Artificial Intelligence (AI)’s rapid advancement can evoke anticipation and apprehension, as humorously highlighted in a recent episode of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. While the skit illuminated common fears of AI’s potential to overreach into the job market, such concerns often overshadow its substantial benefits, especially in enhancing productivity and job quality for frontline workers. Legion Workforce Management (WFM) pioneers AI solutions not to replace human workers but to assist them, aligning perfectly with our mission to transform hourly jobs into good jobs.

The Philosophy Behind Legion’s AI

At Legion, our philosophy is that AI should augment human capabilities, not replace them. Through intelligent automation, our AI solutions are developed to liberate workers from the drudgery of repetitive tasks, allowing them more time to focus on growing their teams and engaging with customers, which are core activities that significantly enhance job satisfaction and overall job quality. This shift in focus from mundane tasks to more value-added interactions is crucial to fulfilling Legion’s mission of improving hourly jobs. We maintain a commitment to transparency and user control, ensuring that while AI can suggest actions and automate processes, the ultimate decision-making power rests with the people who manage and perform the work. This keeps human oversight at the forefront and fosters a deeper trust in the technology.

Implementing AI in Frontline Work: Key Areas of Focus

Demand Forecasting: Legion uses advanced machine learning models to analyze factors like local events, weather, and promotional schedules to produce precise demand forecasts. By selecting the most appropriate models based on historical forecast accuracy, our AI ensures that predictions are reliable and incredibly useful for planning. The forecast underpins optimal staffing scheduling, which directly contributes to more stable and predictable working hours—a cornerstone of what defines a good job.

Schedule Management: Legion’s AI optimizes schedules by integrating a comprehensive understanding of demand forecasts, organizational rules, compliance requirements, and employee preferences. It continuously learns from the adjustments managers make to schedules, enabling it to adapt future schedules to better align with individual manager preferences while still achieving all optimization goals and reducing future edits.

When open shifts occur, Legion’s AI proactively searches for and offers these shifts to candidates who are qualified and willing to work, maintaining compliance with organizational rules. This streamlines the process and ensures that shifts are distributed fairly and equitably without manager intervention. Additionally, when managers prefer to assign shifts manually, Legion’s AI curates and recommends the best employees to fill the open shifts. This capability eliminates the need for managers to search for available employees, saving time and ensuring that operational needs are met efficiently and fairly. These features streamline the scheduling process and significantly enhance operational efficiency and job satisfaction, allowing managers to spend more time mentoring their teams and engaging with customers.

Timesheet Management: Legion’s AI significantly streamlines the timesheet management process by automating the review and approval of timesheets, ensuring they are complete and accurate. It proactively flags any issues for managerial review, minimizing managers’ time on timesheet administration. This automation is crucial in eliminating the frantic scramble that payroll administrators often face at the end of each pay period, chasing down managers to submit payroll before the cutoff window. By ensuring that timesheets are prepared promptly and accurately, Legion’s AI reduces stress levels across the organization and guarantees smooth and precise payroll executions.

Legion Copilot: Redefining Interaction with Legion Workforce Management Software

Legion Copilot is a groundbreaking AI assistant that dramatically changes how employees interact with Legion. Traditionally, using enterprise software required employees to know two key things: what they needed to do and how to do it. This often involved significant training on the software’s functionality and complex navigation through various interfaces to complete tasks. Unlike traditional systems, Copilot is personalized to each user, knowing who they are, where they work, and their specific role within the organization. This deep personalization allows Copilot to deliver tailored advice and perform tasks on the employee’s behalf. This means that users no longer need to know how to perform the action themselves. For example, suppose a compliance issue arises, or a decision on staffing needs to be made; Copilot not only alerts the user but also suggests actions and executes them once approved. This level of assistance reduces the cognitive load on employees. It eliminates the need for extensive training on the software’s mechanics, allowing them to concentrate more on their core job functions—developing their teams and engaging with customers.

Copilot is not only an expert on Legion’s functionalities but also on the specific policies and procedures of the organization. It understands the unique operational nuances and regulatory requirements of these organizations, which allows it to make informed recommendations that are compliant and contextually appropriate. Whether handling staffing needs, ensuring compliance in timesheet management, or advising on policy-related issues, Copilot integrates these details into its recommendations and actions.

This capability of Copilot to factor organizational specifics into its functionality saves time, reduces errors, and enhances decision-making at various levels of the organization. Employees can rely on Copilot to guide them through necessary tasks and decisions without the burden of mastering every detail of organizational policies or software functionality.

Conclusion: AI as a Partner, Not a Replacement

Integrating AI into the workforce, especially for frontline workers, presents a significant opportunity to enhance and empower. Legion’s AI initiatives align with our mission to ensure that hourly jobs are stepping stones to greater personal and professional growth. By automating routine tasks and providing analytical insights, Legion’s AI allows workers to shift from mundane roles to strategic, satisfying, and customer-focused roles.

Embracing AI should focus on the opportunities for job transformation rather than job displacement. Legion’s AI solutions are designed to enrich frontline jobs, making them more valuable, enjoyable, and productive. In this AI-augmented future, workers are not overshadowed by technology but are empowered to achieve their full potential, contributing to a workplace where hourly jobs are indeed good jobs.

Request a demo to see Legion’s intelligent, automated, employee-centric Workforce Management Software in action.