AI in Employee Retention: 6 Applications to Nurture a Long-Tenured Workforce

Your best employee has just given her two weeks’ notice. The exit interview reveals that she has been unhappy for six months, feeling undervalued and seeing no clear path forward. Sounds familiar?

The frustrating part was that there were warning signs all along. Her Slack activity dropped by 30%, and she stopped volunteering for high-visibility projects. But by the time HR noticed these patterns, she’d already accepted an offer elsewhere.

Most retention strategies are reactive. HR teams throw money at the problem after people announce they’re leaving or roll out company-wide perks (those pizza parties won’t help), hoping something sticks.

Artificial intelligence (AI) changes this game entirely. Instead of waiting for the exit interview to understand what went wrong, you can identify risks and gauge employee sentiment months in advance. And instead of one-size-fits-all retention programs, you can deliver personalized interventions that address each employee’s specific needs.

In this article, we’ll show you eight concrete ways AI can transform your retention strategy—from identifying at-risk employees before they start job hunting to creating career paths that keep your top performers engaged.

Employee engagement monitoring

Employees often feel disengaged and unmotivated due to the lack of career development or advancement opportunities. Additionally, according to a NectarHR study, 71% of employees are more inclined to quit if they think their hard work goes unrecognized and unappreciated.

Other factors contributing to employee departures include feeling burnt out, dealing with challenging bosses, and looking to realign their work, knowledge, and capabilities.

According to Gallup, 37% of employees cite a company’s engagement and culture as the reason for leaving their last job. Clearly, you need to do something about employee engagement.

The data highlights one of the issues with traditional engagement tools. These tools capture how engaged people were weeks or months ago, not how they are today.

Fortunately, that’s not the case with AI-powered solutions. Here’s what real-time engagement monitoring looks like with AI:

• Digital behavior analysis: AI tracks patterns in how employees interact with work systems like Slack, meeting contributions, and project completion rates. When an employee who typically responds to emails within an hour starts taking half a day, that’s a signal
• Communication sentiment tracking: Natural language processing analyzes the tone and sentiment in employee communications. For example, it could pick up when an employee’s messages are becoming shorter, if they’re using collaboration language, and so on
• Individualized training programs: AI analyzes employee learning history, skills, and career aspirations to create personalized development plans, aligning training with professional goals
• Data-driven insights: AI gathers and analyzes data from multiple sources, including performance reviews and self-assessment surveys, to identify strengths, weaknesses, and interests
• Tailored recommendations: AI algorithms suggest suitable learning materials and activities based on each employee’s competency profile and interests, enhancing engagement and learning effectiveness
• Real-time progress tracking: AI-powered platforms monitor employees’ development progress, enabling timely interventions and adjustments for optimal learning outcomes

Performance management for retention

Performance reviews have typically been annual events that employees dread and managers rush through. By the time issues surface in these reviews, they’d have festered for months.

Research from McKinsey shows that companies that focus on employee performance are 4.2 times more likely than companies that don’t.

By leveraging advanced algorithms and data analysis, AI automates the process of generating feedback, primarily based on goal completion. This automation streamlines the feedback process, providing a holistic view of an employee’s performance, and facilitates personalized growth opportunities.

This results in more effective employee progress and performance reviews that contribute to a culture of continuous improvement within your organization.

• AI-generated feedback summaries: AI-powered performance management compiles feedback from multiple sources, including peers, managers, and self-assessments. This multi-rater feedback provides a comprehensive view of an employee’s performance, highlighting strengths and areas for improvement
• Personalized feedback based on goals: AI goes beyond performance goals and analyzes progress towards development objectives. It then offers personalized feedback tailored to each employee’s aspirations and growth areas, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment to professional development.
• Objective and unbiased evaluations: AI’s automation and data-driven nature ensure more objective and accurate evaluations. By focusing on measurable outcomes rather than personal impressions, AI ensures that evaluations are fair and consistent across teams

Personalized career development

AI-powered employee career development platforms leverage advanced algorithms and machine learning to analyze employee data, such as skills and career aspirations. By doing so, they can intelligently match employees with internal job postings that align with their individual preferences and capabilities.

Moreover, with AI’s assistance, employees can access a wealth of opportunities they may have overlooked otherwise. They also receive personalized career trajectories, suggesting growth paths tailored to each employee’s strengths and interests.

As a result, organizations can foster a culture of continuous learning and career advancement, keeping employees engaged and motivated.

Employee skill development

One such remarkable resource is setting up a competency and skills coach, driven by generative AI and cutting-edge learning science insights. These AI coaches expertly guide employees, empowering them to embark on successful skill development and career growth journeys.

Centralized knowledge repositories further make accessing training materials a breeze for your employees.

AI also provides training content translation into multiple languages, promoting inclusivity and accessibility for your diverse workforce.

