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How AI Can Drive Employee Engagement

This article by Falon Fatemi discusses how employee engagement is one of the biggest challenges in the workplace, however, AI has the potential to solve this issue. The following keywords from our course, relate to the article:

Organizational Behavior: A field of study devoted to understanding, explaining, and ultimately improving the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and groups in organizations.

Job Performance: The value of the set of behaviors that contribute, either positively or negatively, to organizational goal accomplishment.

Task performance: The behaviors directly involved in transforming organizational resources into the goods or services an organization produces.

Citizenship behavior: Voluntary activities that may or may not be rewarded but that contribute to the organization by improving the quality of setting where work occurs.

Counterproductive Behavior: Employee behaviors that intentionally hinder organization goal accomplishment.

Organizational Commitment: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization.

 Affective commitment: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization because of an emotional attachment to, or involvement in, that organization.

Continuance commitment: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization because of an awareness of the costs associated with leaving.

Normative Commitment: A desire on the part of an employee to remain a member of an organization because of a feeling of obligation.

Withdrawal: A set of actions that employees perform to avoid the work situation.

 

The article covers how employers are not feeling engaged in the workplace and motivation is very low due to a lack of sense of purpose. According to this article, Gallup found in their research that, 51% of employees in the US do not feel engaged in their workplace. Businesses with higher engaged employees tend to have higher profits along with higher levels of employee commitment, so it is important to maintain engagement. It is common for organizations to use surveys on a quarterly or annual basis to evaluate engagement, but this process tends to be prolonged and monotonous. Surveys also tend to take weeks to analyze, leading to feedback that is not current. This is when AI has the chance to step in and make a difference in engagement by employees, in a timely manner. AI has the ability to investigate the engagement of employees by using language processing and analysis, along with assessing biometric data. This would allow HR to take quick action in order to solve engagement issues early on. AI would also be able to suggest which employees would excel in leadership positions and put together productive teams based off of skills and motivation.

I can agree with this article when it comes to recognizing that employee engagement is a very critical part of an organization. I can admit that at one time, I felt very unengaged at a previous workplace, but had felt a continuance commitment to the employer because of my financial situation at the time. I did not feel that I had a true sense of purpose at this location and I left the business after a year. I have now been with a business that I feel a very strong affective commitment to. I feel very motivated and engaged when I am at my workplace, which is a great feeling. This article made me think a lot about AI and whether or not I agree with the forward-thinking companies that are incorporating it into the workplace. My first thought is that there may be privacy concerns. If businesses are considering using AI to increase employee engagement, it may be a good idea to hear the concerns of the employees that work there.

Question: What action can a business take to increase motivation and engagement if they do not choose to utilize AI?

Work Cited

Fatemi, F. (2019). How AI Can Drive Employee Engagement Retrieved July 7, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/falonfatemi/2019/07/05/how-ai-can-drive-employee-engagement/#1360ca4f4275