How to Use AI in Employee Engagement to Increase Employee Retention

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Using AI in employee engagement is a win-win: Your employees benefit and so does the company — from data-driven insights, time saved, and happier workers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) gets a lot of attention for its ability to generate images, written materials, and other forms of content. But some of the most promising use cases for AI technology are in data analysis and personalization. HR professionals are increasingly incorporating these AI uses into their employee engagement, onboarding, and performance management programs.

But how do you use AI in HR while maintaining a human touch? The role of AI in employee engagement should be to enhance what your human resources team is already doing. Here’s how AI tools can amplify your efforts in gathering employee feedback, allow you to more accurately assess employee engagement levels, and help you take the initiative to respond to employee needs.

What Is AI in Employee Engagement?

The use of AI continues to grow — a 2024 McKinsey & Company survey found that 72% of organizations are using AI technology for at least one business function, up from 55% of organizations in 2023. But how exactly can AI be applied to employee engagement and performance? Here are three different kinds of AI tools and how they can be used in the human resources department:

  • Generative AI tools create words, images, and other types of content. HR teams can use them to generate onboarding documents, quizzes and surveys, chatbot responses, and more, reducing the need for human input.
  • Natural language processing helps AI systems understand the way humans naturally speak and write. HR teams can use AI recruiting tools to sort resumes and schedule interviews and AI algorithms to conduct a sentiment analysis on employee feedback. 
  • Machine learning is used to crunch numbers and assist with decision-making. For example, HR professionals can use predictive analytics to understand their company’s high turnover rate and take steps to improve employee retention.

Although AI is revolutionizing many industries and can be a real game-changer in the HR department, it’s important to use AI tools wisely. After all, AI solutions are only as good as the information you give them, so it’s important to monitor them for accuracy and ensure they don’t reinforce existing biases on your HR team.

Benefits of Using AI in Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is all about optimizing the work environment, understanding the drivers of employee satisfaction, and making sure employees feel like part of the team. These are three advantages to using AI technology to streamline the process:

1. Reduce Administrative Tasks

Keeping employees engaged can require a lot of time and energy, especially if you have a large workforce that needs personalized attention. By using AI-powered automation to perform time-consuming or repetitive tasks, you can free up your HR team to deal with more complex employee relations issues and higher-level strategic initiatives.

From sending onboarding documents to new hires to tracking professional certifications, automation allows you to standardize many HR processes and reduce the possibility of human error.

2. Improve the Employee Experience

Employees increasingly expect HR teams to be available around the clock — but better yet is to provide a self-service portal they can access at home to resolve their own issues. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can respond to questions about employee benefits and other topics, and route more complex cases to a human agent.

By using AI to anticipate employee needs and solicit real-time feedback, you can help employees resolve issues promptly and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

3. Make Data-Driven Decisions

Keeping tabs on employee engagement involves more than just sending out job satisfaction surveys to see what your employees think about your company culture. With machine learning and natural language processing, you can track employee performance metrics and monitor employee sentiment in real time to identify signs of burnout or disengagement.

HR professionals who use AI-driven analytics tools can process employee data more efficiently and make better decisions about their workforce.

How to Use AI in Employee Engagement

AI in employee engagement: employees having a discussion

AI in employee engagement isn’t just about automation and analytics. By using different forms of AI at different stages of the employee lifecycle, you can gain new insights into your workforce. Below are four places to use AI to streamline the work environment while allowing individual employees to shine.

1. Onboarding and Training Programs

Providing a memorable onboarding experience for new hires can be a major driver of positive employee engagement, but many organizations rely on a one-size-fits-all onboarding process that doesn’t take into account differences in roles and skill levels.

AI-powered onboarding tools allow you to create personalized learning programs for each employee based on their interests and experience.

After the initial employee training program, offer continuous learning and professional development opportunities to support employees’ career growth. This could take the form of personalized course recommendations tailored to each employee.

Finally, use certification tracking software to send out reminders when an employee’s credentials are about to expire. RapidBee’s certification management tools help you keep employees’ certifications up to date and ensure regulatory compliance.

2. AI-Powered Service and Support

Many organizations have an online service center where employees can log in to view their pay stubs or employee benefit information, update their contact details, and find answers to FAQs. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants go one step further by responding to queries in real time and providing personalized support.

For example, RapidBee’s AI-driven chat and ticket management system offers instant responses and ticket escalation for complex issues. It can even field messages from multiple sources, including emails, forms, and SMS messages, for true multichannel support.

Another feature is automated document management, so employees can fill out essential HR documents and sign them online. Use custom datastores to organize employee data, and store it securely on RapidBee’s HIPAA-compliant servers.

3. Employee Surveys and Feedback

If you want to reduce your turnover rate, then understanding why employees are leaving your company is key. Employee surveys and performance reviews can provide you with some insight into employee satisfaction and behavior, but employees may be reluctant to provide real-time feedback or criticize the company culture for fear of retaliation.

Performing a sentiment analysis can help you identify underlying issues before they rise to the surface by analyzing the words of your employees for their emotional context. For example, you can use AI to review your internal messaging apps to look for signs of burnout or discontent.

AI tools aren’t just for identifying red flags and warning signs, though. You can also use them to highlight positive outcomes and reward high-performing employees for their day-to-day achievements. An AI-powered employee recognition program can boost retention by ensuring that employees are recognized — and rewarded — for a job well done.

4. Workforce Planning

One of the most important uses for AI in employee engagement is for predicting what will happen next. Understanding the causes behind high turnover is one thing, but predictive HR analytics can help you identify which employees are most likely to leave next or how many employees are likely to leave in a given period.

You can use this information to encourage them to stay by providing professional development opportunities, or maybe you’ll want to adjust your recruiting process to achieve better hiring outcomes.

By integrating RapidBee with other platforms, such as your talent management system and human resource information system, you can have all of the information you need in one place to make informed decisions. And with data synchronization and built-in reporting tools, you can get real-time analytics to drive your recruiting and hiring processes.

Boost Employee Engagement With RapidBee

AI in employee engagement: employee using her phone

Keeping team members engaged throughout the employee lifestyle is key to employee retention. But as employees come to expect more personalized support, HR teams often find it hard to keep up. Using AI in employee engagement can help HR teams resolve issues faster and make better decisions based on actual performance data.

RapidBee’s AI-driven employee service center can increase employee engagement by providing instant answers to common queries and delivering custom training programs. From onboarding to performance management, RapidBee allows HR teams to use the power of AI to identify employee needs in real time and support their well-being.

Request a trial today to see RapidBee in action!