You don’t have to be a people pleaser to understand the value in keeping people satisfied—particularly if you’re a business owner. Why? Because business owners know that satisfied employees are more productive. But don’t just take it from us, according to a study by Social Market Foundation, satisfied employees are 20 percent more productive than those who aren’t.

So, if employee satisfaction is linked to productivity, how can your business help employees feel this way more consistently? One solution: artificial intelligence.

 

But first, let’s define ‘employee satisfaction’

In order to understand how to improve employee satisfaction, it’s important to know what’s at the core of it. The HR Technologist defines ‘employee satisfaction’ as “the measure of employee happiness with their jobs and their workplace,” and a necessary component to limit turnover and attrition. While several studies dispute employee satisfaction’s association with performance, they nonetheless acknowledge the term as a building block for a productive workforce. Employee satisfaction has also been said to correlate with increased motivation, morale, and profitability, making it clear that efforts to improve it will have multiple positive outcomes for businesses.

 

How is artificial intelligence involved? 

Despite all of the movies that depict artificial intelligence (AI) as malicious robots trying to take over the world, AI in the real world is a lot more like an intern who wants to do work for you. That’s because AI is a system of intelligent machines that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. But, unlike humans, these machines have to be programmed—programmed to do the things you want them to do, which can make them some of your best advocates at work.

 

What exactly can AI do to improve employee satisfaction? 

There are many ways artificial intelligence is able to assist employees in their day-to-day routines. For example: 

 

AI can increase employee productivity 

In a given workday for just about any employee, there are a number of responsibilities that bog down productivity, but are nonetheless essential for a company to function and make decisions properly. Such responsibilities may include entering data, creating spreadsheets, and generating reports. With the help of artificial intelligence, many of these responsibilities can now be automated. Robotic process automation (RPA) is an example of a technology that utilizes artificial intelligence to interact with software in ways only humans have been able to previously. With the help of RPA, employees can program ‘digital workers’ to mimic processes that require sequences of repetitive steps.

 

Although RPA needs to be monitored to deal with variations in processes, these digital workers, if properly managed, can greatly improve the amount of work a single employee is capable of achieving in a given day. At scale, RPA can give your company a significant boost in productivity while also reducing the amount of work each employee is tasked. This can result in a workforce that’s less stressed and more satisfied with the work they’re able to do.

 

AI can result in more sales leads 

What makes sales teams satisfied? More sales. The possibility of that is much greater if someone from your sales team is always available. However, that’s usually not the case. That’s because a sales team’s availability to respond to prospective customer inquiries is limited to the hours they’re scheduled to work. That’s where artificial intelligence comes in. Howabot is an AI-enabled chatbot designed to support your business in managing the influx of traffic and inquiries your website receives at any hour of the day.

Howabot isn’t like every other chatbot on the market—it goes several steps further. For example, Howabot can automate entire intelligent conversations, provide customer insight for better marketing, offer sales strategies based on the data it collects, and even assist with live agent communication whenever a member of your sales team would like to take over. Through Howabot’s implementation, your employees can experience greater sales success and become more satisfied with the performance of such endeavors as a result of it.

 

AI can reduce time to proficiency 

Another instance where AI-enabled chatbots can improve employee satisfaction is assisting both human resource departments and new employees with onboarding and training procedures. As a company expands recruiting efforts, more time is required from HR and other employees to bring new hires up to speed. However, in doing so, these workers have less time to focus on other responsibilities that may be essential for your company to function properly or find top talent.

 

In an effort to reduce the amount of time workers spend apart from their work while providing new employees with the help and training they need to be proficient, companies are now turning to AI chatbots. These chatbots can be programmed to provide new employees with training instructions, or answers to any number of common questions they might have about their role or are simply too embarrassed to ask another person.

 

This way, your company’s training procedures will be more specific to the wants and needs each employee has, instead of providing each of them with the same general orientation that spans multiple days. Your company will also be better equipped to respond to queries your employees may have that they might feel uncomfortable to bring up, such as:

 

• What qualifies as sexual harassment?
• How should I disclose a pregnancy?
• What are the company’s parental leave policies?
• How many days of vacation do new employees get per year?
• Can employees be compensated for not taking time off?

 

Just be aware that this type of chatbot will require a bit of legwork to get up and off the ground in order to provide instructions or respond to questions that are specific to your company and your procedures. However, once the heavy lifting is done, your employees will only need to make minor tweaks and additions as procedures change or new inquiries come up. The result of implementation can result in a reduction of time spent training new employees and increasing their familiarity with and comfortability at your company.