Culture Amp launches AI tool to streamline HR feedback analysis

Culture Amp, a player in the HR technology sphere, has unveiled its latest generative AI solution, AI Comment Summaries, which promises to revolutionise how HR professionals process employee feedback. Leveraging Google Cloud’s advanced Vertex AI platform, this tool is the first of its kind to emerge from the collaborative efforts between Culture Amp and Google Cloud.

During an early-access pilot involving over 400 customers worldwide, AI Comment Summaries reportedly saved HR teams approximately 6,600 hours, equating to around 40 work-months. This significant time-saving underscores the solution's efficiency in automating the reading, reviewing, and analysing of extensive employee survey comments. According to Culture Amp, most HR administrators engaged with five different summaries during the trial, with 70% of users expressing strong satisfaction with the tool's performance.

AI Comment Summaries harnesses the power of Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and Culture Amp’s People Science expertise to summarise key points and sentiments from large volumes of comments into concise, objective, and actionable summaries. HR professionals have already started using these summaries to better articulate issues and recommendations regarding employee engagement to organisational leaders. The tool’s efficiency is expected to further increase once it becomes available to a broader range of leaders later this year, enhancing access to critical insights through shared reports.

Doug English, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Culture Amp, emphasised the strategic advantages provided by AI Comment Summaries. "We know that managers and HR teams spend a lot of their valuable time analysing individual comments from their regular engagement surveys to try and identify sentiment and areas of focus," English stated. "AI Comment Summaries is our way of helping them get on the front foot, freeing up their time and giving them clarity to operate at a much more strategic and forward-thinking level than before."

Feedback from early users has been overwhelmingly positive. Sharon Stewart, Organisational Development Specialist at AA Insurance, highlighted the feature's potential in shaping employee engagement strategies. "I love this new feature because it will help us build and sustain a far more compelling and well-informed strategy around employee engagement in just a fraction of the time," Stewart noted. She also praised the summaries for their reliability and the ability to trace back to individual comments.

Culture Amp’s approach to developing generative AI solutions is guided by three main principles: building trust, maintaining control, and focusing on customer value. AI Comment Summaries allows HR teams to trace and review the individual comments used in analysis, ensuring transparency. The underlying AI model is designed to improve continually based on user feedback, enhancing the length, accuracy, and specificity of summaries over time.

English highlighted the continuous improvement aspect of their generative AI solutions. "We’ve reached a stage in generative AI development where we can continuously monitor and improve the outputs of our LLMs, resulting in an HR experience that improves every time our customers use the solution," he said. He also praised Google’s models for their flexibility, which facilitated the rapid and careful design of AI Comment Summaries.

Future plans for Culture Amp’s platform include tools for summarising feedback, assisting in writing performance reviews, and embedding contextual AI capabilities throughout the platform. These advancements aim to provide HR professionals with even more robust tools for employee engagement and performance management.

Matt Zwolenski, Director and Chief Technologist at Google Cloud Australia & New Zealand, commended the collaboration's potential. "Culture Amp’s journey with Google Cloud demonstrates the immense potential of generative AI to deliver bold solutions in a responsible way," he said. Zwolenski noted that Google Cloud’s AI platform and models empower customers to address specific use cases and expand their scope to broader industry challenges while adhering to high standards of compliance, security, and trust.