We’re at the early stages of a remote work boom period. Although the rise of work-from-home (WFH) has gained significant momentum in the wake of the pandemic, the World Economic Forum predicts that global digital jobs will grow by around 25% to more than 90 million roles by 2030.
This can provide unprecedented opportunities and challenges for small businesses and startups. While embracing a globally remote workforce can open the door to wider talent pools, it can also make communication and employee management more difficult.
Artificial intelligence will emerge as a leading productivity and collaboration tool for businesses seeking to tap into cost-effective international markets for talent, helping to acquire suitable candidates for technical roles without having to struggle to unlock their potential through language barriers and other silos imposed by remote work.
With this in mind, let’s explore five key ways AI tools are transforming remote work for startups and SMBs alike:
1. Next-Generation Workforce Management
Artificial intelligence can help intuitively oversee workforce management across time zones and language barriers.
The technology can predict workloads and help managers allocate tasks more efficiently for remote workers. This can help employers better manage employee workloads and prevent burnout.
We’re already seeing larger firms embrace AI into their remote operations, helping to improve collaboration among globally distributed employees.
IBM uses AI tools to improve the productivity of remote workers worldwide. Using its dedicated AI platform, Watson, employees can manage tasks, analyze centrally stored data, and collaborate in teams on projects across multiple time zones.
We’re also seeing technology help to improve payments to international employees. As an employer of record (EOR) automation platform, Horizons EOR is an example of a platform that can automate the hiring and payment of employees in over 180 countries, widening access to talent for small businesses on a global scale.
2. Automated Onboarding
Onboarding and training for remote employees can be a significant barrier to productivity when dealing with internationally based workers and can present timing difficulties for trainers.
This divergence from traditional onboarding means that remote workers require more than video calls and screen sharing to get used to company processes.
Style guides and centrally stored manuals can help bridge comprehension gaps, but AI tools can help deliver more engaging training solutions to get new recruits up to speed in their roles.
Artificial intelligence onboarding tools can offer personalized training programs for employees based on the analysis of their experience, skills, and learning approaches.
This fully adaptive software can help maximize employees’ learning potential while utilizing natural language processing (NLP) to deal with queries and issues in real-time.
3. NLP Collaboration
In natural language processing, these AI tools can build a seamless bridge over language barriers by helping internationally distributed teams collaborate effectively.
One particular way this excels is through translation and interpretation. NLPs can instantly translate conversations between team members to offer a mutual understanding in real-time.
The technology can even analyze sentiment and emotion within textual communication to help managers assess prospective issues within their teams and quickly rectify growing concerns.
NLP technology can also transcribe meetings in real time, helping all parties to keep up to date with internal work processes.
4. Cybersecurity
Remote work also brings new threats to businesses. Cybersecurity can be a major issue for companies with distributed workforces. This is because your sensitive and confidential data will only be as secure as the weakest access point for your remote workers.
Artificial intelligence can help businesses to monitor cyber threats more effectively by detecting anomalies and acting on them at a rapid rate. These algorithms can look for patterns in data that may provide insights into when a possible security breach is taking place, which can offer preemptive action to prevent any breaches or stolen data from occurring.
5. Capitalizing on Personalization
Different remote workers worldwide will have varied approaches to meeting their deadlines. Artificial intelligence can enhance productivity by complementing the respective approaches of the employees.
Adaptive virtual assistants, for instance, can use machine learning to analyze the work habits of individuals and offer content curation based on their preferences. This can help working environments to be personalized in a way that meets the needs of the individual, thus boosting engagement and job satisfaction no matter where the employee is based or how they prefer to work.
Building on AI Opportunities
Remote work will provide plenty of opportunities and challenges for businesses, and artificial intelligence will help small businesses capitalize while eliminating some of the friction that early iterations of WFH left.
For small businesses, AI tools can open the door to an unprecedented pool of international talent, and the firms that are the most proactive in embracing the technology have the potential to outgrow their rivals as the ideation process begins to give way to implementation.
