Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Workforce Enablement

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies are becoming increasingly critical to business functions. This includes using artificial intelligence for workforce enablement, where generative AI (GenAI) and other AI tools are transforming workforce efficiency, satisfaction, accuracy, and success. “Current generative AI and other technologies have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today,” McKinsey reported in June 2023.

Now, AI is supporting the design of entirely new models for work across business roles and functions—including recruiting, marketing, training, and customer support, among others. In order to leverage these advantages, organizations must integrate AI-specific assets into their own workforce enablement strategy, giving them a competitive edge and a formal way to address emerging technologies in this exciting field.

In this article, we explore recent progress in leveraging artificial intelligence for workforce enablement. We identify the roles, functions, and industries that will be most impacted by AI, and provide guidance on how you can help your workforce adapt to a more effective and desirable AI-driven workplace.

How Progress in AI Has Begun Helping Workforces

In the early days of artificial intelligence, AI was confined to technical functions and esoteric roles—enterprise data analytics and computer science, for example. Now, we are entering an environment where human workers of all varieties work directly and collaboratively with AI-driven tools.

“AI has the potential to significantly impact the next generation of workers in both a positive and negative way as AI continues to become more progressive,” as Forbes describes. As humans and AI work more closely together, business strategy must directly address how these collaborations can contribute to better experiences and outcomes for individual employees, and not just the business.

This new focus is having a profound impact on how employers are recruiting and training employees, defining and measuring employee performance, and creating desirable work environments for existing and new generations of workers. In time, employers will clearly define their AI use cases upfront when recruiting and hiring new employees, helping to shape their expectations and understand how these use cases will impact their daily lives. But first, employers must ensure they can align and prepare workers with the proficiencies they will need to succeed in these roles.

Direct Human Interaction with GenAI

Any conversation today about artificial intelligence for workforce enablement must begin with a discussion about GenAI. “Generative AI has catapulted the topic of artificial intelligence to the forefront of workforce strategy,” Forrester describes. Employers who do not adopt or at least address GenAI formally will have to face the fact that employees will use it anyway, however they see fit.

The term “generative” refers to these AIs’ ability to generate content using natural-language prompts from human beings, identifying trends across vast amounts of data to create responses that sound genuinely human. In this way, GenAI works as a collaborator with humans, one that is almost human itself in the unique functions where it can provide value.

As generative AI (GenAI) grows in its general use, business leaders cannot delay formally aligning their workforce with their AI ambitions. Indeed, the universal nature of GenAI’s foundational technology means it has applications across business functions, such as:

• servicing customers
• writing code
• analyzing natural language content (e.g., legal documents)
• improving knowledge discovery and management
• predicting customer behavior

As we will discuss, each of these use cases requires that employees receive the right training and resources to interact with and work side by side with AI models.

Boosting Workforce Efficiency and Productivity

It may be that AI is at its best when its functionality supports human labor directly. For example, a recent MIT study found that using AI can boost worker productivity across functions from 20% to 70%. There are a variety of ways this is made possible, including:

• AI models that can recognize subtle patterns in human behavior and performance, allowing managers to better understand workflow and adjust processes accordingly.
• AI tools that bring together content from multiple sources into one unified location for employees to easily access and leverage.
• Intelligent automation systems that leverage machine learning (ML) algorithms to sort through data quickly and accurately.
• AI-driven analysis tools that provide more precise insights into customer behavior, trends, and preferences.

These AI use cases are helping employers better manage the workforce in real-time—allowing them to deploy resources faster and make more informed decisions about “where” and “how” employees should be working to increase productivity.

Improving Employee Engagement and Satisfaction

According to Gartner, creating a “human-centric work design” can improve employee “engagement, productivity, and well-being by giving employees more autonomy over their work and work environment. AI systems can help in this effort by providing employers with insight into how employees are responding to changes in the workplace.

For example, AI-enabled sentiment analysis can track how well a particular change is being received and make adjustments accordingly. This helps create an environment where employees have more influence over their work and can take part in initiatives that bring satisfaction as well as encourage collaboration.

AI applications in individuals’ workflows can dramatically improve employee engagement and satisfaction, also; that’s because AI can liberate them from their least-favorite tasks. “When machines take over dull or unpleasant tasks, people can be left with more interesting work that requires creativity, problem-solving, and collaborating with others.” as McKinsey described in July 2023.

Supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Now, AI can help employers close the gap between intention and execution when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. “[AI’s] impact on accessibility and equity in the workforce is profound,” says Forbes. “By leveraging AI technologies, organizations can address barriers, promote inclusivity, and create equal opportunities for individuals from diverse backgrounds.”

