Introduction
In the era of technology, companies seek more advanced ways to maximize revenue and productivity. When searching for ways to optimize productivity, an organization must increase the workforce’s satisfaction. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a widely used tool in corporations. While AI can be perceived as complicated, in reality it can help monitor employees’ progress and identify ways to increase their satisfaction, boosting creativity, commitment, morale, and productivity.
Identification of a Process Requiring Strategic Reset
In my workplace, the process that needs a significant reset is monitoring employee performance and enhancing motivation. Companies can have hundreds or thousands of employees; sometimes, supervising all teams can be frustrating. Still, it is essential to see how well people cooperate, their preferences, how well they perform their tasks, and whether they meet the deadlines. Consequently, there needs to be a more efficient tool to monitor employee performance and gauge their levels of frustration or satisfaction with the work, which can sometimes be complex.
Development of an Innovative or Disruptive Solution
The issue can be resolved by incorporating Artificial Intelligence software to evaluate each employee’s progress and achievements, monitor burnout, assess morale, provide feedback, and assess satisfaction. For example, a business may use AI to examine individual email communications inside the organization and obtain a broad morale assessment (Ricard, 2020). Management can handle critical situations before they worsen if they have access to the most recent information.
Moreover, it is necessary to assess whether employees are overexerting themselves and are at risk of burnout (Ricard, 2020). In this case, AI will measure how many hours a day an employee is active on their personal computers and create a pop-up window that lets the worker click a smiley face representing their current mood (i.e., sad, anxious, angry, happy). While this can take only seconds, management will know whether the workforce is satisfied with their conditions or is experiencing burnout.
Additionally, there can be new requirements for candidates and current employees in this fast-changing world. The AI system will review new resumes or the accomplishments of the current workforce to identify skill and knowledge gaps that need improvement. This will allow the company to monitor the number of valuable team experts and offer training. At the end of the month, each employee will receive messages from the AI system outlining their strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations to help them stand out. The recommendations will be generated automatically from the collected KPI data.
The solutions can be supported by a study of 1,500 businesses, which found that businesses experience the greatest performance increases when humans and robots collaborate (Wilson & Daugherty, 2018). Humans and AI actively build upon each other’s complementary qualities, such as leadership, teamwork, innovation, and interpersonal skills of humans and AI’s speed, flexibility, and statistical capabilities (Wilson & Daugherty, 2018). Therefore, combining AI and human efforts is perceived as efficient.
Implementation Plan for the Proposed Innovation
Now that the plan to make the team more efficient has been introduced, it is necessary to focus on the politics of innovation. Step one involves anticipating resistance; in this case, resistance can come from the leadership and employees (Uzzi, 2017). The first area of resistance is the cost of incorporating the AI system, which can be expensive. The second resistance area involves employees viewing such a change as a timely transition.
The second step involves unmasking the political motives of the stakeholders. Here, it is vital to understand that sometimes resistance can stem from hidden fears and risks, and stakeholders might not feel confident sharing the truth. In the case of leadership, their genuine concern might revolve around the risks of litigation stemming from violations of employees’ privacy rights and intrusions into their personal space. Meanwhile, similar issues are faced by the teams, which can be apprehensive when giving full access to their correspondence.
As a result, the next step would be to “find the right champion” (Uzzi, 2017). Here, the goal is to find an individual who can support the initiative. In this case, a senior team leader from the programming department can help by developing a simplistic version of the AI software to test it on one team.
The final step is to “secure social proof” and find support among other stakeholders. Concessions will be made, and during the initiative’s testing phase, teams will be required to consent to participate. The ultimate goal is to show leadership that this initiative will deliver a positive return on investment, as many mundane tasks will be automated and manual performance assessment will no longer be necessary. Additionally, it will help select suitable candidates or retrain current ones, thereby creating a pool of talented workers. As for employees, such a solution to reduce efficiency will help them indirectly communicate their concerns and preferences to management.
Conclusion
Hence, although AI may seem complicated, it can assist in evaluating workers’ performance and in identifying ways to improve their satisfaction, thereby raising their creativity, dedication, morale, and productivity. A more effective tool is required to track employee performance and gauge their degrees of pleasure or irritation with the often challenging task. The above problem may be remedied using artificial intelligence software to analyze each employee’s development and accomplishments, monitor burnout, gauge morale, provide feedback, and gauge satisfaction.
References
Ricard, S. (2020). AI’s effect on productivity now and in the future. Forbes.
Uzzi, B. (2017). How to navigate the politics of an innovation project. Harvard Business Review.
Wilson, J., & Daugherty, P. R. (2018). Collaborative intelligence: Humans and AI are joining forces. Harvard Business Review.