How is AI shaping the future of internal communications?

A brave new world for internal comms

For many departments, AI’s role is commonsense: IT, Finance – even Marketing, all involve resource-intensive tasks that can be efficiently automated. At a glance, internal communications seem less compatible with AI partly because tools like content-writing bots are perceived more as a threat than a productivity enabler. But in reality, AI and automation innovations stand to solve some of the biggest internal comms challenges to date, including:

• Combating communications overload and cutting through excess noise as the volume of content increases
• Battling for employee attention against other channels, sources, and consumer media and marketing
• Alleviating employees’ engagement fatigue while still keeping people updated
• Meeting the growing desire for more personalized, relevant experiences
• Reducing the burden on communicators to deliver consumer-grade campaigns
• Driving organic engagement and human connection in a more digital world of work

Once the dream of sci-fi novels and dystopian films, today artificial intelligence is the driving force behind the way we find and consume content, how we turn big data into insight, and how we go about our work – even when we don’t realize it.

Many people fear AI and automation, many more don’t understand how it works. Almost all of us fail to realize just how many things that we take for granted use AI in some form. As consumers AI is already shaping our expectations, delivering hyper-relevant, personalized experiences that turn user-data into fuel for engagement. There’s so much more to internal comms AI than bots that write articles for you – so how exactly are AI and automation bringing new capabilities to the IC arsenal?

5 ways AI is creating value for internal comms

AI can provide significant value to internal communications in a variety of ways, and business leaders are taking note: 72% of decision-makers agree that AI can enable humans to focus on more meaningful work, per PwC.

It's important to briefly note the difference between AI and automation and their application in the workplace. Internal comms can leverage automation to outsource menial, repetitive tasks and free up time for more creative, human jobs. This means automated tracking and analytics, automated workflows for campaigns, even automated content delivery. AI, on the other hand, is the underlying technology (or intelligence) that powers this automation – think the algorithms that determine which content is shown to users, or that processes and finds patterns in data to then measure and analyze. Put simply, automation is powered by formulas and rules, whereas AI focuses on the creation of hyper-intelligent tools, like its subset ‘machine-learning.’

#1. Intelligent, personal experiences for every user

In our personal lives, content finds us. With little effort we are recommended almost anything we want to watch, listen to, or read. As a result, employee expectations demand the same kind of personalization at work that we’ve grown accustomed to as consumers.

Machine-learning and intelligent content delivery – putting the right content in front of the right people at the right time, and through the right channel – will play a big role in the future of employee engagement. Analyzing user activity and predicting what will engage them most, and building unique profiles for users and continually improving recommendations based on activity, helps deliver experiences the modern employee demands without asking communicators to granularly target each individual.

#2. Automated campaigns build organic engagement

The marketer’s secret weapon has made its way inside the workforce. Internal communicators can make use of Engagement Automation to plan, schedule, automate, and track comms campaigns from one hub and take content to the next level.

Engagement Automation allows internal comms to build out automated campaigns that support a modern approach to employee engagement, rivalling what we see in our personal lives. Bringing together market-leading analytics and workflow engines, communicators can set and track objectives and build in actions that respond in real-time to those goals. Want more people to read your latest CEO update? Build in follow-up push notifications or email broadcasts to retarget employees yet to view content until your goals are met. This is just one of the ways in which AI technology can bring an automated approach to something as personal and human as engagement.

#3. Automation streamlines tasks

While internal comms and AI may seem incompatible, in truth there are a litany of tasks that could be automated to free up valuable time for communicators and meet the growing demands of employees. Here's where a combination of light-touch AI and automated processes can make a big difference: take resource-intensive tasks and automate them in seconds.

Communicators can leverage features like AI-powered multilingual translation to overcome language barriers and provide tailored content experiences to global workforces. You can also use AI content-tagging to automatically add metadata to images, videos, and other assets, so you’ll never lose them in your CMS again.

#4. AI enhances user experiences

Our perceptions of AI and automation have been shaped in large part by our initial interactions with it. In the consumer world, many people’s first introduction to AI came in the form of AI assistants, like Alexa and Siri. Our experiences with these tools became flag-bearers for what we think and believe about AI, which explains why chatbots and search experiences often come to mind first when we talk about AI in the workplace.

Automated chatbots lend a valuable hand in taking FAQs and search queries from users and making them more interactive and immediate – they successfully answer over 80% of all questions. They also provide a useful source of data that allows you to measure what questions and issues arise most often and adjust certain aspects of your comms strategy in response.

#5. Content-writing bots break writers’ block

As the amount of content we consume increases year-on-year, having doubled since 2020 to almost 7 hours every day, internal communicators are under more and more pressure to keep up with our voracious appetite for content in the attention economy.

Content-writing bots have proven a controversial development in the AI space, as this is where AI seems to encroach on the responsibilities of internal comms most. But this is also where the distinct gap between the abilities of neural networks versus the tone and intuition of human communication is most visible. So don’t rely on content writing bots to replace internal comms. Lean on them to produce structures and body copy for content quickly and at volume. Then come in and edit this down into the desired, high-quality content your employees need.

This approach saves time, resources, and perfectly symbolizes the future of AI and IC: Working hand-in-hand to solve menial problems and streamline tasks, yet continue to deliver high-quality, emotive, and, most importantly, human communications.

Keep ahead of the game with an agile approach

Internal comms must remain agile to change to be able to capitalize on the value that AI, automation, and other emergent technologies offer. As AI technology continues to develop, the reality of internal communications augmented by AI, but still human at their core, grows closer every day, with plenty of tools available today.

AI and automation is the future of work, promising unique value to all corners of the workforce. The enterprise and internal comms tech landscape is rapidly changing, so deciding on which tools to support your digital strategy can be make or break. An evergreen employee experience platform provides the agility and flexibility you need to stay at the forefront of technological innovation and deliver the best comms experiences to your employees.