Employees are adopting AI in droves, but organizations are behind the curve in supporting its use in the workplace. This can have serious consequences, not only for harnessing AI’s business benefits, but also for mitigating risks. This article explores the state of employee AI use today and how your organization can ensure it follows best practices.
The state of AI use in the workplace today
There’s no question that AI plays a significant role in modern workplaces. According to one large-scale poll, 75% of global knowledge workers use it in their jobs in some capacity. This isn’t surprising, given how accessible and exciting generative AI tools are for the average desked employee. These tools have incredible potential to boost efficiency and even quality in our workplaces, especially when adoption is well managed.
Unfortunately, many businesses are behind the curve in supporting employee AI adoption and use, and this starts with underestimating how often employees are already using AI in their roles.
According to McKinsey, workers are three times more likely to use AI than their leaders expect. The same research found that 13% of employees report using AI for 30% or more of their daily tasks, and another 34% expect to be doing so within a year. When asked to estimate these numbers, leaders put them at 4% and 16% – a stark difference that can limit AI’s effectiveness and exacerbate its risks.
One encouraging trend is that employees are already reporting benefits from AI adoption. According to Pew Research, four out of ten workers who use AI tools at work say they’ve been very or extremely helpful in saving them time, while 29% report that it’s raised the quality of their work. The potential is there, but to realize it on an organizational level and avoid common pitfalls, employees need guidance.
Many are not getting that guidance. One recent study found that only 44% of companies had a policy in place that specifically covers employee use of generative AI. This may be a product of how quickly AI use has spread and evolved, a lack of precedent, or even a lack of understanding around its impact. Whatever the reason, it’s imperative that companies provide employees with the information they need to use AI effectively.
The number of companies with dedicated AI policies is lower than we’d like. Still, it is up 34% year-on-year, and 25% of employers without policies say they’re currently working on putting one together. If you’re one of these organizations, we’ve got some great tips below. If you need more convincing – or just a refresher – we’ll dive into the risks of not having a generative AI policy next.
4 reasons employees need guidance on AI use
Employees are excited to use AI, but tend to think more about its benefits and groundbreaking capabilities than they do about its risks. Here are some drawbacks to unchecked employee AI use that prove a little education can go a long way.
Potential inaccuracies
Generative AI has been trained with information from many sources, and not all of these sources are accurate. If this source material is misleading or wrong, then the AI output will be too. Using AI-generated information without confirming that it’s true could result in errors that add up to big consequences across the business. Employees who aren’t as educated on AI’s limitations may not know they should be checking for these inaccuracies and inadvertently use misinformation that affects your products or services, reputation, customer relationships, and more.
Bias and discrimination
AI is also susceptible to bias. Much of this comes down to training data, with AI perpetuating biases that exist in society and make their way into source material. Examples include AI-generated images that are more likely to depict men as doctors or CEOs, AI-generated strategies that don’t consider the perspectives of those of lower socioeconomic statuses, or even client-facing copy that perpetuates harmful stereotypes about a certain demographic.
Using biased material can limit perspective, cause you to miss out on valuable opportunities or strategies, lead to discriminatory decision-making, and alienate customers, staff, or partners. Your employees can spot and correct bias, but first, they need to be aware of how pervasive it is in AI-generated content and understand how to identify it.
Security risks
Incorrect, unaware, or careless use of AI can be a major threat to your organization’s security. If employees don’t know about the risks involved, users may enter information they shouldn’t into AI platforms. This data is typically stored by these platforms indefinitely and used to further train AI models, giving your organization little to no control over how it is used and stored.
Once it’s in the possession of AI tools, sensitive data may be exposed or captured due to data leaks, data breaches, and cyberattacks, and your organization may not know about these security lapses right away. This is especially true if employees are using consumer-grade AI tools, which tend to lack the encryption and security that enterprise-level systems have. With 78% of AI users using their own tools rather than company-sanctioned ones, this is a significant concern.
Legal liability
Unrestricted employee AI use can also set your company up for legal risk. Employees who input sensitive data into AI platforms can unknowingly violate industry-specific or regional data privacy regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, or HIPPA. Noncompliance in this area can create monetary and reputational costs for your organization that are difficult to shake.
