Considering the unpredictable spread of COVID-19, developing back-to-work protocols and strategy isn't an easy task. Business leaders are struggling to sort out how to ensure a safe and secure work environment and instill confidence in their employees. To assist businesses in getting back to work safely and securely, Artificial Intelligence can be a game changer.
Workplace automation solutions increases productivity while your workforce is separated. If you're offering employees to come back on a voluntary basis, the mix of remote and in-office workers increases the complexity of operations separated across geographies and time zones. AI can improve office automation and workforce strategy by optimizing workflows and monitoring project statuses.
As business leaders plan their health and safety protocols, one strategy to consider is how to continuously monitor a workforce once they've entered the location to make sure they are following social distancing and PPE protocols. A popular AI solution is computer visioning. This technology can be added to existing cameras and will identify individuals who are too close to one another or fail to wear masks/gloves or other PPE.
Today’s workforce environment involves many different applications and platforms, such as mobile apps, IoT devices and personal devices (BYOD). This increases the scope of connected devices which require intelligent connections. AI solutions can leverage vast data sets and automate the process of collecting, evaluating and generating analytics across many devices.
According to Forbes, 79 percent of experts believe that AI has a large role to play to improve business workflows. For example, to understand a project status, managers need to frequently check portals and dashboards instead of concentrating on strategic tasks. To track continuous development, a chatbot trained by AI can automate the process of tracking statuses and notify management of any updates in a project.
Employees often raise IT tickets, especially when problems arise in their remote workspace. For IT teams, it can be challenging to categorize, prioritize and assign these tickets. Manually managing the entire service process is even more time-consuming. Instead, AI can automate the issue resolution process without having employees worry about the routing process. The automation process uses AI-driven Natural Language Understanding (NLU) applications to identify the types of issues based on keywords and assigns the request accordingly.
AI’s ability to generate insights into project data creates visibility into employee productivity and performance, which is especially important for a remote workforce. AI-driven analytics permits leaders to design, quantify, assess and streamline key performance indicators. This way AI provides greater transparency and accountability to stakeholders.
AI tools can monitor an employee’s daily online and offline activity and predict security and safety risks before any damage occurs. Because the move to remote work happened so abruptly, their could be unidentified cybersecurity risks IT teams weren't prepared to handle. By having an AI algorithm in place, business leaders can understand risk quickly and AI can even suggest tools to combat those threats.
Making the Back to Work transition as seamless and safe as possible is business leaders' top priority and will be a big topic for the next few months. So far, the most successful strategies include a voluntary approach and include advanced technology solutions to give leaders the advantage and knowledge the need to keep their employees safe and healthy.