Unilever and NHS to pilot team-building chatbot
A team-building chatbot is being tested by companies including Unilever, Logitech and a local NHS Trust. CoachBot, developed by London-based HR firm Saberr, asks users about workplace dynamics and provides reports based on its conversations with employees. Staff have to introduce themselves to the bot, and answer a range of questions about their jobs. It uses their responses to identify goals and suggests activities to help improve a team's dynamics. There is evidence that people may be more likely to speak frankly to a chatbot than to reply honestly to a written questionnaire.
Team discussions could be different if a chatbot joins in, but will they get better? sturti/Getty

Are your colleagues lousy at communicating with each other? A chatbot could help, specifically one called CoachBot. Developed by the London-based HR company Saberr, it asks about workplace dynamics and provides the team with reports. A unit within the UK’s National Health Service is trialling it, as are 10 companies, including Unilever and Logitech.

When Coachbot arrives in the workplace, staff have to introduce themselves to it.

“Team members start by saying hello to CoachBot, and are then asked about who they are and what they do,” says Tom Marsden, Saberr’s CEO. After 10-minute sessions to identify problems and delve into grievances, “CoachBot then creates a plan to try to improve the team’s overall performance,” he says.

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Engaging its services costs £8 per month per employee. One early adopter is Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, which specialises in mental health. The trust is now using it for 30 staff members over a 12-month period to see if it helps improve outcomes for patients and employees’ perception of the effectiveness of their teams.

Bite-size coaching

“It has great potential for us because it offers bite-size coaching that the teams can work on at a time that suits them,” says staff member Jess Lievesley. “It means we don’t have to take days out of service for long courses, and if we need to move things around due to patient needs we can do so without incurring extra cost.”

Questions Coachbot asks include “Is your team productive?” and “Do you trust each other?” This questioning eventually leads to CoachBot identifying some team-wide and individual goals that it will keep tabs on. If they aren’t being met or team morale is low, CoachBot suggests activities to try to improve things. These come straight out of “management science”, and include options like changing the way meetings are run or recommending the team plays a board game together.

There’s some evidence that people may prefer to divulge their woes to a chatbot. In one study, members of the US army were more likely to admit to mental health issues, using illicit drugs or drinking alcohol when talking to a chatbot than in an old-fashioned written questionnaire. If this extends to office politics, people may be more willing to speak their mind to CoachBot than via other means.

But don’t expect too much beyond that. “One of the key skills of any [human] coach is to pick up on the emotional aspects of a group – something which a bot is probably not so good at doing,” says André Spicer at Cass Business School in London.

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Even if the technology develops, not everyone is convinced that it will ultimately be beneficial. “I think it could be successful in a rather cruel and sinister way because it will force people to record every little move they make,” says Carl Cederström at Stockholm University, Sweden. “If it turns out that when this data is processed that a person is not performing as efficiently as they should, they could be left out of a team,” he says.

“There is also a real danger that a coachbot could actually get in the way of doing the job,” says Spicer. “This would happen when employees spend more time interacting with the robocoach than each other.”

This could also mean that managers are lulled into complacency and fail to do their jobs properly. Marsden says that’s not their intention. “We’re not trying to replace human conversation,” says Marsden. “We’re trying to augment it with better information.”