![]() ![]() The instant nature of these tools also creates legal issues with hourly gig workers. “But once you send it, you can’t get it back.” “One person may think a text is funny, where the other thinks it’s inappropriate,” he said. Such scenarios are all too common, particularly when teams work long hours together or are out celebrating a project success. “It was innocent banter, but all of sudden it was going in a direction no one wanted.” “That’s when the HR team had to get involved and shut it down,” he said. That evolved into a conversation about why female employees were lucky because they can wear skirts, which led to a “guys vs. He recalls a recent day at his own company when employees were using Slack to discuss whether the company’s “no-shorts policy” should be abandoned when temperatures rise above 90 degrees. “There is a fine line between casual conversations and inappropriate content, and instant messaging makes that line very easy to cross,” StratEx’s Ochstein said. ![]() We’ve all read the stories of managers cursing out employees for some minor infraction or flirting in a way that makes someone uncomfortable, only to have those conversations go viral and result in someone getting fired. In an era of social sharing, the casual nature of texts in the workplace can put companies at risk. The adoption of instant communication in the workplace isn’t all good news. In an era of social sharing, the casual nature of texts in the workplace can put companies at risk. Many employee communication platforms and corporate emails are “generic and impersonal, but chatbots can have human conversations,” she said. For those who think chatbots are too inhuman for workplace communication, O’Dea believes it’s the opposite. “Chatbots can provide employees with instant access to this information through an app, which is where they spend more of their time anyway,” she said. They can take over the tasks that are needlessly complicated.” She believes early applications will focus on things like filling out employment forms, requesting days off and accessing personal data. “Chatbots offer huge potential for employee communication. High believes AI technology will change the way we communicate at work and at home. “It’s an efficient way to reduce misunderstandings,” he said. The goal is to help employees vet the “tone” of texts and emails, just as you might spell-check before hitting send. ![]() High’s team has also created the AI-driven IBM tone analyzer, which uses linguistic analysis to examine the emotion in text messages. High envisions a day where AI conversation agents will be the third party in a conversation, automatically searching for information and providing context.Īlso read: Meet Your New Colleague: Artificial Intelligence “Artificial intelligence tools, at their most basic, improve the likelihood that employees can find and share information as they communicate.” This enables faster problem-solving and ensures they can make decisions based on data, not gut instinct. “If you want to be an employer of choice for this generation, you’ve got to adapt.Īlong with changing how employees communicate, new technologies are also changing what information they can share, said Rob High, chief technology officer for IBM Watson, IBM’s cognitive computing system. While chatbots won’t be taking over the way we engage any time soon, the tools we use are evolving, and skeptical managers need to get on board, Ochstein said. A 2017 report from Dynamic Signal found that only 17 percent of companies had recently invested in technology for internal communication, even though 73 percent said communicating company information to employees was a “serious challenge.” The use of instant and automated technology to support communication isn’t going away, so managers need to get on board or risk creating information gaps in the workplace. “They want to communicate in real time with their fingers, not their voices.” Email can also be tricky for contract workers and frontline staff, who may rarely check their emails but always have their phones. Younger workers are far more likely to choose text or Slack over email or phone calls, which they view as cumbersome and outdated, said Adam Ochstein, CEO of StratEx, an HR technology and consulting firm based in Chicago.
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