The agentic—and empathetic—opportunity to simplify employee experience

Improving employee experience is a critical need for every business. But delivering on the promise requires a dual approach.  First, companies need to identify and understand the key employee experiences that need better solutions—then, look at opportunities where agentic AI can manage the workloads.

This is where the leadership challenge comes in: Implementing AI effectively is more than distributing tools. It’s an organizational commitment to “leading with empathy,” as Freshworks CIO Ashwin Ballal explains: focusing on great employee experience with the same rigor that companies tend to apply first to customer experience. “AI may help us automate tasks and derive insights from data,” says Ballal, “but it’s empathy that will help us bridge the gap between technology and people.”

Two recent reports in The Works dig into both sides of the technology and empathy equation:

• Why empathy, not just AI, is driving the future of business
• 5 frustrating employee experiences that demand a better solution 

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The need to uncomplicate job experiences

Despite a decade of major corporate investments in digital transformation, many employee experiences remain frustratingly complex, with significant business costs. Companies stand to make substantial gains by deploying AI to improve five key pain points:

• IT support (where resolution times exceed 30 hours without AI)
• Employee onboarding (poor experiences double quit rates within six months)
• Recruiting (49% of candidates find processes too lengthy)
• Benefits enrollment (half of workers regret their choices)
• Time-off requests (where AI can reduce resolution time by 90%)

Murali Swamanathan, CTO of Freshworks, explains how AI agents can tackle some of these challenges: “The power of AI agents is in breaking complex tasks into micro-actions,” he says. “What used to require multiple systems and manual steps becomes one conversation.”  

Companies taking this approach are seeing impressive results: Australia-based Village Roadshow, for example, achieved 25% faster resolutions and 25% higher employee satisfaction after deploying AI-powered solutions.

Kathi Enderes, senior VP at the Josh Bersin Company, notes that AI offers "the opportunity to rethink employee experience in a different way—to focus on the outcome we want and redesign the process to achieve it."

Read the full story on The Works.

Leading with empathy to deliver great EX

While technology provides powerful tools, empathy is equally critical in driving business transformation, says Ballal.

"AI may help us automate tasks and derive insights from data, but it's empathy that will help us bridge the gap between technology and people," he says, noting that empathetic leadership drives higher employee engagement, leads to 30% higher Net Promoter Scores, and can boost employee retention by 50%.

Ballal adds that CIOs must solicit and respond to employee feedback as a key commitment. They must also understand the human impact of technological change and balance the need for efficiency with employee well-being.

"Empathy isn't a 'soft skill' or an add-on; it's a core leadership skill," Ballal says. In a world increasingly dominated by AI, "it's our uniquely human capacity for empathy that will make the biggest difference in how we lead and how we make technology work for everyone."

Read the full story on The Works.