Ever since the pandemic hit us, work dynamics have been changing rapidly, and remote working and hybrid work cultures have been in vogue. This has given rise to a convenient work culture. At the same time, it has made employee engagement a lot trickier.
There are quite a few unique challenges that come with the remote or hybrid workplace. We may have gotten used to connecting via several apps like Slack and MS Teams, but collaboration still remains an issue. Expecting an HR team to constantly follow up with employees is unfair and using only chatbots to communicate with your employees can lack personalization.
This is when chatbots for HR step in! In this blog, we explore how chatbots can help improve employee engagement
Why Use Chatbots for HR?
As per a recent report, nearly 51% of the employees are not engaged at work. A chatbot for HR uses artificial intelligence (AI) to communicate with emolyees and contribute to overall employee experience. They communicate using natural language processing and machine learning to gauge overall engagement level of the employees.
This allows employees to anonymously submit valuable feedback at any time. Chatbot for HR services helps turn feedback into regular conversation, providing managers with the information they need to take adequate measures.
What is the need for employee engagement in the workplace?
Helps retain the best talent
Engaged employees have a 59% lesser chance of looking for a job elsewhere, at least for a year. Employees are humans. And humans who are interested in a particular act or place are less likely to give up on it.
Your engaged employees are the ones who’d stay back and work with you for the longest time. These are also the employees who would be more loyal to the organization and be a lot more invested in their work.
Boosts productivity
Engaged employees are 21% more productive than the ones who are not. To no one’s surprise, employees who work because they want to are more likely to be productive than those turning up at work because they have to.
Enhances the company culture
Happy and satisfied employees foster a positive work culture and can easily pass their vibe on to every colleague, superior, or subordinate they interact with. This creates a positive and vibrant work culture that encourages the employees and creates a chain reaction of happiness. In the long run, organizations that prioritize employee engagement come across as the ones that respect their employees.
Leads to individual and organizational success
As Ann Latham had famously said, “engagement is a symptom of success”. Engaged employees feel heard and that they matter. In turn, motivating them to work better and invest wholly in their job.
Engaged employees also foster a better culture and are happier colleagues to work with. But most importantly, they consciously utilize their time in activities that add value to the organization. They know their success is directly linked to the company’s, and every time they succeed it is recognized as their personal and the organization’s success, further fueling their passion and engagement.
How to use HR chatbot to improve employee engagement?
As per a recent survey, nearly 68% of the working professionals feel demotivated and burnt out. This is not a promising statistic. However, chatbots for HR, empowered with conversational AI, can really help improve things when it comes to employee engagement. How exactly do these chatbots help, though? Let’s find out.
Serves as a knowledge base
As chatbots for HR often have to answer employee queries, they can double up to become a hub of all the information that an employee would want — whether it is about the organization or employee benefits. These chatbots manage all the data effectively, have a knowledge base that can be updated periodically to ensure they’re armed with the latest information, and make information accessible in an easy format.
Chatbot in HR or HR Virtual Assistants can be very efficient in answering routine or everyday employee queries with ease, without needing any intervention from the HR department.
Helps with the new hires
One of the most cumbersome and challenging tasks for HR is to find and hire a new candidate, and the onboarding process is an extension of the same. A chatbot for HR can automate this and ensure you deliver an employee onboarding experience that is not dictated by processes but is instead welcoming of the new hire
With an HR chatbot, HRs can focus on the human part of employee onboarding, while the bot takes care of mundane joining rituals, such as the signing of the contract, sending team video, assigning team buddies, and even the necessary paperwork.
Collects feedback and assists teams
Collecting feedback is an important task because it helps you find out if and when the organization is failing to live up to employees’ expectations. This is important at every point across the employee lifecycle can arm organizations with a lot of information that they can work with.
An HR chatbot sends out periodic feedback surveys to all employees and collects relevant data which is objective and unbiased. Such bots can analyze the data that has been collected and send out detailed reports for the senior management and leadership to look into, in turn helping HR teams understand what is causing disengagement and what is not.
Conducts work from home surveys
The remote working scenario has eased life in some ways and made it difficult in others. Among the things that it has definitely made difficult is ensuring and tracking employee engagement. And this is exactly where work from home surveys come handy.
HR chatbots can independently carry out these surveys in the form of a simple Q$A session with the employees. The highly interactive and conversational nature of such surveys makes them an ideal tool to gauge employee sentiments.
Helps with employer branding
While HR chatbots might never be directly involved with projecting your organization as a good employer, they can smoothen out hiring and related processes, meting out a positive experience to new hires and turning them into your brand ambassadors.
Chatbots for HRs can help ease your hiring and onboarding process, reduce your cost-per-hire, and ensure you spend lesser time looking for the ideal candidate. HR chatbots can also help you maintain consistency and confidence in your communication while looking for candidates, in turn making you look like a mature organization that knows what it wants from prospective employees.
It’s well established that an HR chatbot can improve employee engagement by leaps and bounds. However, one question still remains unanswered. Why use an HR chatbot when you have an HR department? Read on to know
HR chatbot vs HR: Why automate when you have the person?
What came first — the egg or the hen?
We start with this because the question of why to use an HR chatbot when you have an HR is quite like it. The rift between human intellect and technology is not new. But for any strategy to be effective, the two need to sync and work together.
HR chatbots do not work towards replacing the HR, but towards making the HR’s work easier by helping colleagues communicate more effectively with each other, focusing on employee experience, and centralizing communication.
When HRs and HR chatbots work together for better employee engagement, here’s what happens:
- Self-service and automation of mundane HR tasks lower administrative costs
- HR chatbot expands the HR visibility to 24×7, fostering a sense of security in the minds of the employees
- Creates a consistent HR experience through a single tone and experiential language
- Improves access to all the HR-related information, making it available in an easy format
- Encourages a frequent and proactive outreach, thus increasing employee engagement
- Increases employee retention rate and gets rid of unwanted attrition
- Reduces the chances of human errors and saves HR’s time
- Ensures employees get accurate and actionable answers when they want it
Chatbots for HRs are an ally to the employees and HR alike
The 21st century is imbued with innovations. To keep up with the current times, you have to consistently improve existing procedures and create new ones. Leena AI’s HR chatbot is a step towards the same.
While it does not replace an HR team, it certainly makes their work better, leaving them time and energy to focus on more immediate and better tasks at hand. It also saves costs and keeps the communication professional and consistent, helping them focus more on employee engagement.
But most of all, it helps create an atmosphere where the employees know who to reach out to in case of problems., And, to no one’s surprise, the safer and more heard the employees feel, the more engaged and loyal they will be.
Still confused about what to look for when purchasing an HR chatbot? Our experts await an opportunity to walk you through
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