WTW's AI tool is changing how employers survey their workforce

What if, when managers were stuck on a problem, they had a list of personalized solutions at their disposal? That scenario has become a reality for a number of companies working with WTW — and AI is to thank. 

The global advisory, brokering and solutions company recently announced the launch of Engage Coach AI, an addition to the firm's existing employee listening service Engage. The generative AI assistant aims to guide leadership through some of the obstacles they face with employee engagement in an effort to help leaders and managers improve employee experience as well as business performance.

"We decided to tackle one of the biggest problems with employee surveys, which is taking action on the results," says Adam Zuckerman, global product leader for Engage. "Everyone can do a survey; it's responding to the results in a way that satisfies employees and improves their experience and improves the business that's a challenge — so that's where we started." 

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In its earlier iteration, Engage was able to use simpler forms of AI to pull the most important findings out of employee surveys and engagement reports. The addition of generative AI, however, enables the platform to give leaders personalized advice and insights based on those findings. In addition to the AI-generated recommendations, managers can now also access the platform's curated library of content from WTW experts, including resources like videos, book summaries and articles. 

The challenge wasn't just to help the organization take action, but to do it in a way that accommodates decentralized and distributed workforces, Zuckerman says. 

"There are hundreds or often thousands of reports being distributed to managers and leaders across the company, each of whom is looking after their own department or their own unit," he says. "They've got to take action, but how do they do that effectively when their workforce is so distributed and they only have so many HR people to help them? AI was the perfect way to scale that support." 

Using Engage Coach AI, a manager can send out surveys and have results — including employee comments, questions or concerns — fielded within seconds of running it through the program. The AI then provides actionable steps the manager can take based on the specific needs of their department without the need to consult HR.  

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"It also removes the barrier of excuses," Zuckerman says. "Previously, you'd have managers who would respond to a lack of action by saying they don't know how to address what they were seeing. Either they wouldn't do anything, or they would call HR for help, whose resources are inevitably always strapped. The new program allows them to act independently." 

While the concept of using automation at work isn't necessarily new, the introduction of generative AI into workflows is still in the early stages of development, which can seem daunting to business leaders and middle managers. Zuckerman, however, urges organizations to lean into the novelty and get proactively involved in the generative AI conversation while they still can. 

"AI is an accelerant — the speed and the quality of any process is just greatly improved," he says. "So if you believe in the value of employee experience and you're trying to improve it as a key lever to improve business performance, it's something you want to take advantage of. To ignore it is to be missing out on that opportunity completely."