For years, executives have joked-not-joked about wanting to clone their best employees.
Now, a new generation of “digital twins” could make those cloning dreams a reality…sorta. With workforces transitioning to a mix of employees and their virtual twins, there’s more pressure than ever to ensure that everyone inside the organization—both human and digital—remains on task.
Can you use it in a sentence? So, what exactly is a digital twin of an employee? It depends on who you ask. In an April report, Gartner defined it as “a model that enterprises build to understand how real employees will respond or behave in a given context.”
“The [digital twin of employees] is an emerging way to use data, models, and simulations in support of productivity, performance, experience, and well-being goals,” Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Helen Poitevin wrote.
Ryan Hamze, director at technology research and advisory firm Information Services Group, said digital twins in the manufacturing industry refer to digital replicas of an employee’s workflow.
“You’re looking at how it is simply actually doing things, and through there you can find bottlenecks,” Hamze said. “You can find the inefficiencies of how they do things [and] the bureaucracy humans have to go through to get approval sometimes.”
Digital twins of employees may also mean an AI persona of an employee that is capable of communicating with others. CJ Meadows, head of innovation for Asia at the SP Jain School of Global Management, told IT Brew she digitally twinned herself in this manner using enterprise AI persona company Personal AI, and sees several use cases for this deployment.
“In future, we’re going to see more and more digital twins on the org chart. So, our organizations are going to be mixed,” Meadows said. “There’s going to be some humans in there and some technology people in there as well.”
Army of two. Similar to traditional digital twins, digital twins of employees can be a valuable investment for companies. Hamze, for instance, said organizations can use these digital simulations for upskilling their workforce by showcasing the exact process new employees need to learn.
“If you replicate that exact process, especially with technical processes, more physical ones, it would be easy to train people for the future,” he said.
Gartner said digital twins of employees can also be beneficial in dangerous work environments, as well as for productivity gains in machine-heavy settings.
Top insights for IT pros
From cybersecurity and big data to cloud computing, IT Brew covers the latest trends shaping business tech in our 4x weekly newsletter, virtual events with industry experts, and digital guides.
Meadows outlined one use case for her digital twin in her professional life: making herself available to answer questions for MBA students around the clock. She believes digital twins could likewise free up time for employees to tend to significant tasks.
“You know how you answer the same damn question for 50 people? Okay, how about we have your digital twin do that and you spend time doing what we actually need a human to do, and which would be hopefully more meaningful work for you,” Meadows said.
The terrible twos. Digital twins of employees can come with their own baggage. Hamze, for instance, said the replicas could stir up negative feelings among employees if organizations skimp on communicating their purpose and fail to build trust on the idea.
“Always understand that monitoring employees is always met with resistance because of surveillance issues and fear of being replaced,” Hamze said.
The Gartner report also notes that privacy regulation and labor laws can impact how organizations are able to collect data on employees for digital twin purposes, and that off-the-shelf solutions are rarely available.
Peaceful coexistence. In its report, Gartner said digital twins of employees are still in a nascent phase. However, Hamze said organizations looking to expand their workforce with these virtual employees can do so by clarifying what their purpose will be.
“You have to understand your scope of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, what’s the highest value output you need,” Hamze said. He added organizations need a solid strategy for how the data leveraged by their digital twins will be collected.
“Is it coming from systems? Is it coming from cameras, monitoring the employee and AI analyzing those steps?” Hamze said. “Is it coming from data entry that you’re putting in?”
As for AI persona digital twins, Meadows said organizations may choose to treat digital twins of employees as “personal assistants” who can take on work that could be automated. Meadows said she keeps her own digital twin in check by making adjustments on the backend of it as needed.
“People have come back to me and told me things, and then with that feedback, I’ve gone in to make adjustments and corrections and so forth,” Meadows said.