We have Alexa at our homes, Siri on our phones, and use various support bots when we shop online. Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) has penetrated almost every aspect of our lives—it is no longer science fiction. In fact, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, referred to AI as “one of the most profound technologies we are working on, as important or more than fire and electricity”.
Employee experience though had been largely untouched by AI. COVID-19 changed that. It became clear that traditional 1:1 connects and non-personalized annual surveys would not cut it in a remote setup. Organizations had to turn to and adopt conversational AI to transform employee experience at scale.
Why has employee feedback failed in the past?
Most managers today either do not view or act on the data received from their employee surveys. Similarly, a considerable number of employees who had done an engagement survey told us it made no difference to their working lives.
If I were to draw a parallel, traditional employee surveys are like sending a message in a bottle. Employees pour their heart into writing it only to have it wash up on shore weeks later and be tossed aside by an unwitting stranger who knows very little about their journey.
These surveys are ineffective because they’re not real-time, take weeks or months to complete, and are anonymous—making employees lose interest in sharing any feedback. Even if they do share their feedback, it’s superficial. To top that off, the manual work involved makes them impractical to be implemented on a large scale.
Employee experience (EX) – a topic that had been a part of sideline conversations – suddenly came to the forefront with the onset of Covid-19. With the basic fabric of workplaces transforming, HR leaders were now forced to start thinking about EX in their effort to build people-first cultures. And conversational AI formed an important role in this inevitable change.
Myth: Employees will not talk to a chatbot
It’s a popular belief that people do not like talking to chatbots. That may not necessarily be true. In a survey about chatbots, 80% of respondents said they had interacted with one before, and 68% of them said they liked that the chatbot answered them quickly. In fact, getting a quick response is the number one reason for people to talk to chatbots.
Employees want to feel heard and valued. They want their issues to be addressed and queries to be answered. If a chatbot can help them get what they need, they’re happy to talk to it. And that’s where Conversational AI can create immense value.
AI-driven chatbots can understand natural language, and that means understanding the context of an employee’s needs. They are trained to understand the conversational input they receive, so they can adapt their responses to different patterns and new situations.
All the challenges that couldn’t be solved through the manual way of collecting employee feedback can now be solved with Conversational AI. It humanizes employee interactions and gives them an experience that feels natural and intuitive. It personalizes questions based on an individual employee’s journey in the organisation to make the questions relevant for an employee. This contextualization also induces trust in employees and improves the quality of the responses. Its conversational approach and two-way interaction increase engagement and response rate among employees.
HR leaders can know what their employees are experiencing in real-time and at scale. We’ve seen employee response rates as high as 91% with Conversational AI.
Strategic decision-making for CHROs
In the long run, there is one more added advantage of adopting Conversational AI to measure employee experience. It provides CHROs with a wealth of information to study systems and processes, identify patterns, and take data-led decisions.
Conversational AI allows HR leaders to put into practice people analytics and learn things they were not able to do earlier. They can learn when employees are at risk of leaving and address their concerns. This can reduce the employee turnover rate and reduce the backfill costs involved.
The data collected can also be used by CHROs to understand the engagement and sentiment of employees at every level. This can help them slice and dice data and come up with creative ways to improve employee engagement, increase productivity and optimize workforce planning.
By shifting focus away from transactional employee information and focusing on deeper employee insights, CHROs can develop a people-first culture that will earn the trust of both employees and C-suite members.
Conversational AI: The future of EX
The benefits of AI in employee experience are clear. It makes the overall employee experience more personal while leveling the playing field no matter where your employees work or what device they use. The adoption rates of conversational AI have also been encouraging and show every sign of accelerating.
Conversational AI has the potential to fundamentally reshape the way organizations engage with their employees and it’s up to us – people leaders – to be receptive and take advantage of this new opportunity. Companies that implement AI and personalized employee experience will gain a competitive edge. The future belongs to companies that know how to keep their employees happy, engaged, and creative.
