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7.5. WORKFORCE APPLICATIONS OF EXPERT SYSTEMSThere are many workforce applications that are better performed by computer or that provide intelligent support to the workforce. Many routine operational tasks of an informational nature can be partially or totally automated. More important are the uses of ES to empower front-line employees to make decisions once reserved for management. To ensure accountability and security, electronic audit trails and ES monitoring are used. Using CBR and RBS, job announcements and assignments can be made automatically, with management providing criteria for content and selection. Employees indicate interest in and availability for positions and assignments, and the system evaluates applicant performance and capabilities to find the best matches to the needed requirements and skills. Automated employee appraisals already exist in some companies using agreed-to standards and measurement criteria, as well as customer and peer evaluations. Automation of routine work: Routine, simple, boring tasks will be automated to the extent possible. Examples will be data entry, form correctness and completeness checks, and simple approvals. Employees will no longer process and control paper, but rather will provide value-added advice and services that require knowledge and judgment. Electronic templates, supplanted by RBS, will be provided to capture data from paper forms, immediately applying entity, validity, consistency, and reality checks to the data entered. The information captured will be stored in knowledge repositories for later use. Empowering employees: Front-line employees will have immediate access to needed information sources on-line. They also will have expanded decision-making authority and responsibility for results. RBS and CBR can push decision-making down to the working level in many instances. ES can automate some decisions, as well as support most other decisions while leaving the human in control. An electronic audit trail can be kept of all personnel actions, purchases, and consequential decisions. Automated job announcements and assignments: A job announcements database will list the skills, assignment duration, and project leader for specific projects. Employees will be able to proactively apply for assignments individually online or can request receipt of all announcements of a certain type by location and duration. Employees can use CBR to select the best match between their skills, experience, interest, and availability, and the characteristics of available positions. Project offices can also assign project development work automatically through use of RBS and CBR by determining the skills needed for the job, evaluating the applications submitted, and searching the skills inventory, employee leave, and employee career development data stores for available employees with the needed skills and performance. This approach will eliminate favoritism and promote true merit selection. Automated employee appraisal: A multiple perspective approach to appraisal, such as the balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 1992), is recommended. An automated employee appraisal system using this approach can be used to align enterprise-wide strategies with the compensation system. Performance metrics will be cascaded down from the enterprise-wide level into clusters of relevant supporting measures for each individual employee. Performance measures and quality assurance samplings will provide most information on employee performance. Information on training and education received by employees will also be online. Structured appraisal templates will be issued automatically by the system to peers, project managers, and functional experts. Responses, including free text, will be received, scored, and analyzed. Text generation AI software can convert numeric scores, text, and other inputs into a written appraisal that the manager can use or modify, according to need. Automation of administrative tasks: Many personnel and administrative tasks will be automated, eliminating the need for most administrative managers and personnel. CBR software can be used by employees to select the most appropriate health benefits plan. Employees enter their requirements and preferences and the CBR returns the plans with the closest match on the features. An RBS module can be added to assist in choosing the features, as well as compute the likely plan cost of a number of desired features. Personal assistants: Personal Assistants (PAs) can assist employees in a variety of tasks. PAs using RBS and CBR can screen and prioritize E-mail and voice-mail messages, including the deletion of duplicate messages. Voice-mail can be first transformed into text using speech recognition software. Particular topics and individuals can be selected for priority sorting. Users will be able to create PAs to perform complex procedural tasks, information retrieval tasks, or monitor-and-search tasks that humans are not good at. PAs can continually roam the intranet and/or Internet searching for and retrieving topics of interest. Intelligent servers will schedule meetings automatically by cooperatively working with other servers to arrange and rearrange individual schedules according to user preferences and manager requests. When there are scheduling conflicts, the RBS mediates between participants depending on the reporting relationships, urgency, and existing assigned work. Intelligent meeting schedulers can also suggest potential participants and meeting roles, as well as compose meeting agendas, depending on the topic, type of meeting, and prior meeting action items.
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