All too often when we think about artificial intelligence (AI) visions of robots replacing humans pop into our heads.
While many companies have been using AI to help workers do their jobs better, the idea that AI could help retain workers is new.
In an article on SHRM’s website, author Lin Grensing-Pophal spoke with Janet Clarey, director of HR research and advisory services at McLean & Company who says that AI can help ensure that employees are highly engaged not overlooked. "People stick around longer when they have opportunities for career growth," said Clarey, nothing that her company has found "employees who agree or strongly agree that they can advance in their career in their current organization are 3.4 times more likely to be engaged, compared to those who disagree or strongly disagree."
Organizations can use AI, she said, "to algorithmically match people with internal opportunities such as project and gig work, full-time roles, learning experiences, and mentorships based on that person's individual skills, experiences and interests."
As AI can help employees develop, it can also identify those at flight risk.
"Using both internal and external data, AI can be used to build predictive models of employees who may be a flight risk," Clarey said. Some examples of internal data are job satisfaction, number of positions held, engagement score and years with an employee's current manager. External data can also be used—for example, benchmarking compensation rates by tenure.
One company that is using AI to hold onto employees is KPMG. In an article in CIO.com, the company said that it calculates a score for an employee’s risk of attrition, tries to identify a reason for that, and then suggests remediation. “With back-testing and cross-validation, we found that we’ve consistently been able to predict two-thirds of people about to resign, and save 10% to 20% of the ones we identified,” said Bill Nowacki, decision science lead at KPMG.