Startups face a handful of significant challenges in getting off the ground. While funding and breaking into the market may be the most obvious, you shouldn’t overlook your workforce, either. Turnover can be common among new businesses, and high attrition could stop you from reaching your goals efficiently.
The startup-heavy fintech sector exemplifies this issue. Singaporean fintech businesses have an average attrition rate of 10 per cent to 15 per cent, and employees typically stay with the company for just three years. Thankfully, artificial intelligence (AI) can help. Here are five ways you can use AI to reduce employee turnover:
Find ideal candidates
AI’s role in attrition reduction starts before hiring even begins. Many employees leave startups because they struggle to see the company’s long-term potential or may misunderstand its culture, as this will be less established. Consequently, you can avoid turnover by finding people who are a better fit for your business.
AI candidate screening tools can recognise subtle characteristics suggesting how well a job-seeker will match the role. Because AI is better than humans at detecting easy-to-miss trends in data, it can find ideal recruits conventional hiring approaches may overlook.
Looking for unconventional candidates can increase the available labour pool by nearly 10 times the norm. Consequently, you’re far more likely to find people who match your company culture with AI’s help.
Personalise onboarding and career development
Once you find the right employee for a role, AI can help by tailoring their experience to their requirements. Failure to nurture workers’ talents or lacking the resources to meet individual needs are other common causes of startup turnover. Automated personalisation fills that gap.
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Machine learning models can analyse an employee’s experience and preferences during recruitment to learn what they need from the company. They can then modify onboarding templates accordingly, ensuring everyone’s training matches their unique situation. Consequently, people will feel more comfortable and ready to start work at your startup.
Similar benefits apply to long-term career development. Limited opportunities for advancement are a key cause of attrition for 43 per cent of workers in Southeast Asia. You can address this need by using AI to match current employees to potential promotions or training opportunities, helping them advance while providing the most value to the company.
Automate un-engaging tasks
You can also use AI to reduce attrition by automating work your employees may find tedious or boring. As minor as such complaints may seem, low engagement leads to higher burnout and turnover, so removing unengaging tasks can have the opposite effect.
Common non-engaging work includes data entry, billing, scheduling and reporting. All of these functions are also easily automatable with today’s available AI software. AI also tend to perform such work with higher accuracy and greater efficiency, so you can save time and money by automating them, too.
Remember to use AI to complement workers, not replace them. Your takeaway should be that AI frees employees to focus on the tasks they enjoy and that contribute more to the company. Threatening job losses with automation will likely lead to worse turnover.
Evaluate employee sentiment
Another way to reduce attrition through AI is to evaluate how your employees feel about the workplace. Customer sentiment analysis is already a common AI use case in many businesses, and you can apply the same concept to your workforce to learn where company culture may need to change.
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Automated surveys and internal communications provide the data AI needs to determine employee sentiment. When using surveys, remember to ask about feelings toward your AI technology itself. It’s the second leading cause of job losses among today’s technologies, so you want to assure your workers as soon as possible if they fear such a future is headed their way.
Once your AI model summarises your employees’ state of mind, you must act. Address any common issues people bring up about the workplace and open a dialogue about how things can improve. Workers will be more likely to stay if they see positive change and witness leadership listening to their input.
Guide your startup’s future
It’s also worth considering that some employees may leave your company because they realise many startups fail. You can assuage these concerns by using AI to gain insight into your industry’s future and build a more reliable long-term strategy.
As much as 98 per cent of startups say AI is crucial to their future business strategy. You may fall behind the competition if you don’t also capitalise on the technology. Start by looking for cost or time-saving opportunities through AI-driven automation and use AI to identify inefficiencies or predict future market changes.
When you build a better business model with AI, you can assure workers of their future at a successful organisation. Attrition will fall as a result.
Startups must emphasise employee retention
Workforce turnover is expensive and disruptive. Consequently, you must boost retention to give your startup a better chance at success.
AI may not be a panacea for workforce issues, but it can assist you in many areas. Following these five steps can help you build and manage a successful, engaged team to drive your business forward.
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