Generative AI for Employee Experience: Industry Deep Dive in Energy and Manufacturing

Energy and manufacturing sectors are at a pivotal crossroads. As experienced employees retire in record numbers and new talent struggles to bridge the knowledge gap, organizations face mounting pressure to retain critical expertise, accelerate upskilling, and ensure operational continuity. Generative AI is emerging as a transformative force—redefining how companies approach employee experience, knowledge transfer, and workforce development. At Publicis Sapient, we are leading this revolution, helping clients harness generative AI to future-proof their workforce, codify institutional knowledge, and create a more connected, empowered employee base.

Industries like energy and manufacturing are experiencing acute talent shortages and a demographic shift. Traditional onboarding and training methods often fail to capture the tacit knowledge accumulated over decades, resulting in the loss of critical expertise and slower onboarding. The risk is clear: operational disruption, reduced productivity, and a workforce ill-prepared for the demands of digital transformation. Organizations need new, scalable ways to capture, preserve, and disseminate knowledge—quickly and securely.

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

• Codify and Institutionalize Knowledge: AI-powered platforms can capture, organize, and disseminate decades of operational expertise, maintenance logs, and best practices. This ensures that critical knowledge is preserved and made accessible to new hires and distributed teams, reducing the risk of brain drain.
• Accelerate Onboarding and Upskilling: Conversational AI assistants and personalized learning platforms deliver tailored training modules, answer employee queries in real time, and recommend relevant content based on individual learning needs. This dramatically shortens the learning curve for new employees and supports continuous development for existing staff.
• Empower the Connected Worker: Generative AI tools provide field technicians, operators, and analysts with real-time insights, automated recommendations, and access to consolidated knowledge bases. This not only improves efficiency but also enhances safety and decision-making in high-risk environments.

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.

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.

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.

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 integration of generative AI into workforce strategies delivers measurable outcomes:

• Enhanced Employee Engagement: By automating repetitive tasks and enabling personalized development, employees are more engaged and motivated.
• Boosted Productivity: Intelligent automation and knowledge management free up time for creative, strategic work.
• Accelerated Organizational Change: GenAI enables organizations to adapt quickly to market shifts, regulatory changes, and evolving business models.
• Future-Proofed Workforce: By codifying expertise and upskilling employees, organizations mitigate the risks of talent shortages and ensure operational resilience.

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.

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.

Relevant Links

• How a Sound Generative AI Strategy Enables Success
• How a Sound Generative AI Strategy Enables Success
• Agentic AI vs. Generative AI: Strategic Guidance for Business Leaders
• El Rol de la IA Generativa en la Transformación de la Experiencia del Empleado en América Latina (LATAM)
• L’Intelligence Artificielle Générative : Un Accélérateur de Transformation pour les Entreprises Européennes (Europe)