Generative AI helped customer service workers increase their productivity, according to a new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. It’s one of the first studies of generative AI in the workplace, and it examined the customer service sector because of the industry’s high AI adoption rate.

Researchers measured the number of customer issues resolved per hour among 5,000 agents working for a Fortune 500 software company, and found that novice and lower-skilled workers benefited greatly from the assistance of AI, by as much as 35% for those with the lowest skills.

Researchers noted that because the machine learning algorithms studied and mimicked the behaviors of the company’s more productive and senior employees, their impact on those workers’ productivity was minimal.

“Turnover is high” in the customer service industry, the researchers said. An estimated 60% of agents in contact centers leave each year, leaving supervisors to spend an average of 20 hours each week training and coaching new employees, and $10,000–$20,000 per agent to replace them, researchers noted. Generative AI, used as a tool to help new employees gain experience more quickly, could free up a supervisor or trainer’s time.

Businesses are using AI in growing numbers.

Keep reading.—AD

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Here’s this week’s edition of our Coworking series, where we chat 1:1 with HR Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

Jennifer Bingaman approaches HR at Washington-based healthcare start-up MCG Health from a “humanistic perspective.” She has a counseling background, and when people interact with her, she aims to make sure “they feel seen and heard.” At MCG Health, Bingaman is trying to build a culture that allows colleagues to do meaningful work that also moves the business forward. “The goal is not to exhaust [employees]. The goal is to not squeeze them until they’re dry,” she said.

She’s most interested in using her role in HR leadership to advance social justice causes and support people in her workplace and in her community, and believes the last several years have shown the “impact of doing things for people for the sake of them being humans, not for the sake of them being just workers.”

Bingaman believes that if she trains her coworkers to make others feel seen and heard, “then my team becomes a force for good, my team becomes a force for justice in the organization,” and, ideally, more and more colleagues will want to replicate that philosophy.

Read the interview.—AD

Running a small business is not for the faint of heart. While small businesses often face many of the same obstacles as multinational corporations, they do so with a fraction of the resources.

According to a recent report by payroll provider ADP, finding qualified employees remains the top challenge for small-business owners today, although those concerns have lessened slightly.

The small-business owners surveyed by ADP said they struggle most with finding candidates; losing candidates to competitors, people not showing up to work, and candidates not showing up for interviews were among the other most prominent reasons for this challenge.

One Brooklyn-based flower shop owner told HR Brew in March that they had better luck posting jobs on Instagram, rather than the traditional job platforms. This helped them find employees who were passionate about the industry and the shop’s environmentally friendly mission, and also improved diverse representation among the workforce.

ADP found that small-business owners indicated that demand for higher pay, a disconnect in job expectations, and competition from other firms are driving retention challenges. The survey concluded that companies between 50–499 employees were able to offer greater benefits and flexibility to employees to address this. Some are getting creative: San Francisco cake shop Butter& previously shared its story with HR Brew about offering stock options to its employees.

The administrative work of forming a corporation and creating stock options may be a bit of a lift for smaller businesses, but Butter&’s owners told HR Brew that a profit-sharing plan could accomplish similar goals (giving employees skin in the game) without the overhead cost of maintaining a corporation. They also noted that transparency with company finances helped employees feel more invested during busy times and helped identify cost-saving opportunities.—AK

Are you a small-business owner who has overcome a staffing challenge like the ones described here? We’d love to hear from you! Email your story to [email protected].

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: A recent survey found women spent 14.3 minutes per day being mentored when they came into work, compared to 10.9 minutes daily when they worked from home. The gap was less wide for men, who only lost 90 seconds of mentoring when working from home. (WFH Research)

Quote: “In my mind, I actually think the irony is that the labor market is the least scary part of this at the moment…I’m actually much more scared about the impact of AI on everything else.”—David Autor, MIT economist, on how he views AI’s effect on employment (NPR)

Read: A reporter used ChatGPT to draft all her digital communications at work for a week, to less-than-stellar effect. (the New York Times)