How HR Can Benefit From AI and Chatbots
Chatbots and artificial intelligence put together, form a small but significant step in revolutionizing the way enterprise solutions are supposed to be — simple, intuitive, and engaging.
Originally published in YourStory and VentureBeat.
Terrible user interface and complex designs have plagued enterprise tools for decades. How do we solve this problem? First, users need to gain confidence that the chatbot is able to assist them in a manner similar to that of a live agent. To do this, they must first give the bots a chance. Most enterprise businesses have been subjected to tools that have terrible user interface and complex designs. These tools are not only boring and bulky, but most of them require hours of training, on-boarding, and what-not before you can actually start using them. On average, a typical employee ends up spending 70–80% of their work time on outdated enterprise software. In this process, you eventually lose crucial work time in just figuring out the basic workflow. If the hours spent on enterprise software could be brought down without hampering the workflow, then it could be a huge boost in employee efficiency. This is 2016 and there ought to be a better way for enterprise businesses to get work done quickly and efficiently. Looks like bots might be the answer to this.
Less overhead for the HR and Managers, more productivity for the organization, and more engagement for the employees. That’s how bots and AI are making life simpler at workplace.
Simple and Efficient
Chatbots and artificial intelligence put together, form a small but significant step in revolutionizing the way enterprise solutions are supposed to be — simple, intuitive, and engaging. Bots have the ability to take away the challenges that come with accessing a new enterprise application by simplifying most of the use cases into user friendly interactions which are not only effective but also a lot more fun. 80% of businesses use some kind of a communication and collaboration platform on a daily basis. What makes bots special is that they can easily be integrated into some of the existing communication platforms that businesses already use, in order to give an in-app experience to its users.
Typical enterprise business is comprised of many areas but the one that is at the core of any business is HR, or you could say People Management. HR as an industry has evolved tremendously in the last few years but there has been little or no innovation in HR software. HR is a huge space with sections like Recruitment, Performance Management, Employee Engagement, Administration, Compensation, and Benefits. Let’s take Performance Management as an instance, and see how bots can really simplify the whole process.
Stale Annual Performance Reviews
Annual performance reviews, the most difficult and most important aspect of a manager’s role, forms the biggest chunk of this performance management process. The whole process is too cumbersome and organizations end up spending weeks or even months conducting these reviews. Employees have to fill out long questionnaires, surveys, and verbose forms at the end of the year, and it’s not at all fun. The data that is captured during this process is never real-time and is in most cases ineffective. On an average, the productivity of an organization goes down by 40% during this period as the whole workforce is preoccupied in filling out forms instead of focusing on the tasks in hand.
Senior Managers and HR get affected the most as they have to spend another 3–4 weeks in going over the collected data and analyze it, resulting in massive loss of productivity. Organizations like General Electric, Accenture, Adobe, Google, Eli Lilly are all getting rid of annual performance reviews since the data is expensive & not relevant as it is delivered quarterly or yearly. Case in point — Accenture, which spent $32 Million alone last year on their annual performance management process says, “The process is too heavy , too costly for the outcome, and the outcome is not that great.” 58 percent of business and HR leaders say that the performance management solutions they currently use are ineffective, drives no results, and they lose crucial work time in the process.
They can’t wait to get rid of their bulky tools and adopt a new and easy solution that not only saves a lot more time but also is super effective.
Conversational Interface At The Core
There is a huge need for simple, automated, and artificial intelligence powered solution in this industry which can facilitate real-time feedback collection, and that’s where bots can add tremendous value. The conversational interface design of the bot makes it a perfect solution to quickly collect feedback from employees in the most transparent way possible. Instead of forms, employees share their feedback through chat, which has proven to be a very effective way to ensure maximum participation from the millennial generation. The artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities built into bots help managers get actionable insights into employee’s performance without spending months in going over each and every feedback message that is collected. The advancement in natural language processing technology combined with sentiment analysis can help managers in finding easy-to-miss patterns hidden deep inside the data, which in turn helps in better workforce management.
The above image shows an AI powered assistant (Engazify bot) that automatically captures positive feedback from team conversations and also encourages employees to share feedback with their peers based on the company core values. No filling out forms, no processes, no boring emails — everything happens in real-time and inside a chat interface. The data that is captured is also delivered immediately to managers with an employee performance trend report. This simple change from the traditional approach can make organization more efficient by 200%. At the same time, since it is a lightweight model, bots reduce the cost by as much as 90% as compared to the traditional approach. These numbers are a clear indication that traditional processes are waiting to get revolutionized with the advent of bots and Artificial Intelligence.
During the last few months, while growing Engazify, we talked to a lot of enterprises to get a sense of where they are in terms of adopting these new age ways to solve the existing problems. The results were amazing as most Senior Managers and HR leaders were more than happy to welcome these new innovative ways to get work done. They can’t wait to get rid of their bulky tools and adopt a new and easy solution that not only saves a lot more time but also is super effective. Almost everyone agreed that artificial intelligence combined with deep machine learning and bot technology can add significant value to their organizations.
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What’s Next
Performance Management & Employee Engagement areas, the ones which we covered above, are definitely getting tremendous value out of bots and AI. But that’s not all, there are many more such processes that can easily be simplified with the help of bots.
For instance,
- Simplifying the recruitment process through artificial intelligence — you just tell the bot about a position you want to hire and it will get you the right suggestions, also help you chat with the candidate, and even interview the candidate right there and then.
- Managing expenses and payroll through a simple bot — no more filling out forms for recording conveyance charges, just tell the bot and it will go get your charges approved from the Manager.
- Managing the complete on-boarding flow for the new hires through a bot interaction — send out important company info through chat interface and let the bot act as a FAQ where the new hire can get answers to any possible question they might have.
Less overhead for the HR and Managers, more productivity for the organization, and more engagement for the employees. That’s how bots and AI are making life simpler at workplace.
The possibilities are endless and the market is ripe for innovation. It would be really interesting to see how this space evolves in the coming years. Good times ahead!
Siddharth Shekhawat is the Founder of Engazify, a performance management bot which facilitates real-time employee feedback and appreciation within organizations. With artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities built right into it, Engazify helps Managers & HR make sense of their employee performance data and gather actionable insights and trends.
