How AI Transforms Hourly Workforce Engagement and Efficiency
Enhancing the hourly workforce with AI results in better engagement, retention & efficiency.
Discover how AI can enhance the hourly workforce, improving engagement, retention, and operational efficiency, says Desmond Lim, CEO of Workstream.
Artificial intelligence has seen a meteoric rise in popularity and variations during the past few months, which has led some to worry about its ability to replace human jobs. While these fears are not entirely unfounded, AI has the potential to benefit every worker in the U.S. economy – not replace them.
Even while AI is becoming widely used, there are several factors companies need to consider before implementing artificial intelligence into their business practices. Specifically, there are a handful of ways that HR leaders can use the technology to impact the nearly 82.3 million Americans over the age of 16 earning an hourly wage in today’s workforce.
What HR Leaders Should Consider Before Implementing AI
Before you jump and adopt the latest AI tool, it’s essential to stop and consider why you’re implementing it and what success looks like. Since AI’s rise to popularity, the biggest mistake companies commit is not properly vetting their selected AI programs to ensure they align with business and organizational objectives. Additionally, any AI technology you adopt must integrate with the existing programs and technologies you’ve previously invested in and implemented.
Here are some things to consider as you begin vetting AI programs:
- Ethical concerns: Contrary to popular belief, AI systems are not immune to biases. It all depends on the data they’re trained on. Including data from various demographic groups and identities enables your algorithm to be fair and impartial in hiring, promotion, and compensation processes. Adding in human oversight is another way to identify biases in the data early on. Ensure your development and implementation team represents diverse perspectives, and you’ll increase the chances your AI does, too.
- Training: AI tools are not always intuitive. More often than not, users barely scratch the surface of what it can do for them. Depending on what AI solution you’re implementing and its use case, you will need to train your team to make the most of the tool to reap the efficiency gains. For the hourly workforce, this could be identifying the most common questions workers ask their managers and developing answers or training processes to address the topic. It could also mean educating general managers on how to analyze the data generated by their AI to inform better decision-making.
- Testing: Before full-scale implementation, pilot AI in one store or location. This will enable you to understand how workers use the technology where they might need more training. It will also help you identify other opportunities to use the AI you have yet to consider. After your pilot period, ask both your hourly workers and managers for feedback, and dive into the data to see if there are any early findings around how AI impacted productivity. This can help you benchmark success when opening the program to other locations.
See More: Top 10 AI Development and Implementation Challenges
AI Applications in the Hourly Economy and Chatbots’ Ability to Enhance Engagement
It’s essential to get clear on your goals for AI and realize where it’s meant to replace human work and where it’s intended to enhance it. For HR leaders in the hourly economy, there are quite a few ways AI can benefit your company that you can begin to consider today, but the most important benefit is driving engagement, where AI chatbots can play a significant role.
Engaged employees have a reported 22% higher productivity than unengaged employees, according to Gallup, which requires positive exchanges in quality and quantity, and the latter is where AI can help HR teams when it comes to hiring. In the applicant stage, AI chatbots can serve as an extension of your recruiting team, answering candidate questions at all hours of the day or night so your hiring managers don’t have to. Some even offer multilingual chat capabilities, which enable applicants to ask and receive questions in any language they’re comfortable with, even if your team isn’t. This more natural chat application experience lets applicants thoroughly vet a job opportunity before applying, increasing the chances that they’re seriously interested in it in the long run.
Employee engagement and retention start before a worker begins their first day but continue throughout their employment. In addition to providing a better applicant-to-job match in the hiring stage, AI chatbots can support workers on the job. After an applicant is hired, AI can continue to serve as a 24/7 resource to address an employee’s specific questions or concerns in their preferred language without any social barriers that often discourage an employee from asking a manager particular questions. By quickly accessing everything from your employee handbook to your recipe book, AI can rapidly answer your employees’ questions on the job, giving them confidence, helping them perform their best, and increasing their job satisfaction, which are the critical elements to employee retention.
See More: Redefining Recruitment with Chatbots
What’s Still to Come for AI and the Hourly Workforce
AI is still in its infancy, but we project more benefits for the hourly economy are on the horizon. With the ever-changing aspects of the AI industry, it’s essential to evaluate new products as they come out and their potential impacts on your business. Doing so will ensure they properly align with your business objectives and employee needs. Below are two possible leading uses for AI in the hourly workforce based on future needs and the benefits they can bring.
- Connecting with multilingual applicants and employees: According to recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, foreign-born workers accounted for 18.1% of the total labor force. In comparison, their unemployment rate decreased to 3.4%, highlighting the growing percentage of U.S. workers utilizing English as a second language. While increased diversity is good for business and culture, it presents a significant obstacle when engaging with these employees and meeting their needs, which AI can assist exponentially. Chatbots are excellent tools, but just the beginning of AI’s capabilities.
- Employee scheduling: Many employees in the hourly economy have variable working schedules, and scheduling these employees is an ever-present challenge for managers and employees alike. AI has the potential to assist in schedule building and coordination, making sure that employee availability and consistency are maintained.
In the hourly economy, arguably more than anywhere else in the workforce, AI isn’t stealing jobs but enhancing them. When implemented correctly, AI can eliminate tedious tasks for HR teams, enable better applicant-to-job fit, boost employee retention, and help us identify business efficiencies far faster. As the backbone of our economy, the hourly workforce will reap some of the greatest benefits from adopting AI and being ready to embrace whatever it has in store.
However, before jumping head first, ensure your strategy, organization, and employees are well-prepared. Doing so will set your companies and HR departments up for success well into the future.
How can AI help enhance the hourly workforce’s engagement, retention, and efficiency? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
Image Source: Shutterstock
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