Generative AI for Employee Experience: Secure, Custom AI Assistants Transforming Internal Workflows
Unlocking the Future of Work at Publicis Sapient
The rapid evolution of generative AI is fundamentally reshaping how organizations operate, collaborate, and innovate. At Publicis Sapient, we are at the forefront of this transformation—not just for our clients, but for our own people. Our commitment to digital business transformation extends inward, where we leverage proprietary generative AI tools like PSChat to enhance internal workflows, knowledge sharing, and employee productivity. This page explores how secure, custom AI assistants are redefining the employee experience at Publicis Sapient, and how these innovations inform the solutions we deliver to clients worldwide.
Why Internal Generative AI Matters
As generative AI becomes ubiquitous, organizations face a critical question: How can we harness its power to drive efficiency and creativity, while safeguarding sensitive data and intellectual property? Public AI platforms offer convenience, but they often fall short on enterprise-grade security, privacy, and contextual relevance. For a global consultancy like Publicis Sapient, where our people are our greatest asset, the answer lies in building secure, custom AI solutions tailored to our unique workflows and knowledge base.
Introducing PSChat: Our Secure, Custom AI Assistant
PSChat is Publicis Sapient’s proprietary generative AI assistant, designed from the ground up to address the specific needs of our teams. Built on best-in-class large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 and enhanced with frameworks like LangChain, PSChat is more than just a chatbot—it’s a secure, context-aware digital colleague. Unlike public AI tools, PSChat is architected to ensure that all data remains within our control. We have partnered with leading cloud providers to guarantee that information entered into PSChat is not stored on external servers or used to retrain public models, addressing the privacy concerns that have made headlines across industries.
Key Features of PSChat
- Enterprise-Grade Security: Data privacy is paramount. PSChat operates in a secure, sandboxed environment, ensuring that sensitive company and client information never leaves our ecosystem.
- Custom Plug-ins and Role-Based Responses: PSChat can be tailored to specific disciplines—engineering, product, experience, data—offering role-based outputs such as code generation, content creation, or data analysis, depending on the user’s needs.
- Multi-Model Flexibility: Users can select from multiple LLMs and compare outputs, ensuring the best fit for each task.
- Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration: A share feature allows employees to disseminate useful prompts and solutions, accelerating collective learning across the organization.
Transforming Workflows Across Disciplines
Generative AI is not a one-size-fits-all solution. At Publicis Sapient, we have embedded PSChat and other AI tools into the daily work of diverse teams, each with their own unique challenges and opportunities:
- Engineering: Software engineers use PSChat to accelerate code reviews, troubleshoot issues, and ensure adherence to internal best practices. By integrating with our inner-source code repositories, PSChat generates code that aligns with our standards, reducing errors and speeding up delivery.
- Product: Product managers leverage AI to synthesize market research, draft user stories, and iterate on product requirements. PSChat’s ability to act as a product owner or analyst streamlines the path from ideation to execution.
- Experience: Designers and experience strategists use generative AI to brainstorm creative concepts, generate user journey maps, and rapidly prototype solutions. The AI’s contextual awareness ensures outputs are relevant to our clients’ industries and user needs.
- Data: Data scientists and analysts employ PSChat to automate data cleaning, generate insights, and even assist in building machine learning models, all while maintaining strict data governance.
Security and Privacy: What Sets Us Apart
The security of proprietary and client data is non-negotiable. Unlike public AI platforms, which may use user inputs to improve their models, PSChat is designed with a zero-trust approach. Our data is never used to train external models, and we maintain full control over access and retention. This is especially critical in regulated industries and for clients with stringent compliance requirements. Our approach ensures that experimentation and innovation with AI can happen safely, without exposing the organization to unnecessary risk.
Accelerating Learning and Inclusion
Generative AI is a powerful equalizer. Studies and our own experience show that employees who use AI tools become more productive and creative, regardless of their starting skill level. PSChat lowers the barrier to entry for complex tasks, enabling junior team members to contribute more quickly and empowering all employees to focus on higher-value, strategic work. Our Chief People Officer, Kamishwari Rao, emphasizes the importance of “diving in” and learning by doing—an ethos we foster by making AI tools accessible and intuitive for everyone, not just technical experts.
From Internal Innovation to Client Impact
Our journey with generative AI is not just about internal efficiency—it’s a proving ground for the solutions we bring to market. By building, testing, and refining AI assistants like PSChat within our own walls, we gain firsthand insight into the challenges and opportunities our clients face. This “learning by doing” approach enables us to advise clients on everything from secure AI adoption to workflow transformation, risk management, and ethical AI governance. Our experience shows that the most successful AI initiatives are those that balance rapid experimentation with robust security and a clear focus on business outcomes.
The Path Forward: Human-Centric, AI-Enabled Work
At Publicis Sapient, we believe that the future of work is not about replacing people with machines, but about augmenting human potential. Generative AI assistants like PSChat are catalysts for a new era of collaboration, creativity, and operational excellence. By investing in secure, custom AI solutions, we empower our people to deliver greater value—to each other and to our clients—while maintaining the highest standards of data integrity and trust.
Ready to transform your organization’s employee experience with secure, enterprise-grade AI? Connect with Publicis Sapient to learn how our internal innovations can help you unlock the full potential of generative AI for your business.