Efficiency is the floor, authenticity is the ceiling. Smart organizations are shifting their AI strategy from mere automation to building authenticity with their teams and customers.
Sydney Scott
Editorial Strategist, AI
Workday
It’s an elephant in the room that many organizations are dealing with—in relentless pursuit of efficiency and automation, some have inadvertently created a huge connection gap.
Traditional metrics have pushed us to prioritize speed above all else. We’re measuring how quickly we get things done, not how well we’re genuinely connecting, which could cost us in the long run.
Solely focusing on speed and efficiency can sometimes result in employees and customers feeling frustrated and dismissed, leading to lost loyalty and trust—the real currency of growth. For instance, if a support chatbot fixes an issue in seconds but leaves the customer feeling misunderstood, you’ve lost trust, no matter how efficient your chatbot was.
But some companies are recognizing this strategic paradox and executing a fundamental shift in their AI strategy. They've realized that AI shouldn't replace humans, but should, in fact, empower us.
The goal is simple: let AI take over the cognitive clutter and grunt work so we can focus on what only humans can do well—solving complex problems and building relationships.
Authenticity isn't measured by how sophisticated your technology is, but its trust, reliability, and making people—whether customers or employees—feel truly known and respected. It’s about ensuring that when human interaction does happen, it’s informed, present, and authentic.
How are organizations actually making this happen? They are applying AI using three key models: empowerment, reliability, and cohesion.
The most immediate and effective use of AI is to give time and attention back to our most valuable asset—people.
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The most immediate and effective use of AI is to give time and attention back to our most valuable asset—people. It’s about letting machine intelligence handle mind-numbing admin and tedious burdens so human experts can dedicate their specialized knowledge to deeper, more meaningful engagement. Take a look at how two industries use AI to do just that.
No field is more burdened by data entry than medicine. Doctors are often drowning in clinical documentation, which detracts from direct patient interaction.
In competitive retail environments, the path to customer loyalty often runs through a store associate who can offer informed, personalized advice. AI is now enabling associates to provide unique customer experiences.
In high-stakes domains, authenticity isn't about face-to-face charm but absolute security, consistency, and dependability. This is where reliability comes in. Here, AI drives trust by acting as an invisible guardian, guaranteeing that our underlying operations are secure and consistent.
Trust is foundational for banks and financial institutions. With AI, they’re catching fraud and enhancing customer confidence by minimizing the annoyances that erode trust.
In data-intensive fields like healthcare and science, genuine, careful collaboration depends on securing and tracking sensitive information.
AI is playing a pivotal role in fostering deeper human connection among employees. This focus on internal connection accelerates communication flow and restructures institutional knowledge to make internal teamwork better.
In complex organizations, communication often fails not from a lack of effort, but from the inability to reconcile specialized language across different departments, leading to silos.
AI is also revolutionizing internal dynamics by providing leaders with detailed, real-time data on employee engagement and communication patterns.
Now that we have the three core strategies for building connection with AI—restoring focus, trust, and cohesion—we have to rethink how we measure those relationships.
If we agree that connection is as important as efficiency, then the biggest challenge to this new human-centric AI strategy is a radical overhaul of our traditional KPIs.
Traditional operational metrics fail to capture the quality of interactions. This creates a blind spot where speed is confused with impact. Operational excellence does not have to come at the cost of the customer.
We need to move beyond simply measuring resolution rates toward assessing whether the customer felt understood and respected. A genuine human experience cannot be fully reduced to efficiency numbers.
The exciting part is that AI is providing the rigorous, quantitative infrastructure we need to measure these formerly "soft" metrics, allowing organizations to finally operationalize relationship quality.
By using AI to monitor sentiment across interactions, we gain the data infrastructure necessary for scaling empathy. This fundamental change in measurement allows us to train both AI systems and humans to prioritize relationship quality over mere speed.
The future of AI is not about erasing the human element, but making the human part of the job better.
The examples we’ve seen all point to a powerful strategic takeaway: We should view AI as a resource that enhances human connection, not a tool for human replacement. The way forward requires a shift in mindset, not just technology.
In practice, this means AI is fundamentally changing where human time is spent. It starts with restoring focus. We shed cognitive burdens like documentation or data lookup so experts can deliver personalized consultation and maximize their connections with each other and customers. This shift extends to the bedrock of confidence: trust.
AI builds dependability by acting as a silent guardian, minimizing annoying flaws in security systems and guaranteeing compliant data transparency. It fosters a shared understanding by breaking down communication barriers and turning specialized knowledge into a cohesive, shared language among teams.
If we keep focusing on speed alone, we'll always be stuck chasing simple efficiency. Instead, we need to commit to AI-driven ways to measure relationship quality. Think about adopting new metrics to rigorously define and measure the quality of those human-to-human interactions.
This is the only way to move beyond efficiency gains and realize the much higher ROI that comes from strong relationships. The future of AI is not about erasing the human element, but making the human part of the job better.
A remarkable 82% of organizations are already using AI agents. But is your team ready? Read our latest report to learn how businesses are maximizing human potential with AI, featuring insights from nearly 3,000 global leaders.
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62% of leaders welcome AI, but only 55% of employees feel the same way. Closing this AI trust gap and ensuring that your organization is prepared for widespread AI implementation will prove decisive to your company's future success.