A guest post by Alistair Shepherd, founder of Saberr
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can make teams more productive and help them stay on track with their goals. This may sound like just another pie in the sky promise, but we are already seeing this technology work in trials in healthcare teams.
In any organisation, employees have varied personalities and backgrounds. The best teams are full of diversity, they bring different ideas and approaches to problems. Be that from their upbringing, age, experience level, education etc. it’s what helps build new products and make great discoveries. Yet diversity in the team usually requires diverse management and tailored coaching, which isn’t always easy for one person to achieve.
This is where AI comes into the picture. In recent years, technology has developed to such an extent that companies can use AI to create a cohesive team, help them set team goals, develop their roles and make decisions. In fact, we’ve come so far that this technology is being piloted within an NHS mental health trust, The Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) who are responsible for more than 400,000 patients.
What’s different about using AI for teamwork is that, rather than interacting with a bot online, the technology encourages team members to collaborate offline.
While technology is rapidly evolving around us, what’s not going to change is our desire as humans to do meaningful work and collaborate with others. Regardless of the technology you have access to, good teamwork is going to produce better results.
The bite-sized coach
HPFT teams are piloting CoachBot, a digital team coach that delivers bite sized team coaching that fits around day to day work. What’s unique about CoachBot is that over time it’s learning how to recommend the best course of action based on what’s right for a specific team at a specific point in time. In many cases, like a good human coach this will mean prompting the team with the right questions that encourage discussion that they’re not having but should be.
CoachBot asks employees a few questions each week via email. Things like “how likely is it that you’ll reach your goal ‘x’ by the end of the month?”, or “what’s the one thing your team aren’t talking about enough”, it then presents back a summarised report to the team in their next team meeting with guided discussion points for the agenda. Finally, CoachBot follows up with the team to see if what they discussed is being actioned.
Coaching and developing individuals and teams is not a new thing. Traditionally, you’d use numerous single points of improvement, such as developing a team member’s communication skills. Now you have the opportunity for ongoing learning that benefits the whole team at once.
What makes traditional coaching difficult is making behaviour change happen, and making it last. This is where we think modern technology can help. New machine learning techniques mean that over time the effectiveness of digital coaching technology improves. CoachBot is continually learning what works for different team contexts and applying these learnings at scale, it has the potential to become the world’s most experienced team coach very quickly.
All coaching should trigger meaningful conversations
Rather than encouraging team members to interact with a bot, our goal is to u promote, rather than automate away, meaningful conversations between people. Even in remote teams.
Although remote working can create a good work life balance and increase productivity, some people find that it makes them feel isolated and disconnected from their teams. CoachBot can help to keep that connection and identity going with regular feedback and by helping teams shape a shared and meaningful purpose.
Healthcare leads the way
Which brings us back to HPFT, who’s work with CoachBot was shortlisted as a finalist in the Best Workforce Innovation category of the Health Service Journal (HSJ) Healthcare Partnership Awards.
HPFT is the first public sector organisation to trial an AI team coaching solution in the UK.
The innovation is ideal for healthcare teams, particularly clinical staff and remote workers, as it allows a real time and personalised approach to team development, which can be flexible around busy schedules and reduce time and cost associated with traditional training days.
The technology has already begun to offer advice and team development exercises in response to research compiled on team performance within its data store. It draws on digitised versions of team development exercises used by some of the world’s best team coaches and 100+ academic articles on team and organisational performance to help NHS health professionals.
Great teamwork enhances efficiency, innovation, contentment and problem solving. It has also been shown to reduce medical errors and lower the level of issues that lead to burnout. This is helpful in the healthcare profession as 50% of the NHS workforce report debilitating levels of work related stress.
According to Michael West, Head of Thought Leadership at the King’s Fund, a 20% improvement in real team working in the NHS could result in 5,000 fewer avoidable deaths and just a 0.12% improvement in sickness absence rates could result in £1.7m savings for the NHS.
The goal of the digital team coach is to provide increased coaching support to aid team performance and development. We don’t see it replacing humans, but rather working in partnership with one another.
