Say Goodbye to Information Overload During New Employee Onboarding with AnswerGPT
Say goodbye to information overload and hello to a more personalized and less-stressful onboarding experience with AnswerGPT - your own personal AI assistant for all things company-related.
Are you ready to say goodbye to information overload during new employee onboarding? If you're like me, you remember feeling overwhelmed during the process: which team member to ask about account access, what meetings to attend, and who to talk to about certain processes.
Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have joined a 3-day Innofest (Hackday/Hackathon) hosted by my current company, where we came up with an idea to make new employee onboarding less stressful.
Introducing AnswerGPT - your own personal AI assistant for all things company-related. In this blog post, we'll dive into the importance and challenges of onboarding and how AnswerGPT can help make the process smoother for new employees. Say goodbye to information overload and hello to a more personalized and less-stressful onboarding experience with AnswerGPT.
Why is onboarding so important?
Starting a new job can be exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time. But no matter how confident a new employee might feel, there's always a lot to learn about the company's culture, processes, and goals. This is where onboarding comes in - it's the process of getting new employees up to speed and feeling like part of the team.
A well-designed onboarding program can make all the difference in the success of a new employee and the company as a whole. In fact, studies show that effective onboarding can lead to 82% higher retention rates and 70% faster time-to-productivity for new hires. That's why it's so important for companies to invest time and resources into creating a comprehensive onboarding program that aligns with the company's goals and values. With the right onboarding process, new employees will feel welcomed and prepared to contribute their best work to the team.
What are some challenges of onboarding?
Information overload can be overwhelming for new hires, who are trying to absorb a lot of new information in a short period. This can result in new employees feeling confused and disengaged, which can lead to lower productivity and longer ramp-up times. Similarly, paperwork can be time-consuming and tedious, taking up valuable time that could be spent on more meaningful activities.
Another challenge is the lack of personalization during the onboarding process. Many companies have a one-size-fits-all approach, which can lead to a poor experience for new employees. When new hires don't feel valued or supported, they may become disenchanted and start looking for other job opportunities.
How AnswerGPT can help?
AnswerGPT can be a valuable tool in reducing new employees' stress from trying to memorize everything from the onboarding meetings and documents immediately. Instead, new employees can focus on participating in the onboarding activities that the company has prepared and try to learn the company culture and get to know their colleagues. This approach can help them get up to speed as smoothly and quickly as possible, which is beneficial for both the company and the employee.
By utilizing AnswerGPT, those responsible for onboarding new employees can also save time by allowing the chatbot to provide access to the information. This means they no longer have to answer repetitive questions, which can be time-consuming and tedious. With AnswerGPT, new employees can get the information they need quickly and efficiently, allowing them to focus on their job duties and contribute to the company's success.
Overall, AnswerGPT can be an effective tool in reducing confusion and disengagement among new employees. By providing an AI personal assistant to answer questions about the company, new employees can feel more confident and supported, which can lead to greater job satisfaction and retention. As a result, incorporating AnswerGPT into the onboarding process can be a smart choice for companies looking to streamline the process and create a positive experience for new hires.
How does AnswerGPT work?
We used semantic search + ChatGPT to build the AnswerGPT chatbot. The APIs we used were the Text Embedding API and ChatGPT API.
Prepare and embed the context.To prepare the handbook information for embedding, we downloaded all the files and split them up each of them by contexts. What is a context? Each topic in the handbook can be considered a context. For example, the section in the handbook talking about working hours is a context. So it would have its own file. Once these data is ready and we finish embedding, the result become a database of context to check when we get input from the users.
Build the chat interface. Now we need a chat interface that can take user input and the chat bot needs to provide a response. We used Steamlit to create the website for people to ask question.
What actually goes on behind the scenes? When user inputs a message/question, we would go through text embedding with the user’s input to generate the embedding. Then, we would compare the embedding with our handbook embedding to check the similarity score and grab the context. The threshold we set was if the similarity score was greater than or equal to 0.8, then we would pass the context and questions to the ChatGPT API to get a response.
To make it even more engaging, and just for fun, we added text to speech using uberduck.ai to have the chatbot read the responses in legendary rapper Eminem’s voice. With AnswerGPT, new employees can easily navigate onboarding and get the help they need without feeling overwhelmed or lost.
Beyond the scope on employee onboarding
AnswerGPT is a proof-of-concept showcasing how OpenAI's APIs can be utilized to address the common challenge of searching for information across internal company documents. However, the potential for Q&A/chatbot technology using OpenAI APIs is vast and extends far beyond employee onboarding. The possibilities are endless - imagine a chatbot capable of searching through all internal documents, making it easier for new and existing employees to find the information they need.
Our team has even considered the idea of using ebooks as a database for the chatbot, enabling users to recall previously read information or notes they've taken. The possibilities of this technology to streamline information retrieval and enhance productivity are tremendous, and we're only beginning to explore its potential. As more and more people are getting in to the space, I’m definitely excited to see where this technology will take us and the impact it will have on business and industries across the board.
Conclusion
Participating in my second Innofest was an incredibly enriching and rewarding experience. As I pitched my idea to my teammates and acted as a project manager, I gained valuable insights and knowledge in the field of AI.
I'm grateful for our company's culture, which fosters innovation and creativity, and for my teammates who collaborated with me to transform our idea into a tangible prototype. I'm eagerly anticipating future Innofests, as they offer an opportunity to continue exploring the fascinating world of AI and expand my knowledge in this exciting field.