Humu wants to bring similar data-driven insights to other companies. It digs through employee surveys using artificial intelligence to identify one or two behavioral changes that are likely to make the biggest impact on elevating a work force’s happiness. Then it uses emails and text messages to “nudge” individual employees into small actions that advance the larger goal.
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But after receiving nudges for a few months himself in emails from Mr. Crosby, whose email address is used to send the messages, Mr. Razdan said the bite-size reminders made it easy to take action right away. In one instance, he said, he was prompted to ask members of his team for their opinions on decisions he was facing.
“The team doesn’t know I was nudged,” he said. “But I’m not ashamed to tell everyone that I heard from Wayne today.”
Firm Led by Google Veterans Uses A.I. to ‘Nudge’ Workers Toward Happiness
Not sure machine learning is really critical to this endeavor, but how could a startup do this and not insist it was using machine learning? AI is the new electricity.
Of course even with the low-stakes nudges, there are critics:
“The companies are the only ones who know what the purpose of the nudge is,” Professor Haugh said. “The individual who is designing the nudge is the one whose interests are going to be put in the forefront.”
Really? We can’t even nudge?