Intentional use of AI improves benefits engagement for employees and HR

AI technologies may be relatively new to benefit administration, but they have the potential to completely revolutionize the space for the better.  

More than 70% of benefit leaders believe AI will have a positive impact on benefit administration, according to a recent survey from tech and business services company HealthEquity. Eighty-five percent even say they're likely to choose a benefits partner that uses AI — which proves just how far some organization's commitments to AI innovation have already come.   

"Benefits are complicated," says Rhiana Gademsky, co-founder and CEO of Aidora, an AI-led benefit management platform. "Even HR leaders late in their career still come across concepts or questions that they don't have the answer to. For employees, selecting benefits packages and understanding the policies is largely just jargon. AI can streamline what's historically been a very cumbersome process and reduce its complexity." 

Read more: AI helps select employee benefits — and saves organizations money

Through her work with Aidora, Gademsky has seen firsthand how much AI helps benefit leaders and employees alike get the most out of the benefit selection process. The platform utilizes conversational AI to help companies navigate longer leaves of absence, such as medical or maternity leaves. The tool, which has a similar format as ChatGPT, guides both HR leaders and employees through the end-to-end process of requesting a leave of absence — from designing a plan and submitting documentation, to the employee's return.  

As a secondary function, Aidora can also help employees understand their rights to take leave under federal, state and local laws so that they don't have to cross reference the information from the Department of Labor with their state regulations and their company's own policies. This makes the process smoother and more effective for everyone involved. 

"Everyone deserves access to their own benefits and we want to use AI to make that process friendly," Gademsky says. "Our tool takes complex concepts that are publicly available and makes them personalized and digestible."

It's not just employees that benefit from AI intervention, either. Aidora can eliminate many of the more menial functions HR leaders have to deal with such as extracting data from disability applications for and calculating payroll adjustments so that they can not only focus on the more human and aspects of their work but spend more time and effort on what Gademsky refers to as "higher thinking." 

Read more: Why benefit managers can't ignore tech and AI any longer

"If you can use AI to divert brain power from really repetitive admin tasks, you're giving people agency to build skills outside of just writing an email, writing an FAQ or filling out a form," Gademsky says. "For example, I'll use AI to proofread and correct a difficult email, freeing up time to think about how we're actually driving our business forward and the strategy behind what we're doing, rather than just the execution of it." 

In order to reap those benefits, however, benefit leaders need to be intentional about the kind of tech they choose to invest in, for which Gademsky has some advice as both a business leader and the developer or an AI benefits tool. 

"Organizations should be looking for tools that can help with data analysis or employee communication but that don't completely remove HR leaders from the process," she says. "IT should keep humans involved at vital touch points to make sure that everything is kind of going according to plan, but remove the heavy lifting off of that team." 

Read more: 5 ways adaptive intelligence is reimaging benefits

Still, despite the general progress, there are still many HR and benefit leaders that don't know where to find the AI tools they need, much less how to use them. Much of that is due to the fact that HR is often the last department to see tech innovations, according to Gademsky, but she expects that to change as more organizations see the positive and profitable benefits AI brings to the landscape. 

"It allows teams to upskill and grow in their roles over time," she says. "It allows organizations to run more efficiently and it allows the people in those organizations to be in jobs that bring them more intellectual stimulation and fulfillment."