Transforming Employee Experience and Upskilling with Generative AI: From Knowledge Transfer to the Connected Worker

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations face mounting pressure to attract, retain, and empower talent—especially in industries like energy and manufacturing, where talent shortages and high rates of retirement threaten operational continuity. Generative AI is emerging as a transformative force, redefining how companies approach employee experience, knowledge transfer, and workforce upskilling. At Publicis Sapient, we are at the forefront of this revolution, helping clients harness generative AI to future-proof their workforce, codify institutional knowledge, and create a more connected, empowered employee base.

The Challenge: Retaining Expertise and Bridging the Skills Gap

Energy and manufacturing sectors are experiencing a demographic shift. A significant portion of the workforce is nearing retirement, and the influx of new talent often struggles to bridge the knowledge gap left behind. Traditional onboarding and training methods are time-consuming and often fail to capture the tacit knowledge accumulated over decades. The risk? Loss of critical expertise, slower onboarding, and a workforce ill-prepared for the demands of digital transformation.

Generative AI: A Catalyst for Workforce Transformation

Generative AI offers a powerful solution to these challenges by enabling organizations to:

Real-World Impact: Use Cases in Action

AI-Powered Knowledge Bases

Publicis Sapient has partnered with leading organizations to deploy generative AI solutions that make vast repositories of internal documents, standards, and best practices easily searchable through intuitive, conversational interfaces. For example, a major downstream oil and gas company leveraged a generative AI-powered search tool to enable natural language queries across a 200GB+ repository, reducing average search times from five minutes to just 20 seconds and increasing data retrieval accuracy by 94%. This not only boosts productivity but also ensures that employees can access the information they need, when they need it.

Conversational Training Assistants

Generative AI can act as a digital co-pilot for technicians and operators. In the energy sector, AI-powered assistants help field workers diagnose equipment failures, provide step-by-step repair instructions, and optimize maintenance schedules. By tapping into unstructured data—such as maintenance records, error codes, and historical notes—these assistants deliver actionable insights and close the feedback loop by learning from user interactions. The result is faster problem resolution, reduced downtime, and a more confident, capable workforce.

Personalized Learning Platforms

By analyzing employee data and learning preferences, generative AI platforms can deliver customized training paths and recommend relevant content. Publicis Sapient’s proprietary tools, such as Bodhi, provide organizations with pre-vetted large language models and frameworks to scale knowledge sharing and personalized learning across any major cloud platform. These innovations help employees acquire new skills faster, adapt to evolving business needs, and remain engaged in their professional growth.

Secure, Scalable AI for Every Employee

Security and data privacy are paramount, especially when dealing with proprietary operational knowledge. Publicis Sapient’s PSChat is a proprietary generative AI assistant designed for internal use, ensuring that sensitive data remains within the organization’s secure environment. PSChat enables employees to ideate, automate tasks, and access contextual knowledge without risking data leakage—empowering every team member to leverage AI safely and effectively.

The Broader Business Impact

The integration of generative AI into workforce strategies delivers measurable outcomes:

Best Practices for Generative AI-Driven Workforce Transformation

To maximize the benefits of generative AI, organizations should:

  1. Start with a Shared Knowledge Base: Build transparency and trust by educating all stakeholders on the capabilities and limitations of generative AI.
  2. Establish Robust Governance and Guardrails: Define clear policies for data use, model oversight, and ethical AI deployment.
  3. Prioritize Data Security and Privacy: Implement sandboxed environments and strict access controls to protect sensitive information.
  4. Invest in Workforce Upskilling: Launch targeted training programs to equip employees with the skills needed to collaborate with AI and drive innovation.
  5. Foster a Culture of Experimentation: Encourage teams to pilot new AI solutions, learn from setbacks, and scale successful initiatives.

Why Publicis Sapient?

Publicis Sapient brings deep expertise in digital business transformation and generative AI, with a proven track record of helping organizations navigate the complexities of workforce transformation. Our proprietary platforms, such as Bodhi and PSChat, combined with our integrated SPEED (Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering, Data & AI) model, enable end-to-end execution and measurable impact.

As the future of work continues to evolve, generative AI will play an increasingly central role in shaping how organizations attract, develop, and retain talent. By partnering with Publicis Sapient, leaders can confidently harness generative AI to drive operational efficiency, ensure compliance, and build a future-ready workforce—turning today’s challenges into tomorrow’s competitive advantage.

Ready to transform your employee experience and upskill your workforce with generative AI? Connect with our experts to start your journey.