AI + Change Management = two unprecedented opportunities

by Mark Dollins:

If employee communicators viewed 2023 as the year that Generative AI knocked at the door, we can easily look at 2024 as the year our global community invited AI into our workspaces to get to know it better.

What will 2025 bring? We’re about to find out – as our 2025 AI and the Communicator Landscape Paper is in development and we’re about to launch our 3^rd annual AI and the communicator global survey. Results from both will be share in late Q1/Q2, so stay tuned.

But to bring yourself up to speed, AI use among professional communicators, according to the 2024 AI and Employee Communication Survey Report, rose 21% between July 2023 and April 2024, as its perceived value to employee communicators rose 9% in the same period (North Star Communications Consulting, 2024).

Communicators in 2024 view AI as a new competency to put in their tool belts, with 93% saying so. Perhaps not so surprisingly, 73% view change management as a critical capability to support employee communications around AI. It’s a big, massive change wave, and communicators can have a critical role in shaping how organizations use it responsibly — by understanding not just what AI is, but everything around it that shapes its use and potential value.

Viewed in totality, there’s a clear, new reality for AI and employee communications that can be summarized this way:

The combination of generative AI and change management communications presents employee communication professionals with two unprecedented opportunities. One is to drive new levels of measurable business performance – and the second is to elevate their influence, and that of the function, to unparalleled levels of strategic importance.

Generative AI and Change Management have the potential to define the strategic value of employee communications over the next decade and beyond. But how? The answer lies in moving beyond applications designed to draft content and create visuals, and examining how AI technologies can solve business problems strategically through communications. Just as important, stepping into leadership of AI presents communicators with a significant and timely opportunity.

As rapidly as communicators are adopting Generative AI for more tactical uses, it’s clear that most are using it solely for that purpose – to address limited personal and team bandwidth, to save time, and make themselves and their teams more productive. This is an encouraging trend, and productivity through content creation is a worthwhile pursuit for today’s communicator.

The numbers bear this out. When asked about how they’re seeing AI being used for employee communications, communicators reported seeing a 21% increase in its use between 2023 and 2024. The same research showed a 375% increase in AI use for content generation, and specifically a 300% increase in use of AI for video scripts.

It’s easy to understand why. Almost three-quarters of communicators said they’ve experienced time savings in one way or another using Generative AI. Almost half reported using that saved time for more strategic pursuits. Almost 60% reported saving 1-2 hours a week, while the other 40% reported saving 3-5 hours or more weekly.

But when asked about more strategic applications of AI for employee communications – data and sentiment analysis and predictive analytics — the numbers tell a vastly different story. Fewer than about 10% of communicators report using generative AI for those kinds of strategic purposes. This illustrates the emerging opportunity, with far greater potential to produce business results.

The case for strategic AI applications: falling behind other functions

It’s clear that organizations using AI are outpacing those that don’t with revenue growth. Accenture’s research on revenue growth (Azagury et al., 2024) between 2019 and 2022 showed a 150% revenue gap between companies using AI technologies vs those that hadn’t. Extending that view through the year 2026, the gap is expected to widen to 370% — at 2.4 times the revenue growth rate.

Source: Accenture

These are the numbers and drivers of growth that the C-suite sees. And they set considerable context for why functions within companies are—or should be—paying attention to AI beyond productivity.

Human Resources professionals are using AI in more strategic ways to drive performance. Gartner in 2022 (Jordan, 2023) reported that the number of HR organizations adopting AI rose from 17 to 32% between 2021 and 2022. And more than two-thirds of those deployed AI to improve data-based decision making. Deloitte (2023) added in its own studies that almost two-thirds of CEOs don’t believe they are recruiting fast enough to keep up with the demands of the business.

Seventy-six percent of employee communicators in the 2024 AI and Employee Communications study reported that their employers were using AI for some business purpose, but that they either were not using AI for communications, or they were unsure.

If HR and other functions of the business are using AI for strategic reasons, why aren’t communicators using generative AI for strategy purposes? The answer may lie in education and training, as 51% of employee communicators surveyed indicated they’re struggling with how and where to learn about those kinds of applications.

One framework to explore AI for employee communications is anchored in three pillars: AI for productivity, Strategic uses of AI to solve business issues, and AI leadership. Engaging in all three of these pillars will drive confidence in understanding of AI, and appreciation for the human guidance that AI demands for its responsible, efficient and productive use.

The rapid expansion of AI technologies, the widening of the landscape and the myriads of choices facing employee communicators offer both risk and opportunity for employee communicators, but what’s clear is that Generative AI and Change Management are new, interdependent competencies that communicators need to master, and fast. It’s a clear path to delivering measurable value for employers and elevating the function’s influence in the process. Investing time in four areas will advance every communicator’s knowledge and skill base.

First, communicators should continue experimenting with generative AI applications for productivity in employee communications. Understanding their strengths and limitations, costs, and comparative capabilities means exploring, distilling, deciding and continuously reviewing what’s new and what’s better.

Next, lean heavily into new strategic uses of AI for employee communications. Learn what predictive analytics are, explore partnerships, find and refine data sources and engage the right partners to help resource efforts with predictive analytics and sentiment analysis. Engaging in strategic applications puts employee communicators in the position of solving business issues with data and strategy: few capabilities have as much influence with decision makers/executives as sound strategies grounded in data. The key will be to blend these emerging science-based skills with the art of communication and specifically storytelling.

Third, lead AI for your organizations. Learning generative AI for employee communications isn’t enough to influence its use or guide its implementation. As business partners, communicators need to pivot to address an undeniable series of changes that AI brings and forces that will influence how they can use it.

Additionally, the adoption of AI for any and all business purposes demands that employee communicators be business partners in pushing for transparency in how AI is being used in and around their organizations. This is about developing internal strategies and content to support when, where and how AI is being used. Leadership must understand that engaging internal stakeholders with transparent communication about risks and rewards that come with AI technologies should start from the inside out. Communicating clearly about how the organization decides to use AI-enabled technologies should include connectivity to the company’s values, and demonstrate a commitment to transparency, fairness and ethical guidance.

And finally, learn and apply the discipline of change management for AI. Communicators who get certified — or acquire a deep understanding of what change management is — will be the most successful in steering responsible, effective adoption of AI in their organizations. Without this knowledge and skill set, communicators will be far less effective and far less influential in delivering business results that matter. Talking the change management discipline talk and walking that walk with confidence – fueled by discipline and data – enables communicators to deliver unprecedented levels of measurable business performance while elevating the influence of the employee communications function.

Want to participate in our 2025 survey? Just email markdollins@northstarcomms.com.

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Mark Dollins is President of North Star Communications Consulting, an adjunct professor of communications at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and a #WeLeadComms honoree.

Written by: cian fahy