For example, employers can leverage AI to foster equity and inclusivity in recruitment processes; applying AI analytics to applications and resumes may reveal opportunities to provide equal access and consideration for all job seekers. But “while 84% of C-suite executives believe they must leverage AI to achieve their growth objectives, most haven’t put AI to work to advance growth through inclusion,” Accenture reports.

How to Prepare Your AI-Driven Workforce for Success

“If you aren’t already, you’ll soon be embedding AI in nearly all your enterprise workflows,” according to Forrester; but “to balance the disruptive potential of AI with the risks involved in deploying it requires a framework.” Here are some suggestions for how AI can support your workforce, and how to prepare them for this transition in a formal way.

1. Identify Correct and Incorrect Use Cases

Ever since ChatGPT became publicly available, a new trend has emerged among workforces: “BYOAI — or, “bring your own AI” — is already the reality, and it is now your job to help your company and employees optimize the value of AI while ensuring that it is being used safely and appropriately,” says Forrester in their July 2023 article.

Forbidding employees from using non-sanctioned tools won’t prevent employees from using them. Instead, business leaders must develop a formal strategy that provides purpose-built alternatives to all relevant employees. Employees will appreciate and use the resource, knowing it’s specific to their roles and it is a comparable or desirable alternative to publicly available tools such as ChatGPT.

2. Align AI Investments Directly with Workforce Benefits

Specific roles may utilize AI tools differently, with various potential outcomes that can help workers reach their unique targets. Consider the following roles and AI applications in each of those roles:

• Customer operations. AI-driven automation technologies can help customer service professionals respond to inquiries more quickly and accurately, thereby boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty. “One company with 5,000 customer service agents… increased issue resolution by 14% and reduced the time spent handling an issue by 9%” using generative AI, McKinsey reported in June 2023.
• Marketing and Sales. AI-driven personalization strategies help marketing and sales teams to better understand their target audiences and craft messages that are more likely to resonate. “Creating personalized communications for customers at scale becomes feasible using large language models (LLMs) and generative pretrained transformers (GPTs), changing how marketers develop their campaigns,” said Forrester in their July 2023 article.
• Software Engineering. AI-driven automation systems can help software engineers quickly sort through massive amounts of data, providing valuable insights that can be used to optimize code and boost performance. “One study found that software developers using Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot completed tasks 56% faster than those not using the tool,” McKinsey reported in June 2023.

Other roles that may benefit from artificial intelligence for workforce enablement include finance, HR, and operations, among others. By aligning AI investments with the needs of individual roles within the organization, business leaders can ensure that employees are leveraging the potential of AI in a meaningful way.

3. Train Employees in AI Best Practices

Employers must offer education and training resources to employees to ensure they understand AI applications and use them to their advantage. This begins by ensuring employees are comfortable with utilizing new technologies and understand the importance of data security.

Fortunately, AI itself is highly practical in supporting and even personalizing employee education and training. “AI LLMs… can hold multi-turn conversations (keeping the context of the topic in mind),” as Forrester describes in their July 2023 article. “These capabilities open up the possibility of individual GPT tutors that can personalize learning in real time based on the conversation that they have with one of your employees.”

4. Recruit and Hire Employees for New AI-Enabled Roles

In addition to preparing existing employees, employers must ensure new workers have the skills and competencies necessary in an AI-driven environment. Critically, that means ensuring employees will “get the most” from AI solutions rather than requiring that employees possess an in-depth understanding of AI technologies themselves.

5. Give Employees a “Voice” as Your Workforce Strategy Evolves

As with other technologies, “pigeonholing” employees into technology use that doesn’t aid them directly in their individual roles can lead to feelings of frustration and alienation, and even resignations. To ensure successful adoption and continued use, employers must conduct regular check-ins with employees to ensure AI applications are still relevant and beneficial.

At the same time, companies should give employees an opportunity to provide feedback on the current AI strategies being employed in their roles; this information can help inform decision makers as they look for ways to improve the AI experiences of their workforces.

The Next Chapter in Workforce AI

We are at only the dawn of a new industrial revolution, one where new workforce applications for AI will emerge rapidly and dramatically boost productivity and better work experiences in the years to come. It is the companies that invest and prepare their workforces now that will have the greatest advantage.

Partner with Semifly to Start Using Artificial Intelligence for Workforce Enablement

Semifly supports companies across industries as they align new AI investments with workforce success. Through a combination of consulting and cloud-based technology integration capabilities, Semifly can help you optimize your workforce in an AI-driven environment. Contact us directly to learn more.