AICO, Flashbrand’s AI-based Coach, Supports Employees’ Mental Health and Career Path

Flashbrand, a leading-edge, real-time employee talent management solution, unveils “AICO,” a first-of-a-kind, AI-based professional coach for all employees. AICO represents a new wave of artificial intelligence platforms that seek to augment humans at work, providing the ability to scale successfully with private mental health recommendations, personalized career development guidance and coaching.

A private coach for all employees

In developing and launching AICO, Flashbrand seeks to democratize executive coaching, traditionally reserved for select members of upper-level management. Serving as a private coach for each employee, AICO proactively tracks performance and personal KPIs, alerting and helping employees better manage their time and priorities. The AI coach also helps each employee with skills development, detecting and analyzing their strengths and opportunities for improvement, proactively recommending a personalized roadmap and sending tailored training content.

“In building AICO, we wanted to break the traditional HR mold that only allows select management executives to benefit from executive coaching. With AICO, we are redefining professional development and extending executive coaching beyond the C-Suite. We strongly believe that every employee is worthy of and deserves executive-level, personalized coaching,” said Denis Descause, Founder & CEO of Flashbrand, “and AI coaching is the only accessible way to reach that goal."

Flashbrand is using AI at the service of every employee in a private way, sidestepping comments or concerns of built-in biases, as it makes no comparisons or segmenting among employees nor is it used for hiring or promotions. The interaction with AICO is completely private: every employee is in full control of their data and the company has no visibility into it.

Employees Prefer Robots Over People for Mental Health Support

A recent global study by Workplace Intelligence that examines AI at work found that 82% of people believe robots can better support their mental health than humans. Further, 68% of people would prefer to talk to a robot over their manager about stress and anxiety at work.

The COVID-19 crisis has underscored the importance of health and well-being at work. Many companies are starting to adopt artificial intelligence and employee feedback to transform their decision-making during the ongoing crisis. Certified by several psychology research centers, AICO leverages artificial intelligence technology, including sentiment analysis across video, voice and text. After analyzing the language, words, sentiments, facial expressions, and texts of an employee, AICO avoids guessing and asks direct questions to confirm how employees feel. This private interaction helps employees with their personal and professional development, engagement and life while working from home, so they do not feel isolated. By analyzing the text and sentiments of hundreds of thousands of employees’ anonymous feedback, Flashbrand also provides a direct channel between employees and top management. This rapid insight helps management understand critical employee issues for better, faster decision-making, enabling the company to address any crisis effectively.

“We recognized that employees feel more comfortable sharing their personal feelings with a robot counselor rather than their managers because robots are impartial and don’t judge. Flashbrand is addressing this vital coaching gap, harnessing AI technology for the benefit of our enterprise customers and their employees,” said Denis Descause, Founder & CEO of Flashbrand.

The startup is in the midst of a Research & Development phase to capitalize on the latest innovations in the field. For example, AICO can observe employees make a presentation, analyze their facial expressions in video, voice, and text, and help employees improve their body language, tone, energy and presentation content.

“We are currently working on integrating the mechanisms for recognizing emotions in voice and facial expression into AICO, and enabling sensory enrichment," added Denis Descause. “As for the vast majority of people, it is easier to open up to a robot than to a human, then it is easier to help him in his development and the resolution of his difficulties thanks to AICO. Our goal is to leverage artificial intelligence in its knowledge of the employee to provide the best possible support, while ensuring complete confidentiality in discussions with AICO.”

With its employee-centric App, Flashbrand extends traditional communication channels, performance management, and employee development processes all remotely, offering regular check-ins, weekly objectives planning, and remote work management. Companies can maintain a “virtual open door” policy with employees, offering continuous discussions remotely across various topics, improving employees’ performance, skills, well-being and engagement while making them feel valued and heard.

About Flashbrand

Flashbrand is a San Francisco based startup. Flashbrand’s namesake Talent Management Platform addresses all criteria impacting employee development, well-being, performance and engagement, and optimizing relationships between managers, employees and the company. Industry-leading companies that span banking, telecommunications, oil and gas, luxury retail, management consulting, and high technology are already using Flashbrand to transform their company and develop a new people-centric transparent and growth mindset culture.

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