For all the attention that artificial intelligence (AI) tools and technologies have received in the media over the last 12-18 months, one of the most remarkable AI stories continues to fly under the radar. The extent to which leading AI tools are already revolutionizing the modern workplace is still underappreciated and not common knowledge.
Human resources (HR) professionals should be up-to-date on how the latest advances in generative AI are boosting employee productivity and streamlining a long list of business processes.
By introducing a new level of automation and autonomy to everyday tasks, these tools are improving efficiencies, saving businesses a significant amount of time and money, and improving the employee experience in countless ways.
The Generative AI Impact
Generative AI or Gen AI, the deep-learning, large language models (LLMs) that are capable of generating accurate and helpful high-quality content based on access to vast amounts of available data, has changed the game in profound and lasting ways. With their ability to adapt and dynamically search a multitude of trusted resources, leading Gen AI tools can essentially orchestrate all the systems within a business environment.
The holistic nature of those solutions is making a whole category of specialized AI bots obsolete. Instead of a pharmaceutical company utilizing a specialized AI tool to connect with all relevant federal regulatory drug information, for example, a Gen AI solution can simply tap into that information as part of its functionality.
When combined with the evolution of sophisticated virtual assistant technology that has been improving for many years, the result is something special. The applications for this technology extend across the enterprise, streamlining and optimizing everything from IT to HR to logistics.
In HR, LLM-based AI tools can now connect with an employer’s HR module and walk employees through detailed HR processes. This can streamline onboarding and make it faster and easier to train new team members and equip them with devices. Such systems can walk an employee who needs to file for maternity leave through the details and send the correct forms to the right people for approval — all with location-specific detail that accounts for regulatory differences.
And because the AI solution is connected in a manner where it is “reading” compliance documents, any policy changes that are made automatically get integrated into the AI system in real-time. On the IT side, AI business solutions can deliver centralized and customized automated IT support that facilitates improved productivity. The best tools display content from and provide access to key IT applications, come with self-service capabilities, and provide proactive and predictive problem analysis with customized persona-specific engagement and presentation of information.
Improving the Employee Experience
From onboarding to operations, this new generation of AI tools is all about streamlining the existing systems/processes businesses already use. They simply make the entire process easier and faster. For employees, the benefits are potentially dramatic, from meeting scheduling and working more efficiently to avoiding frustrations like wasted time or minimizing technical glitches.
AI solutions can actively monitor video communications, detecting and addressing suboptimal connections to improve streaming in real-time Device monitoring functionality can detect and correct small details, such as inefficient loading times for certain screens employees need to access. Other tools can determine when and if a laptop battery is overheating, automatically ordering a new one before the battery fails. In other words, AI does not just tell you when problems have already emerged, but also provides anticipatory alerts and proactive corrections before they happen.
In essence, these tools make it possible to monitor every element of the user experience: software, hardware, infrastructure, network, etc. They enable users to maximize their productivity and minimize their stress or inefficiency with an approach that is personal, preemptive, and proactive. The customizable nature of these solutions is all the more essential at a time when companies have embraced so many different hybrid and remote work models.
Complex Challenges
For all the justified excitement around AI in business, challenges remain. Few companies have detailed and well-articulated policies around Gen AI and LLMs, and there is some lingering media-driven stigma around tools like ChatGPT. Professional tech partners with experience in delivering next-generation Gen AI business solutions need to work to demystify the subject and reassure decision-makers with security measures that safeguard private or potentially sensitive information. The best operators do so by running an entirely private architecture that can access and retrieve public data without sharing any private data back out.
AI providers also need systems and processes in place that avoid AI “hallucinations,” where AI essentially makes up an answer to a question and presents it as factually based.
Finally, some organizations may insist that the solution needs to run on their infrastructure or in their environment and may have compatibility challenges, which is why AI leaders in this space work closely with clients to not only understand their strategy, but also determine the best way to integrate AI tools with their existing architecture.
The Next Big Thing
The next big thing in AI tools for work is likely to involve more sophisticated visual elements like graphics, PDFs, and complex imagery. This has enormous potential for identity confirmation, as well as to expand the already fast-growing selection of remote AI tools that allow for complex remote communication and interaction. AI can talk to a professional in a remote village in Brazil and render an image back in AI that answers a question. The ability of AI systems to read/interpret and generate images will improve communication and unlock new horizons in augmented and virtual reality.
Intelligent automation is another frontier of innovation in the AI space. Automating increasingly complex business processes not just internally but by connecting with vendor, partner, consumer, or supplier systems and tools in a single cohesive ecosystem. From automating identity and access issues to executing complex HR tasks to sophisticated production monitoring, some degree of automation is already happening. But, as with almost every element of business-facing AI technology today, future expansion in this space is virtually unlimited. For HR professionals, the AI toolkit will continue to expand and become more sophisticated in the months and years ahead.
