal approach that leadership has adopted, AI offers many advantages. It can alleviate some employees’ workloads, reducing mundane or rote tasks and speeding resolution times for even very complex tasks. AI can also identify gaps in an individual’s knowledge and create personalized training opportunities.

The result can be a more satisfying way of working, less wasted time and a positive impact on reducing attrition – an important initiative for human resources (HR) leaders.

Developing AI Strategies for HR Teams

To gain a deeper understanding of the benefits and implications of using AI, HR teams need to be part of the larger organizational AI strategy for decision-making processes. For example, employees might be making major gains in productivity. But without the insights that AI can provide, you won’t see connections into how productivity fits with the success of other teams. Or you might not see how the job itself could change because of AI. And as roles change, new roles and associated goals need to be incorporated into departmental goals to validate important achievements.

Rolling AI-based services into your operations gives you an opportunity to better manage and measure the effectiveness of your processes. It allows you to spend more time understanding the analysis rather than actually collecting and collating data. And that can have a positive impact on your employees.

Empowering Employees and Reducing Attrition

Automating mundane tasks is a widespread and effective way to lessen employee frustrations and increase satisfaction rates. For an insurance agent, AI-driven systems can quickly retrieve policy details, auto-fill forms and detect errors, minimizing manual data entry. This speeds up the process for minor policy changes, enabling organizations to reduce wait times for customers.

In the public sector, virtual agents can assist applicants and reduce bottlenecks by answering questions and guiding them through forms, reducing errors and delays.

One use case is to automatically feed agents relevant information in real time, based on the need of the conversation they’re having. This assistive approach helps agents guide a customer through a solution without having to search through multiple sources for answers. This can reduce call time and the related frustration that long call times can cause agents and customers. 

Understanding the sentiment of a conversation can reduce workload stress in other ways, too.

Often known as “after call work,” businesses typically give agents or other employees a limited amount of time to write up their notes at the close of each interaction. That means employees must always be aware of how long they’re spending with each customer. And during very busy periods, trying to meet those goals can result in notes that aren’t clearly written or completed with the most important points.

AI can reduce that pressure. Rather than requiring fast typing to capture the main points of a conversation, AI tools provide a summary that can be simply reviewed by the employee for accuracy.

 Not only does this technology empower an employee to handle more interactions, but it can also reduce points of pressure and help retain talent. Think of how an employee feels when they’re able to focus on the meaning and intent of a conversation, rather than just trying to get through the interaction. The quality of the interaction itself can improve and enable a more empathic experience for the employee and the customer.

Enabling Career Progression and Growth 

High turnover rates or absenteeism can have many causes, including low employee engagement or gaps in performance support. But the right technology can prevent these issues.

The time savings AI enables gives employees more time to talk, with higher quality and more meaningful conversations. However, AI can also help them identify where they are weak, enable more training time and explore more areas for development. It assists in this by identifying skills gaps, recommending career moves based on personal interest and assigning relevant learning modules.

For customer service agents, this could be new skills that promote career progression in areas outside of the contact center. Rather than looking at AI to eliminate jobs, innovative companies are promoting it to support career growth — with personalized recommendations for training and upskilling.

Giving employees on-the-job experience with AI and developing AI skills can be a powerful motivator and open a door to career opportunities. It also allows employees to use their domain knowledge to come up with improvements in how you serve customers.

That’s possible because AI often functions as a complementary technology, running in parallel with systems that are specific to an industry or department, such as HR applications. In the case of the Genesys Cloud™ platform, AI can integrate directly with an HR application to enhance workforce management.

Prior to AI, HR was typically part of the “fix” process and not able to take action proactively. But with platforms like Genesys, HR can play a direct role in driving employee satisfaction improvements as data feeds directly into HR applications.

As the demand grows for AI skills in contact centers, employees can use modern tools to design better workflows, increase the scope of an existing job or move up to a supervisory role based on leadership potential.

Using AI and Automation for Insights in Supervisor Roles

Automating the analysis of recordings reduces the time needed for supervisors’ ongoing administrative tasks, which can reduce their stress as well. Online reporting gives them real-time insights to score interactions and understand the sentiment of customer conversations — from the individual to departmental level.

Supervisors often listen to a small sample of phone calls, which captures data from a fraction of activity. Automation not only captures all conversational data, but it also eliminates the time required to listen in.

Integrating these insights from AI with coaching and day-to-day interactions empowers supervisors to take the guesswork out of performance evaluations, making smarter and more impactful decisions much faster.

Identifying Employee Well-Being with AI-Driven Insights

While sentiment analysis is used to determine the emotional tone behind customer interactions, such as comments during support conversations, it’s also a powerful predictive tool that supervisors, management and HR departments can use to monitor the overall well-being of employees and identify those at risk.

Technology can help supervisors balance workloads and allow employees to manage their own schedules so they can improve their work-life balance and have better satisfaction. It gives HR the power to make decisions that directly improve employee well-being.

Based on a variety of analyses, supervisors can make meaningful adjustments to employee schedules, giving them flexibility and relief from stress. For example, an agent might have had an unusually large number of high-pressure interactions with customers one day, or worked extra hours, or have personal issues that temporarily impact their ability to carry out their jobs. With AI-driven recommendations for wellness programs, organizations are empowered to maintain a more satisfied workforce in the long term.

Making a Good Employee Experience Better 

If you discover uncontrolled and random use of AI among employees, blocking all access to it isn’t the answer. Employees have already found ways around roadblocks and you’re restricting potential benefits you have yet to understand.

AI can make a good employee experience better as it can help resolve many of the issues that get in the way of an engaged and satisfied workforce. Engaged employees can be more likely to deliver empathetic, high-quality service in a connected cycle of improvement: satisfied employees deliver better customer service, driving loyalty and business growth.

It’s time for HR to become part of the AI revolution, as it’s changing the way organizations work across public and private sectors. As you become more familiar with the advantages of AI in the quality and efficiency of services you deliver, you’ll likely discover even more use cases to support your teams and the business overall. AI helps you create an environment where employees are enabled to thrive. And when your employees thrive, so do your customers.

Discover how Genesys Cloud AI can help your organization improve operational efficiency, achieve faster ROI and improve engagement across teams. Read “Why companies choose Genesys Cloud for AI and automation” to learn more.

Khayleia Foy, Business Value Specialist at Genesys also contributed to this article.