The greatest benefit of artificial intelligence for businesses is its ability to automate tasks that in former years would have taken countless man-hours to accomplish. If you’re a business owner, granting your employees the tools and the training to use AI in their day-to-day activities empowers them to be more productive and improve the quality of their work.
However, true employee empowerment means more than just signing up for a few tools and leaving your staff members to do what they will with them. So how can you make sure your company’s AI investments are optimised not only for business growth but also for elevating and empowering your staff?
In this article, we’ll go over some ways you can use AI to automate various business processes and multiply the productivity of your team sustainably over the long term.
Pick the Right AI Tools
Choosing AI tools that are most relevant to your business is crucial if you want to make the most out of generative tech. What these tools are largely depends on the type of business you run. For instance, if you’re a marketing agency that specialises in creating paid ads for clients, it makes sense to give your team access to graphic design tech like Adobe Firefly’s creative AI tools. On the other hand, if you run a factory, it’s best to sign up for AI modelling and predictive maintenance software.
If you’re not sure which specific tools to invest in, it’s always a good idea to gather the input of your employees who will actually be using these tools. For example, if you run a large company with an SEO department, you should speak with the Head of SEO before committing to a subscription to an AI content generation tool. They might have a better alternative in mind or might simply prefer writing content by hand, then having an AI tool check for typos afterwards.
Before buying any AI tools for your team, it’s also vital to understand them yourself. If you can, sign up for a free trial and play around with each tool before putting down money. While it’s a business owner’s job to delegate tasks, you should personally have a strong grasp of what your teams are doing, which includes understanding the tools they use.
Utilise AI for Inclusive Hiring
Recruitment is a massive use case for AI in business. Application tracking systems like Zoho and Recruitee all make use of artificial intelligence to screen potential candidates by searching for relevant experience and skills in resumes. Making use of ATS tools takes out plenty of the bias during the recruitment process, since they only judge applicants based on criteria that are relevant to the job, and not on things like physical appearance or gender. This in turn, helps you cultivate an inclusive workplace.
AI can also be used to write descriptions for job listings. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity can write cohesive, professional, and presentable web copy with the information you feed them. Alternatively, you can also write the job descriptions yourself and run them through AI for editing, making it easier to proofread position descriptions before you post them online, and ensuring your company’s messaging is always focused and well-presented online.
Whatever approach you take, just remember that you shouldn’t rely on AI solely when it comes to hiring. There’s always more to a candidate than what their resumes say, so a human should always have the final say. AI-written job descriptions should always be proofread before being posted on job boards, as AI is still prone to making mistakes. AI can make hiring much easier, but using it doesn’t mean you can completely remove human oversight.
Automate Digital Marketing Tasks
Another area where AI has been used extensively is in digital marketing. Whether it’s performing keyword research for SEO content, generating ad visuals or proofreading social media captions, the rise of artificial intelligence-powered tools has made it possible to automate many tasks that previously took hours of human labour to accomplish.
AI is also incredibly useful in a marketing context thanks to its ability to analyse large swathes of data. Whether you’re collecting information about your customers through website cookies, surveys or newsletter signup forms, there are plenty of insights you can glean from the data you have at your disposal. AI can help you make sense of the customer information you have access to and give you a better understanding of your audience, giving you an instant advantage over the competition.
Use AI to Supplement (Not Replace) Human Work
Lastly, AI should always be used to supplement human ingenuity, not replace it. While tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT are great at automating certain tasks at scale, they lack the creativity and critical thinking skills of experienced human workers. Moreover, large language models are prone to making factual errors that can have a detrimental impact on your business.
Understanding the pros and cons of AI is the key to making the most out of it. Make use of it to accomplish rote tasks and help sharpen the quality of human-produced work while leaving high-level planning to human beings. Moreover, always check AI-produced work before releasing it to the public. AI is an incredibly helpful automation tool, but in its current iterations, it’s far from perfect.
Empower your Teams with Smart Investments in AI & Automation
AI is an incredibly powerful facet of digital technology, but many businesses don’t get the most out of it simply because they don’t use nor perhaps even recognise its true potential. When used in the right way, AI can help your teams automate many of their day-to-day tasks, freeing up their time to work on bigger-picture issues.
Today, we’ve covered some top tips for using AI to automate various day-to-day tasks. Be sure to implement the strategies we’ve covered to empower your teams and help them improve both the speed and the quality of their work.