Artificial Intelligence is not new to HR technology. As AI-powered tools handle the most repetitive and the monotonous tasks, they free up human resource teams to exercise creativity and logic and to solve more complex work problems.
In other words, AI makes sure no employee is underutilized or undervalued. Instead, the technology boosts employee engagement and makes businesses more productive and efficient.
AI is expected to create a $190.6 billion market by 2025.
Here are some ways in which Artificial Intelligence is being used to boost mental, social, and physical wellness in corporate offices worldwide.
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1. Productivity
While AI is transforming the workplace in several ways, it’s positively impacting worker productivity too. When an employee no longer has to scroll through calendars to look for available meeting times, build laborious reports in spreadsheets or look for insights in them, or spend days answering the same questions over and over again, they’re automatically more productive.
Workers are freed from mindless tasks, so they can focus on creating value for their organization. Some tools deploy AI to specifically monitor and increase productivity. Deloitte’s LaborWise is one such solution. It provides company managers and leaders with productivity analytics that help identify areas where impediments slow people down, labor costs are high, or additional staff needs to be deployed.
2. Emotion recognition
Wellbeing technology backed up by AI can help improve employee health and wellness. AI-enabled wearables integrated with deep learning models, natural language processing, and voice and image recognition can monitor and analyze employee behavior and emotions.
For instance, Cogito, a Boston-based software company built a platform for listening in on customer service communications to identify stressed-out agents. The tool is inbuilt with ML and speech recognition technology that picks up the tone and speed of communication to track employee stress levels.
Taking cues from employee mood, movements, and speech patterns, these tools can also suggest when employees should take a break or when they adopt unhealthy work patterns.
3. Workplace relationships
Relationships and collaboration in the workplace can be an indicator of employee health. This is why businesses are now leveraging AI-powered tools to track and assess how team members collaborate with each other.
Humanyze, a startup, provides smart ID badges that track employees throughout the office during the day. The solution then reports data on how well they interact with each other and collaborate on projects.
With AI insights, employees and Human Resources departments can build a more trusting and smoother relationship allowing for better transparency and innovation in the workplace, which ultimately leads to better employee wellness.
4. Office design
Besides workplace relationships, AI can also improve employee wellbeing through office design. Office areas that leverage AI provide opportunities for customization and personalization and create spaces that feel open for endless possibilities, creativity, and innovation.
Research shows that the human mind’s need to connect with nature increases their productivity by 15 percent. AI can assess employee moods through personalized input data to determine if employees need a physical or environmental boost.
Automated sensor systems throughout an office building could also adjust the natural lighting of the building throughout the day.
5. Employee safety
Employee safety in the workplace is also critical when we consider employee satisfaction and wellness at work. AI can monitor and recognize speech patterns and movements that are considered hazardous or dangerous to employee safety.
If there is an emergency, a solution such as Orion Lab’s Panic Bot will notify teammates of impending hazards. An employee who feels safe at their job is a happy employee and artificial intelligence can help build that safety net.
6. Health recommendations
AI-powered health monitoring tools and recommendation engines can allow companies to create customized care plans that consider an employee’s health status, history, and current lifestyle. Then, these tools can offer personalized suggestions for changes in diet, behavior, sleep, and so on.
Often, highly stressful work environments can take a toll on employees’ health. And such a solution will help put employee health in perspective for employees and their immediate managers.
7. Therapeutic AI chatbots
Mental health chatbots such as Moodkit, Woebot, and Wysa offer behavioral change and cognitive insights based on cognitive-behavioral techniques. Woebot uses NLP and sentiment analysis to interpret a user’s input and generate personalized responses. The app asks direct questions to assess the person’s thoughts and moods while helping the user re-evaluate their thinking patterns.
Using CBT techniques, the app offers personalized responses to help individuals with mental health issues modify their thoughts, emotions, and behavior with useful tips.
Moodkit comes with four tools, an activity suggestions space where the app suggests positive actions to uplift the user’s mood, a mood tracker that checks how a user’s mood changes over a day or week, a thought checker to manage negative thoughts and emotions, and a journal for the user to record their thoughts and feelings throughout the day.
AI tools built with machine learning capabilities can help organizations automate everyday tasks, identify employee stress levels and burnout among workers, and offer continuous help to improve overall employee wellbeing.
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