Can AI Really Improve Employee Engagement?

HR has been under pressure to improve employee engagement levels for decades. After all, greater engagement leads to better business outcomes, and so it makes sense to implement tactics and technologies that nurture a happier, healthier and more productive workforce. But there’s always been a barrier to achieving the highest level of engagement, and it’s been holding back organizations for years. This obstacle has been lack of time, and thanks to the rise of AI it’s no longer hindering HR teams. In fact, modern AI is empowering HR like never before, signalling the beginning of a whole new era – Engagement 2.0.

HR has no time to tackle engagement!

The face of HR has changed over the years with HR’s strategic and administrative workloads increasing year-on-year.

HR is now expected to drive people strategy, develop company culture and enable organizational agility alongside nurturing employee engagement. This is in addition to keeping on top of daily administrative tasks, from updating policies and benefits through to managing holiday requests.

While the workload has increased, in most cases the resources have not, leaving HR teams struggling to cope with everything they’re expected to accomplish.

It’s hardly surprising then, that HR simply hasn’t had the time to dedicate to employee engagement. Take employee engagement surveys as an example. While organizations may have engagement surveys in place to obtain anonymous feedback, time restraints often mean that crunching the data, understanding and communicating the insights, and working with each line manager to roll-out positive change, simply doesn’t happen. And for those HR teams who expect line managers to dissect and action the survey results, they are often disappointed to find that the managers lack the skills and experience to do so. The outcome is that survey insights simply fall into a black hole.

 How can AI solve the engagement problem?

The rise of modern AI is finally overcoming HR’s time constraints, transforming employee engagement. Real change is happening and the possibilities are mind-blowing.

Analyzing and crunching engagement data at scale
While AI comes in various forms, machine learning can analyze data at scale and provide consistent insights based on what it’s seen before. It also spots trends, correlations and behaviors.  The new wave of foundation models, often referred to as generative models, such as ChatGPT, MS CoPilot, Gemini and Claude by Anthropic, can be used to extract meaning from huge swathes of unstructured data.

By using these modern technologies, the employee engagement survey crunch is now done instantaneously by AI.

In time, the engagement survey will not even be needed as AI will be able to analyze information and collate insights directly from ‘conversations’ with employees and provide ongoing feedback to HR and leaders.

Delivering tailored insights
Knowing what the data is saying is one thing, but the magic really happens when the data is turned into actions, and AI can now deliver insights in digestible and easy to understand bite-sized chunks. Using systems like People Science AI, for example, engagement survey responses including open-text questions are analyzed and the findings presented as concise and tailored summaries to HR executives, business leaders and line managers. These summaries can be delivered in different formats to suit the recipient, such as text, voice or video.

Line managers are even provided with recommended actions in relation to their specific teams, such as recommending they increase employee recognition or improve their onboarding experience, allowing managers to spend less time guessing and more time on actions that will tangibly drive performance.

Opening-up conversations
Employee listening has been taken to a whole new level with AI, from answering simple employee questions using central Agentic AI chatbots that can link employees to information and services, through to having in-depth conversations.

Modern AI with sophisticated chat functionality allows organizations to have a conversation with every employee, in every location, at the same time.  Furthermore, these conversations can be in any language and still make sense at scale.  In fact, AI can become a true companion capable of having ongoing conversations with employees, thereby helping to boost productivity and creating a sense of belonging. And when any conversations need to be escalated to an actual person, HR has more time to dedicate to the ‘human element’ of HR, supporting employees’ needs and strengthening connections.

Removing the mundane
Repetitive and mundane tasks are where agentic AI and the new wave of assistants are starting to deliver a workplace revolution. If HR needs to cascade training courses across the organization, then generative AI can rewrite the courses to be appropriate to the role and level of seniority. If salary change letters need to be sent to all employees, then an agent can take care of it.   Similarly, contract changes can be made and then sent out to all contractors by a chatbot in the HR system. There’s no point spending hours preparing hundreds of letters when an AI agent can do it.  The time that is freed-up can then be spent on strategizing and value-adding human interactions.

Managing AI risks
While harnessing AI can deliver transformational change – including increasing levels of employee engagement – HR leaders should be alert to the risks of AI and put in place guardrails to ensure it’s used appropriately and in line with data privacy laws.

One of the big concerns associated with AI, and in particular chatbot interactions, is about ‘jailbreaking’.  This is effectively getting the chatbot to go ‘off script’ and provide answers to topics it’s not meant to talk about, potentially answering in ways that are controversial or dangerous. It’s also important to guard against AI leaking sensitive data, likely due to the data’s access controls not being correctly implemented.

AI must be ‘de-risked’ and a reputable expert can support HR with this. For instance, WorkBuzz’s People Science AI offering has been de-risked through preparing interactions in advance. This means asking the right questions, in the right way, to make sure the AI provides consistent answers and advice while minimising the chance of ‘hallucinations’ (making things up).

The future of engagement is AI-driven

 Employee engagement initiatives are no longer constrained by a lack of resources. HR teams now have the time and understanding to make a real difference to the employee experience, with AI’s automated collection, interrogation and understanding of data delivering insights that truly matter. And while AI is removing the mundane from everyday tasks, more time can be spent on those all-important human-centric elements of HR and leadership – the elements that are pivotal to achieving aspirational levels of employee engagement.