By Chidambaram Ganapathi, Associate Vice President and Practice Head, Digital Workplace Services, Infosys
A recent study on the state of the global workplace indicates there is much room for improvement, especially on the employee engagement front. Barely one in four employees (23 percent) feels involved and enthusiastic at work; 62 percent are not engaged, and 15 percent are actively disengaged and on the hunt for a new job. With 75 percent of companies struggling to fill roles in 2024, the last thing they need is employee churn.
For organisations that are sincere about reversing this scenario, help is at hand. In fact, right inside their digital workplaces. By leveraging various technologies to their full potential, employers can dramatically improve the workplace experience to benefit both their employees and their organisations.
From productivity and efficiency to amplified human potential
As a first step, they should attack tedium. Employees waste a lot of time in routine, repetitive tasks that add little value, from hunting for documents to summarising discussions and filing reports.
Tasks like these can be easily automated to unburden employees and make them more productive and efficient; what’s more, the use of generative AI can also bring about significant improvement – as much as 40 percent – on the performance of highly-skilled workers. Freed of repetitive, non-value adding work, employees can spend more time on core/ strategic jobs, and on uniquely human pursuits, such as finding and framing new problems, mentoring co-workers, or working on innovative ideas, which they would find more engaging. Apart from providing digital assistants to boost workforce productivity, employers can reimagine ways of working, for example, by deploying AI co-pilots to support employees in decision-making.
Foster collaboration and inclusion in the hybrid work model with AI
In survey after survey, employees have voiced their preference for hybrid or remote work. However, employers offering flexible work options face a challenge of a different kind, namely, enhancing the experience of remote workers who, besides missing out on office camaraderie, face risks, such as proximity bias (a bias in favor of workers who are seen every day in person), isolation, burnout, and mental health issues. Fortunately, AI is coming to the rescue by providing powerful communication and real-time collaboration solutions, ranging from document sharing and project management tools to virtual whiteboards that enable remote workers to participate in team projects and remain connected with colleagues despite being separated by distance. AI-enhanced video conferencing solutions can fix common problems of home office environments, such as poor connectivity, low light, echo and background noise, to improve meeting quality and reduce physical fatigue of remote workers. Other AI tools can track the health parameters of work-from-home employees by monitoring the data feeds from their fitness tracking devices, and issue reminders to stretch, walk around, or take a break from the screen.
Create an adaptive environment
Another way to improve employee experience is by providing an adaptive work environment. Learning and development is a great example: with skills becoming outdated at an accelerating pace, employees are looking at changing roles or even professions several times during their careers. Different employees have different needs for skills that they must acquire or refresh on an ongoing basis. Traditional classroom-based training, with its standardized curriculum and fixed timings, is clearly unsuited to this. The answer lies in an AI-enabled learning platform that employees can access at any time on a device of their choice, to pick and choose modules that they can learn on their own, at their own pace. Indeed, the platform is so flexible that employees can even adapt the program to their learning style or desired outcome (learn something new, refresh existing knowledge, qualify for certification etc.). An adaptive program not only fulfils the specific learning needs of every employee, but also makes them feel that they are understood and valued by the organisation.
Summing up
There’s an ongoing tussle between companies struggling to meet their talent needs, and disengaged workers looking to quit their jobs. By leveraging various digital workplace technologies, organisations can improve employee productivity, collaboration, and experience to build a highly engaged workforce. Engaged workers deliver value to the organisation by way of better customer experience, greater innovation, and higher profit, to name a few. Hence organisations should make every effort, particularly leveraging AI, to provide a work environment where employees feel enthused and valued.