A Study on Employee Well-Being: Investigating the effects of implementing Artificial Intelligence in Human Resource Management practices.

Abstract

The following study investigates the growing digitalization in a contemporary society and, particularly, how it is influencing the human resource management field. With burgeoning technology, we look to new solutions on how managers can measure and uphold employee well-being by introducing artificial intelligence as a means. The innovative company, Winningtemp, is set to be the benchmark of our study as they have provided organizations with new solutions, allowing managers continuous insight into their employees’ work-life-cycle. The emergence of digitalization over the past decades and the continuous evolvement of technologies justifies the relevance of our study. Nevertheless, the critical phase organizations are currently facing due to Covid-19, requiring rapid change and digital solutions in order to keep operating. Human resource scholars emphasise how employee well-being has not been a central research topic within the field (Ho & Kuvaas, 2019). Arguably though, employee well-being and performance are interconnected, supporting the fact that employees’ health should be a topic of interest for managers. Kuvaas, Buch and Dysvik (2016) further emphasise how performance management should indeed be a continuous process, yet many organizations still rely on traditional methods, limiting performance management practices to once or twice per year. The present research, therefore, seeks to understand whether agile performance management tools might be a more sufficient solution in enhancing healthy and essentially prosperous workplaces. A quantitative study of 93 individuals was conducted to compare companies utilising human resource tools assisted by artificial intelligence, with traditional tools. Specifically, the study found that by adopting agile tools to performance management practices, organizations generated higher levels of employee wellbeing in terms of social-psychological functioning. Further, the results show that employees exposed to new-technological tools report lower on economic leadermember exchange relationships. Nonetheless, managers and line-managers within these companies engage in human resource practices on a more frequent basis and are generally more satisfied with their tools to approach employees.