How Technology is Reshaping the Employee Experience

There’s been some rumblings about the influx of artificial intelligence (AI) not just in the workplace, but across daily life. AI has allowed businesses to automate routine tasks, optimize resource allocation and reduce waste. An extra special perk of AI, is that it allows us to process large amounts of information in a short time, providing insights on trends and behaviours. If AI is so great, then why is there so much anxiety around its increasing use?

Let’s consider this short interaction between my mom and I. If you are a student or an employee in a very demanding environment, you know how crucial it is to back-up your assignments and materials. Maybe you are too young to know the agony of your computer screen suddenly going blue or pitch black and your work disappearing into the abyss of your mainframe, but there was a time before autosave! Yet still, this possibility completely escaped me until one day my mom said “back-up your work”, to which I responded, “I don’t need to, it’s on the cloud” and she cheekily said “what if the cloud goes down”. It suddenly dawned on me that I had not used a thumb drive in a mighty long time! What even is a thumb drive? Do they still exist? What is a “cloud” and can my files just disappear? The point is I didn’t even realize how much my habits had changed and how dependent I was on technology.

Now, to answer my first question, the anxiety surrounding the increasing use of AI involves an existential crisis, echoed in the cries that AI will take our place in the world via our jobs, livelihood or money and maybe even our capacity to think critically. The recent “blackout” in Europe crippled the operations of hospitals, airports and other public transportation. Is this a foreshadowing of what is to come? There are jitters about widespread outages due to natural disasters, cyber attacks and power outages. At this point, it probably sounds like I’m against AI, but I promise I’m not. As with all things, the key is to strike a proper balance. While it can feel threatening to the human psyche, AI cannot fully replace humans.

Three reasons why AI cannot replace human beings

1. Lack of consciousness- AI cannot feel emotions, while it can use information to simulate reactions, it does not actually experience phenomena.

2. Social judgement- This connects to the abovementioned point. Since AI lacks self-awareness, it is difficult to interact with humans spontaneously. Think of a human who has little to no social skills who doesn’t understand sarcasm, facial expressions and other non-verbal cues. This makes it difficult for AI to overtake humans in jobs that require such skills.

3. Moral judgment- Difficulty with ethical decisions because it lacks the experience to understand human values and compassion. For example, in instances where there is a conflict between two morally sound options or taking the decision to do something immoral for a valid reason.

Benefits of AI in the workplace

Despite anxiety over the use of AI, it undeniably increases efficiency in many areas:

Customer Service: boost.ai is widely used to provide 24-hour customer service via chatbots and virtual assistants. 

Candidate screening: HireVue uses AI to interview and select candidates. HireVue uses voice and facial recognition software to rank candidates and determine who is ideal for a position. This helps to eliminate bias in the hiring and selection process.  

Employee development: Disco.co provides personalized modules, AI coaches and certification that align with employees’ career goals. 

Supply chain optimization: Blue Yonder Orchestrator uses generative AI to predict demand, improve inventory, respond to market disruption and make data driven decisions.

Virtual meeting assistants: Otter.ai and Firelies.ai provide transcription services for meetings. You can even ask it to create a summary of the meeting, generate main points or next steps.

Energy management: Schneider Electric uses AI to automate energy management. These AI systems monitor heating, cooling and other electronic systems in real time to enhance sustainability. We see these features in “smart” homes or factories.

Trend analysis: Crayon.co and ThoughtSpot uses AI to garner market insights and provides real-time updates on changes from your competitors and the wider market. Crayon.co filters information that is tailored to your needs, create summaries, analyze calls and create battlecard content for sales representatives.

Sentiment analysis: Quid Inc. uses ai to analyze texts such as social media posts or chatbox conversations to identify patterns and sentiments of customers or employees, which can be used to determine problem areas with products and services.

If you want to find more AI tools to increase productivity, click here.

While it is true that AI enhances our lives, we should exercise caution with how much we lean on artificial intelligence or wider technology, as the consequences may occur so seamlessly, that they go unnoticed until a wider systemic issue becomes an undeniable crisis. If we use AI with appropriate ethical guidelines and accountability, it is truly a marvel of human intelligence.