Can AI Play a Crucial Role In Improving Mental Health in the Workplace?

In this competitive business environment, there has always been an issue of excruciatingly long working hours, which acts as a major contributing element to mental health issues.

And being a part of the working population you can’t ignore the work-related mental health issues, as over the years it can result in severe depression and anxiety problems. 

Having said that, the recent developments in the field of AI and machine learning have observed a potential to help our working population to deal with these issues. However currently hey I can just function as a support mechanism. In this article, we are going to discuss some of the essential benefits of AI in promoting the mental well-being of our working population. 

  1. Managing and Prioritising Workload

According to a recent study, it has been shown that around 85 percent of office employees have to work outside their preferred working hours. Top of that, around 48 percent of these employees have to put in additional hours almost on a daily basis. 

And among this epidemic of long working hours, we have seen a ray of hope by implementing artificial intelligence in our business workspace.

 Once the AI technology gets to know about your job role it has the ability to assist you in privatizing your daily operations, while keeping your mental well-being at the center. For instance, if you have been working on a difficult task for an extended period of time, the AI can suggest an easy and relaxing task, so that it doesn’t put a strain on your mental health and you can also leave on time. 

  1. Simplified Technology Experience

In the current era, most of our experience in IT is usually device-centric, and it places a lot of limitations on which a person can configure his digital workspace, resulting in frustration and unnecessary stress. Having said that, the implementation of AI can make it highly contextualized and solely focus on the given task, instead of the software or tool they are supposed to use. 

Apart from that AI can also simplify the user experience, as the individuals will only be provided with a subset of micro apps, essential for completing the given task. This way they don’t have to spend a lot of their time just learning the entire software which will help them reduce their tech-related stress and also prevent the employees from being overwhelmed. This will also help them to reduce their working hours, and they will be able to carry out their tasks more efficiently. 

  1. Monitoring Stress and Mental Health

Though this sector of AI technology is not fully developed, researchers are trying their best to use AI to monitor and analyze the mental health conditions of any individual. And this has got a lot of potential if it can be introduced in our workspace.

If things go according to plan then the AI technology will be able to analyze a person’s enunciation of words and tone of voice and decide whether that person is under stress. And apart from these elements, researchers are also looking into some other factors such as linguistic cues, monitoring abrupt movements in heart rates, haphazard typing speed, or when changes in the productive output. All of these factors can be potential reflexes indicating the signs of depression and anxiety. 

Using artificial intelligence these elements can be monitored to accurately detect the stress levels of the employees, and deliver appropriate tasks to relieve their stress. Some of the easiest ways to analyze these factors can be through smart watches or biometric data of the employees, which can include the detection of their facial expressions or the rate of contraction of their pupils. 

Final Thoughts

Considering all the factors, these developments in artificial intelligence can have a lot of potential in the future, and help our working population to feel more engaged and relaxed while working in their workspace. Having said that, there can be some obstacles such as privacy concerns or whether the employees are willing to accept the monitoring policies of their physical and mental attributes. And without monitoring these attributes artificial intelligence will not be able to detect their stress levels and provide suitable tasks. 

However if all the things can be managed responsibly the overall outcome can be quite remarkable, and the work-related mental health issues can be greatly reduced. 

Also read- What is The Future of AI Recruiting Looks Like.

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Author- Adesh Chaurasia

A superior and highly experienced entrepreneur in the field of business for quite a long time now. Also, a philanthropist, author, and public speaker who believes in working towards the overall well-being and betterment of society as a whole.

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