Gartner: HR, meet employees where they stand on AI & wellbeing

“The COVID-19 pandemic was a uniquely stressful experience” – but stress and burnout did not go away as vaccines were approved and the pandemic eased, Gartner’s VP, advisory, Brent Cassell tells UNLEASH.

In fact, Gartner’s data shows that employees mental and emotional wellbeing has been trending downward since the winter of 2021.

Cassell comments: “That’s really interesting – schools are open, borders have opened, and by and large we are back to normal” – but HR leaders (and organizations as a whole) need to understand that employees are still not okay.

“Even in the absence of COVID-19, there’s no shortage of things out there to worry about”; inflation is sky-high, and we’re living in a cost of living crisis – plus there is so much instability in terms of geopolitics, emerging tech and climate change.

This begs the question; how can employers move the needle on wellbeing in 2024?

‘All the apps in the world won’t solve the [wellbeing] problem’

The confusing thing for HR teams is that it isn’t like they haven’t invested in more (and highly effective) wellbeing tech over the past few years.

Cassell shares that problem is that “utilization hasn’t budged”, Gartner data shows that only one in four employees actually use wellbeing programs offered by their employers.

But HR teams need to realize that stress and burnout “is not a problem that we can solve exclusively through technology – there are bigger issues that we have to address”, notes Cassell.

Brent Cassell, VP, advisory, Gartner.

A major issue is that “discussing employee mental health at work is still a taboo”, and “unless employees are comfortable having these conversations at work, they’re not going to get the help they need”.

Plus, there is a need to think on “how do we communicate these benefits that we have today in ways that will likely get more folks to use them”.

“Until we do that, all the apps, all the programs, all the investments in the world aren’t going to solve the problem,” declares Cassell.

According to Cassell, another priority for HR leaders must be to look beyond just using wellbeing apps and programs to treat the symptoms of employee wellbeing challenges, and instead to try and actually address the root cause.

“There’s also a very important conversation to be had about what is actually creating that stress, anxiety and worry in the first place,” adds Cassell.

HR, think outside the box and lean on managers

To help HR teams to drive utilization of wellbeing tech and investments (and all the resulting positive impacts; Gartner found wellbeing programs drive 27% higher performance and a 60% increase in engagement), Cassell calls on the function to work more closely with managers.

Managers are well known to make or break people’s experiences at work – and HR needs to “recognize the critical role that managers play” in the realm of wellbeing.

According to Cassell, “all too often, when HR leaders set out to solve the problem of low utilization of wellbeing programs, they default to what they’ve always done – building a bigger, better megaphone for the HR team”, sending more emails or more texts to get the word out.

But in reality, “if you actually train managers in how to spot the early warning indicators of burnout, and how to then engage empathetically”, and inform employees about the programs on offer, “that can have a bigger boost on overall utilization”.

Managers (and leaders) can also help if they “lead from a place of vulnerability”.

When senior leaders communicate openly and honestly about the challenge they’ve experienced in their own lives, and the steps that they’ve taken to overcome those challenges that helps communicate that all important message to employees that it is okay not to be okay,” adds Cassell.

Another way that HR leaders need to think outside the box on wellbeing is to ensure they communicate the technologies on offer in a way that employees understand – it’s time to move from supply-centric to a demand-centric approach.

Rather than sharing, for instance, “we’ve added a 20^th bullet to the third paid of the brochure” and that employees can find that on the intranet, HR needs to meet employees where they are.

“The way that employees actually experience and interact with these programs is when they need to save money for their kid’s education, when they are preparing for retirement, when they’re saving to purpose their first home or when they are getting ready to start a family,” adds Cassell.

HR need to “do a better job at connecting the dots” for employees going through these transformative moments, and making it as easy as possible for employees to know what support is on (when they need it) and where to find said support.

Finally, according to Cassell, if HR teams want to continue to get leadership support and investment into their crucial wellbeing programs, they need to lean into the metrics.

Many are struggling to figure out which programs are working, and why, and then they cannot even start to predict what might work in the future.

But, with budgets being tight in this economy, HR needs to be more strategic with the help of data and analytics.

From data and analytics to AI

Helen Poitevin, distinguished VP analyst, Gartner.

For Gartner, stress and burnout isn’t the only challenge for HR teams to overcome in 2024.

AI also needs to be top of mind for the HR function – first of all, HR is on the frontline of communicating with employees about the impact of AI on their jobs. Plus they also need to figure out the best ways to implement AI into their workplace.

Speaking exclusively to UNLEASH, Gartner’s distinguished VP analyst Helen Poitevin makes it very clear that the research does not suggest that AI will have a negative impact on jobs by 2026 – and in fact, “by 2036, we’re anticipating the creation of jobs with AI”.

She notes that AI is unlikely to come as a big wave – instead it is usually introduced in bits and pieces, so the impact of emerging tech “is actually more gradual than people expect”.

To get ahead now, it is important for HR teams to prioritize upskilling of employees in how to use AI (and of course, AI itself can help here by suggesting the right courses and technologies).

As part of this work, there may be a need to restructure and redesign jobs – this has always been a challenge for HR, according to Poitevin, but “I think some of these AI capabilities can actually help them to step into that with scale”.

Switching gears, Poitevin also sees AI really improving employees’ relationship with (and experiences dealing with) HR.

“Gone are the days where you say ‘I want time off’ and they send you to a website somewhere”. Instead, employees can now get very specific answers using AI tools like chatbots.

This leads to “better utilization of HR essentially”, and it drives efficiencies; rather than wasting time scrolling through an intranet, employees can use AI to get instant answers, and then get on with their value-adding work.

Ultimately, along a similar vein to Cassell’s arguments around wellbeing, AI can help HR meet employees where they are at if organizations want to ensure workers are actually utilizing all the resources, technologies and programs on offer.

The HR vendor partnership on AI

The good news it that HR teams are not alone as they navigate the AI landscape.

Poitevin shares “the vendor role is going to be significant” because very few companies have the capability to build AI, and specifically generative AI, themselves.

To figure out what AI tools to buy, organizations need to dive into their strategy and their priorities – what are the use cases? And why do they want to use AI in their workplaces?

It is important for HR teams to not get siloed here, and only buy tools that work for part of the organization, or part of the HR function.

According to Poitevin: “What often happens is Recruiting says, ‘I want the best thing for me’. And Learning says, ‘I want the best thing for me’”.

But that helps no-one, and means that the why on AI is easily lost.

In addition, HR teams need to work closely with vendors to ensure the AI models they are implementing are responsible and ethical – this is a non-negotiable as Avanade’s chief AI officer Florin Rotar told UNLEASH is a recent interview.

HR leaders need to be asking the right questions in order to hold vendors accountable – a new practice of vendor management is “going to be extremely critical for HR to take on”.