Furthermore, as we touched on above, AI can lead to inaccurate and prejudiced information being shared or used to influence policies, processes, and decision-making. This is problematic on its own, but it can also set your organization up for legal issues if it leads to discriminatory actions or misleading content.
How to manage employee AI use in your workplace
There’s no question that the risks of workplace AI use are serious. But they’re also preventable. Your employees don’t want to put your organization in harm’s way, and if you arm them with the right information, they can work to keep their AI use safe and smart.
Training
Consider offering AI training to employees – they’ll likely welcome the opportunity to learn or brush up on best practices. One recent survey found that 57% of employees feel they are behind in keeping up with AI and only 49% have received training in it. Results showed that even early and confident adopters could benefit, as 44% of respondents reported their workplaces lacked a centralized approach for dealing with AI use.
Employees themselves certainly recognize that the right training is essential for getting employees to use AI in ways that matter. 48% say training is the most important factor for AI adoption, and they’re right – providing the information they need will make a significant difference. Not everyone will be able to make it to these training courses, so it may make sense to record them and house them on your intranet platform for access at a later date.
A hard-and-fast policy on employee AI use
Another way to get employees up to par on AI use is to implement an official company policy. This is a document that employees can reference at any time to ensure their usage is in line with company rules and positions on AI.
Your policy should include the reasons why you’ve created this document and why it’s important that employees adhere to your organization’s guidelines. Here are some ideas for what to have in yours:
- Advise employees to read up on the security, terms of service, and privacy policies of any AI tools they use – you could even provide them with an approved list of options vetted by your IT team.
- Remind employees to follow organization-wide security best practices, such as creating strong passwords, no matter what tool they’re using.
- Emphasize data security and confidentiality by either prohibiting the input of certain information into AI or anonymizing or encrypting it. Establish that employees must report any security breaches that occur.
- Prohibit using AI to create harmful, offensive, or discriminatory content.
- Encourage employees to watch out for and mitigate bias (you may need to provide additional educational materials or training on achieving inclusivity).
- Advise employees to fact-check information generated through AI with reliable sources to counteract inaccuracy.
- Consider encouraging employees to disclose when content is AI generated to facilitate transparency.
- Encourage employees to report concerns about inappropriate AI use in the workplace.
Consider making this policy a “mandatory read” on your intranet or including a statement of acceptance for employees to sign so that you can be sure your workforce has read and agrees to your guidelines.
Giving employees the right tools
Putting the right tools in employees’ hands can help them use AI to better their work and your organization. Above, we touched on the difference between consumer-grade solutions and enterprise-grade solutions, which give organizations greater security and control. Beyond this, it’s good practice to have your IT team build a pre-approved list of AI platforms that employees can feel confident about using.
AI can also be used to help employees better communicate and share information internally. An AI-enabled digital workplace platform should include AI content creation features for internal communications. This helps them craft high-quality, visually appealing content that resonates with coworkers, facilitating knowledge-sharing and culture-building throughout the organization.
For example, Interact’s AI content creation features include the ability to:
- Analyze content to make suggestions that improve tone, sentiment, and inclusivity, and help adapt content to quality guidelines and formatting conventions
- Generate content from simple prompts and transform existing content into policies, FAQs, quizzes, image alt-text generation, and short summaries in seconds
- Utilize duplication detection to alert employees if their content is too similar to existing intranet content, preventing replication
- Create auto-summaries of content, providing an accurate synopsis of what each article or post contains
- Translate content into multiple languages so that users can create and access content in their language of choice without limiting reach or quality
- Help employee-generated content reach the right audience at the right time with historical, demographic, and psychometric data
Taking your employee AI-use approach long-term
In just a few short years, AI has gone from a theoretical solution to a daily reality that’s altering our workplaces in very real ways. Technology will keep evolving and improving at a rapid clip, bringing new possibilities to transform our organizations and business strategies.
This will come with new considerations, features, and best practices, so it’s crucial to stay on top of them and train and inform your employees accordingly. Using your digital workplace to share new updates, challenges, and recommendations will help keep the entire organization on the same page.
