Some businesses have gone all-in on technology, aiming to replace as many workers as possible with AI or advanced robotics. However, this strategy can backfire in many subtle ways over time. Employee satisfaction and loyalty will decrease, knowledge gaps will widen, and the businesses will end up with more problems than they started with.

So, what’s the solution? The best way to combat recruitment and retention issues is to invest in your employees—both directly and through the use of technology and AI. Instead of replacing your employees, your goal should be to use technology to take over manual processes and empower your employees towards higher-order tasks. Empowered employees who have the training and tools they need to succeed will be far more satisfied and loyal to your company.

Let’s dive into more specific strategies that cover how you can invest in your employees and get a return of higher productivity, efficiency, and employee satisfaction.

Contribute and Compensate: Direct Investment

All the software solutions in the world won’t make a difference to your employees if they aren’t paid well. The best ways to invest in your employees—and the ones that will increase satisfaction and loyalty the most—are to offer competitive salaries, paths to promotion, and robust benefits such as PTO, matched retirement contributions, and comprehensive health insurance. Your employees deserve to be treated well, no matter what their status is at the company.

Let’s assume your company has checked all those boxes. Now you can turn your attention to how technology and AI can give your business an even better return on the investment into your employees.

Streamline and Simplify: Software Investment 

In this blog, we frequently write about how important the right software is to promote productivity, efficiency, and growth at any company. In particular, we focus on how knowledge and documents get used and shared throughout the business. A solution like M-Files can help you achieve seamless document collaboration and intuitive storage. A solution like Interject can help you access historical data with ease. And a solution like Epicor can connect data across your entire business.

What’s the common theme here? Access to real-time, accurate, and useable data is absolutely crucial to your company’s success—and guess what? The same thing is true for each of your employees. The more data they have easy access to, the better their decisions will be and the smoother their workflows will be.

Here are some areas to focus on when you’re investing in technology:

• Workflow automation: Workflow automation is one of the best technological investments you can make. By automating previously manual, repetitive tasks such as data entry and approval hierarchies, you can save your employees hours of time and countless headaches. What’s more, the entire company will benefit from increased efficiency and reduced frequency of manual errors.
• Digital compliance: Compliance protocols can be extremely time-consuming and tedious—but they’re also high-stakes. Ease the burden of compliance protocols on your employees by investing in digital compliance tools such as a secure document management system with permission and version controls.
• Integration: Employees won’t thank you if you implement a new software solution that isn’t integrated with your existing systems. In fact, this actually creates more work for them, as they now must transfer data manually between the two environments. Put integration as a top priority when you’re choosing new software solutions.
• Real-time insights: As we mentioned above, access to real-time data and insights is crucial for your employees to make the best decisions they can. Understanding exactly what’s going on in your operations at any given time will increase employee efficiency, productivity, and empowerment.
• Skill development: No software solution will help your business unless your employees know how to use it. With any technological investment, be sure to provide extensive training opportunities—in different formats and at different times—and a point of contact for any questions or problems. Initial training is only half of the equation: make sure to also provide continuing training and skill development to help employees “level up” their knowledge and take advantage of new software features.

Whenever you’re investing in technology, you need to remember the people who will be using that technology. If the software doesn’t work for them, it isn’t truly a solution.

Extend and Empower: AI Investment

The world of technology has gotten a lot more exciting recently with the advent of AI-powered software. These new systems can do incredible things—but, again, they must be implemented thoughtfully and cautiously. Here are some types of AI that can empower your employees to excel at their jobs:

• Predictive analytics: Business analytics are crucial to understanding how your company works—and how well it’s working. Basic analytics compare your company’s current numbers (sales, orders, etc.) with previous numbers (from the last year, quarter, etc.). However, AI can do something really exciting: it can start predicting your company’s future numbers. By analyzing fast quantities of data, including customer trends, previous numbers, and operational processes, AI can predict order levels, customer preferences, and even when manufacturing machines will need to be serviced. Again, the more data at your employees’ fingertips, the better.
• Intelligent search: AI is making a huge difference to search engines—you’ve probably seen AI incorporated into websites like Google and Amazon. Your company can also take advantage of similar software. Especially if your business handles high quantities of documentation, AI-powered search functions allow your employees to describe what they are looking for—they don’t need to know the exact title of the document or where exactly it’s stored. Talk about saving time!
• Generative AI: Generative AI is what most of us think of when we hear the term “AI.” GenAI can produce answers to questions, summarize documents, create text and images, and more. Employees can use GenAI to create drafts of emails, find one piece of data amidst a long document, and even plan out their workday.
• Agentic AI: Agentic AI is where AI is headed next. Agentic AI goes beyond GenAI: where GenAI generates text, Agentic AI does things. What does that mean? GenAI can show your employee where to apply for health insurance coverage, for instance. Agentic AI can create and submit their entire application with just a few inputs.

AI has caused a lot of consternation among white-collar employees. Many worry that AI will “take their jobs.” Therefore, AI solutions must be implemented with care and employee feedback must be taken seriously. The best AI software will not take jobs, but instead free employees up for higher-order tasks that demand human creativity, empathy, and cognitive capacity.

Ready to Empower Your Employees? 

Here at Laminin, we take pride in implementing solutions that meet our clients’ unique needs. Each project is custom-designed to benefit you and your employees. If your business could benefit from an AI-enabled information management solution, let’s talk!