Intelligent CIO North America Issue 21 | Page 37

TALKING

‘‘ business

What if there was a better way to measure the most important factors when it comes to employee retention ? With people quitting jobs at record rates , companies need better tools to measure engagement and the risks of burnout and turnover .

Alejandro Martínez , CEO art Erudit , discusses an AIpowered workforce intelligence company that drives better decisions for businesses with next-generation AI tools . In a post COVID world , engaging and retaining employees are more important than ever given the major changes that have impacted the workforce and job market over the past two years .
What are the financial implications of workplace stress ?
The implications are huge and have increased significantly due to COVID-19 and remote work . For example , voluntary turnover related to burnout has a cost of US $ 15,000 per employee , per company . That means we are talking about an average of US $ 50,000 per employee , per voluntary turnover related to stress . There are also hidden costs related to productivity , engagement , motivation and collaboration with colleagues .
What is the impact of the Great Resignation and why are so many employees leaving their jobs ?
Around four million Americans quit their jobs in the last month – we are talking about people with a gross salary of more than US $ 70,000 or US $ 80,000 per year . That ' s something we have never seen before .
I think there are two main reasons . The first is that , because work is allocated , individuals can work from anywhere and therefore have more options about where they can , and want , to work . Secondly , it is related to the stress around the pandemic . A lot of people have quit jobs and are trying to fix personal problems rather than being purely involved with work .
How can Erudit . ai identify when an employees ’ well-being is at risk ?
AI doesn ' t work by itself ; you need a good team of data scientists who are able to make the AI understand previous jobs . Your AI is replying with the words of a human expert .
We train thousands of databases , created with text and voice , to understand from the perspective of a PhD in psychology the level of burnout or level of engagement in their very specific piece of text or voice .
After that , you have to train Artificial Intelligence to reply with the judgement of an expert , so it ' s as if a leading psychologist was providing feedback in real-time .
Can you explain how your AI-powered software can take insights from a company ’ s communications suite ?
We have created state-of-the-art models to provide , for example , human capital leading indicators such as voluntary turnover raise , burnout raise or engagement levels and we are connecting our AI architecture using the API of the intercommunication tools .
We connect our AI architecture to whatever communications the company uses and that ’ s how we provide insights .
Our AI is digesting the language and we are transforming that into human capital leading indicators about how many people risk voluntary turnover from your company , how many people are experiencing burnout or how engaged they are and what are the reasons behind these leading indicators that we are providing .
Can you explain what information the suite ’ s dashboard supplies to users ?
Right now , we are very focused on providing information to C-level executives , venture capitalists and private equity firms . We want to help them better understand their human capital and realize that if they understand their people , they are going to gain deeper knowledge about their business .
Alejandro Martinez Agenjo , CEO and Co-founder , Erudit
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