Alice Chambers |
Employee burnout continues to rise – to a post-pandemic high of 42 per cent of the workforce, according to digital transformation-focused consortium Future Forum. People who are burned out are more likely to have lower overall satisfaction in their work and more likely to look for a new job.
“Anytime we implement something that makes us more efficient, we’re going to influence burnout,” says Amy Mosher, chief people officer at HR solution provider isolved. “Leveraging self-service tools to give employees the ability to check things in their own time is a great example of this. Access to information makes people’s jobs easier, for example, by helping them know whom to inform when they’ve changed their address.”
A study of 1,000 US workers for isolved’s 2023 Voice of the Workforce report found that 50 per cent feel stressed before returning to work after time off or the weekend. Additionally, 40 per cent struggle with ‘Imposter Syndrome’, defined as a feeling of self-doubt despite career accomplishments.
“I’m hearing from my peers that more employees are going on leave due to anxiety,” says Mosher. “Handling those situations with empathy is incredibly important and providing tools like automated enrolling can help make employees’ lives easier. You can’t replace empathy with technology, but you can provide the right tools to ease the burden of work.”
Mosher says burnout is one of the most important areas of focus for HR professionals in 2023. Another – which could also have a positive impact on burnout – has been the deployment of creative methods to improve benefit plans.
“For example, businesses are using artificial intelligence to analyse the types of benefits that employees prefer to have access to,” says Mosher. “Analysing benefits across different demographics help organisations to provide benefit packages that make a difference for teams and capitalise on company investment.”
HR teams can use the isolved People Cloud platform to define plans, eligibility rules and notifications to automate benefits and improve efficiencies. Employees can then review and manage their benefits to select coverages that fit their personal needs. The benefits dashboard in People Cloud also provides real-time visibility to administrative users. They can then deploy AI-powered tools to understand not just the value of specific benefits packages, but also to get insights into turnover, new hire and demographic data.
“I love the ability to combine sets of data to predict future trends,” says Mosher. “This year, many HR leaders have used AI to understand how different generations think, learn and communicate in the workplace. There’s a lot of education that needs to happen between demographics such as Baby Boomers and Generation Z to see the value in each others’ perspectives, which will lead to better collaboration. Technology is helping organisations to understand those differences.”
Forty per cent of the businesses that participated in isolved’s HR Leaders Survey had planned to invest in HR analytics technology in 2023. According to Mosher, AI is the secret to success and should continue to be used into 2024 to help make faster and more informed decisions.
“Predictive analytics are very important because they allow HR teams to analyse employee data, such as performance reviews, and identify people at risk of leaving the company,” she says. “They can then take proactive measures, such as offering career development opportunities or addressing workplace concerns, to retain valuable talent. Analytics are the missing piece to the HR puzzle because they provide the ability to predict successful employee incentives.”
This article was originally published in the Winter 2023 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.