The revolution continues with AI-based learning management systems (LMS), which simplify and accelerate the training process.

HR support and AI chatbots

Employee frustration with HR processes is a significant but often overlooked driver of turnover. When employees can’t get timely answers to benefits questions, struggle to navigate company policies, or wait days for responses to simple requests, dissatisfaction builds.

AI-powered chatbots have significant potential to enhance your employees’ productivity, wellness, and overall work experience. As versatile assistants, these chatbots provide easy access to information from vast knowledge bases, enabling your workforce to be more efficient and effective in their roles.

AI chatbots can handle routine inquiries like checking vacation balances, explaining health insurance options, or guiding employees through expense reimbursement processes. This immediate accessibility prevents minor frustrations from escalating into larger dissatisfaction issues.

Beyond productivity, AI chatbots also support employee wellness and a better work-life balance. With empathy and understanding, these chatbots help employees manage their well-being by providing guidance and resources for achieving a healthy work-life balance. This, in turn, leads to increased job satisfaction and improved retention rates.

For example, proactive employee outreach uses AI to identify when employees might need HR support based on life events, performance changes, or policy updates.

The system can automatically reach out to new parents about childcare benefits, remind employees of unused vacation days, or notify workers about relevant policy changes that affect their specific situation.

HR-support chatbots are also gaining swift popularity in the digital workplace. Specifically designed to support HR policies and procedures, they provide quick and accurate answers to queries about time-off requests, benefits eligibility, and other related matters. This comprehensive support improves the employee experience, making your workforce feel valued and supported.

Personalized onboarding journeys

AI-powered tools can help organizations deliver tailored onboarding experiences using data-driven insights. As a result, HR managers and leaders can meet each new employee’s unique needs and preferences, setting them up for success from day one and significantly improving new hire retention.

Here’s how:

• Personalized learning paths: AI analyzes skills, knowledge, and background to create tailored learning paths, addressing gaps and enhancing confidence
• Customized training materials: AI generates role-specific resources, ensuring relevant and engaging content for onboarding
• Easy translations: Offer various language options for your global workforce. AI helps you translate your learning content in a few clicks
• Real-time feedback and support: AI chatbots offer instant guidance, reducing uncertainty and fostering a supportive experience
• Continuous performance monitoring: AI tracks new hire progress, enabling proactive intervention for retention
• Social integration and cultural fit: AI assesses cultural fit, aiding in fostering a sense of belonging and job satisfaction

Predictive modeling for turnover prediction

With their extensive historical data analysis, AI algorithms uncover subtle patterns and trends that are often missed by traditional methods. They provide invaluable insights into employee performance, job satisfaction, tenure, and organizational interactions, bolstering employee retention efforts.

Leveraging AI brings multiple advantages to employee retention efforts. For instance, it can help you recognize behavioral patterns and common traits among past employees who left and proactively identify employees with a high risk of leaving your company.

As a result, people ops can design interventions and execute retention strategies, gaining a deeper understanding of turnover’s root causes to create a conducive work environment.

Also, AI’s real-time data processing ensures organizations remain agile and adaptable to their workforce’s evolving needs. By embracing AI for analyzing and predicting retention data, businesses can make data-driven decisions that enhance employee engagement, loyalty, and overall success.

Employee sentiment analysis

Employee sentiment often changes gradually, with subtle shifts in attitude and communication that can be easily overlooked during busy workdays.

Catching these shifts when they happen is crucial because your employees’ emotional well-being and job satisfaction significantly impact their productivity, commitment, and loyalty.

Sentiment analysis algorithms examine language patterns, tone, and emotional indicators across multiple communication channels to gauge employees’ feelings about their work, colleagues, and the organization as a whole.

This ongoing assessment helps identify when positive employees begin experiencing frustration or when struggling team members start to re-engage. It also enables early detection of potential issues related to work concerns, company culture, or managerial practices.

Armed with these insights, you can proactively address emerging issues, fostering a positive work environment through targeted interventions and continuous monitoring. This approach fosters a culture of open communication, trust, and empathy, thereby enhancing employee engagement and retention.

Improve staff retention with Deel Engage

Deel is at the forefront of future-of-work technologies, including AI, offering globally compliant contracts, worker mobility solutions, and a comprehensive HR management suite. Now, both workers and employers can concentrate on their critical work while entrusting the intricacies of HR management to Deel.

With Deel Engage, our AI-based talent management suite, you can:

• Create career frameworks
• Build an extensive learning library of courses, certifications, and training programs
• Populate your organization’s competency library
• Creating a review cycle with the AI assistant and getting help from AI when writing reviews (coming soon)

In addition, Deel also offers a Global HRIS to manage all worker types in 150+ countries.

Book a demo to explore how to incorporate AI in employee retention to give your organization a competitive edge.