Don’t let Generative AI shape your workplace. Even though it seems this technology is everywhere, we’re just in the beginning phases of understanding it.

The allure of Generative AI is that it can do the content creation for you. What this could mean is there’s less writing for your employees and more time for them to be productive in other workplace tasks. While this sounds great, it could possibly lead to some pitfalls.

In Salesforce’s research on this topic area, they found just over half its polled workers were already using Generative AI tools at work without permission. In fact, it also was able to show that 40% of those users are using banned tools at work¹. So, in this article, we wanted to look into how Generative AI is moving forward with or without organizations’ permission and how to best approach it with employees.

Whether we like it or not, Generative AI is here to stay. People are using it for both professional and personal use. Organizations have a few options when it comes to this new technology—get a handle on it or be left behind.

Given the pervasiveness of Generative AI in the last few years, we wanted to share four ways we recommend organizations move forward with this technology:

1. Have an ongoing organization-wide live Q&A on Generative AI: This format allows leaders to shape the way Generative AI is used at their organization and get a better understanding of competency levels with the technology. In these regularly occurring meetings, organizations will gather insights directly from employees on how they are currently using Generative AI and how they’d like to see it evolve.
2. Develop and share Generative AI guidelines: Without any guardrails in place, employees will continue to use Generative AI tools on their own. If organizations really take a deep dive into putting together their own guidelines, then employees will have a better sense of how to optimize their own work performance inside approved boundaries.
3. Conduct routine check-ins with employees: Sometimes, checking in with employees’ Generative AI use will be a necessity. This will allow organizations to understand how this technology is evolving as its footprint grows. It also will be beneficial to employees who may not feel comfortable asking questions or having discussions in larger company-wide forums.
4. Maintain a Human in The Loop (HITL) strategy: Right now, Generative AI is not in the “set it and forget it” stage of use. As more employees use it, the system will learn and become more accustomed to an organization’s style. However, humans will likely always be necessary to double check the work of Generative AI and to ensure there is value in each piece of content.

While Generative AI may seem like the very thing that will take over a lot of people’s jobs, we do not agree. It will certainly, however, make work easier and employees will use it as a supplemental tool in organizations’ day-to-day work. We will see employees using it for more mundane tasks like creating outlines and coming up with baseline ideas. But it’s up to an organization’s employees to have a robust understanding of policies and procedures to carry out development beyond those initial steps.

Keep in mind that this technology may not be able to fully encapsulate an organization’s unique identity and messaging. We caution those choosing to use Generative AI to always keep a human in the loop (HITL) to double check and adjust accordingly any content from it. With this, we hope your organization takes the above advice as it begins its own Generative AI journey.

¹November, 2023. More than half of generative AI adopters use unapproved tools at work. www.salesforce.com/news/stories/ai-at-work-research. www.salesforce.com.