AI-based virtual assistant positively impacts employee engagement and perceptions of fairness, finds study 

The study was authored by Debolina Dutta and Sushant Mishra, professors of Organizational Behavior & Human Resources Management at IIMB.

 The use of Artificial Intelligence-based virtual assistant directly impacts employee engagement, while also indirectly affecting employees’ perceptions of fairness about employers, according to a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB). 

Authored by Debolina Dutta and Sushant Mishra, professors of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management at IIMB, the study, Artificial intelligence-based virtual assistant and employee engagement: an empirical investigation, was published in Personnel Review in August 2024.

To test their various hypotheses, the authors approached the context of a subsidiary of a large multinational organisation which specialised in energy storage and management solutions. The organisation had been operating for 30 years and at the time of the study had a workforce of over 6,000 people. Out of this, 1,179 employees participated in a time-lagged study. While 431 of them actively interacted with the virtual assistant introduced as the CEO’s Virtual Assistant and then participated in the engagement study, the other 748 did not interact with it, but participated in the engagement study. 

“An introductory mail was sent to the employees from the CEO’s desk welcoming this virtual assistant. The email explained that the virtual assistant would reach out to each employee, and their responses would be confidential but not anonymous. The HR head received an updated dashboard with the virtual assistant that reflected employee sentiment topics and participation rates. The platform NLP and sentiment analysis allowed thematic representation of engagement drivers such as My Career and Learning, My Organisation, Senior Leadership, My Organisation Culture, My Manager, and My Work,” the study said.  

The data was designed and captured across four months. When the engagement-level data of the two groups was compared by the researchers, a positive association was found between virtual assistant intervention and employee engagement. They also found that the use of AI-based virtual assistants indirectly affected employee engagement via perceived fairness at a 95% confidence interval.  

The study notes that most employees build their perceptions of fairness about their employers based on their past performance over their extended employment tenure. But the findings indicated that virtual AI-based assistants play a role in shaping these perceptions hence proving that the relationships based on which the perceptions were previously shaped, become statistically non-significant. 

“Our study demonstrates that AI-based virtual assistants help develop organisational engagement faster, especially for newer cohort members. This is important as it impacts newer members’ engagement. This insight presents significant opportunities for organisations to accelerate employee engagement impacting new members’ performance. The virtual AI’s anthropomorphic and immediacy behaviors of intelligence, responsiveness, active listening, and personalization increase a sense of fairness with the virtual assistant,” the study explained. 

The researchers say that while the applications of AI in human resources domains are increasing, there is limited research to understand the implication of AI-based assistants on enabling trust and managing human resources. This is one among the early empirical studies on employee outcomes when AI-based virtual assistants are used.