To learn more about AI use in the Human Resources field EDLIGO team has interviewed HR Leaders about their experiences and opinions about the role of AI in Talent management.
Here are some great insights:
David Swanagon
Head Of People Analytics North America, Ericsson, The USA
Official Member, Forbes Human Resources Council
- What is the current role of AI in HR?
The Future of Work = People + Machines. Currently, AI plays a large role in candidate sourcing and critical skills identification. This includes driving D&I objectives by ensuring that offer packages are equitable across race and gender. For the most part, large companies have used AI to help facilitate HR Service Centers. Front-line tasks such as compensation and total rewards are better handled using Bots and automation tools. As part of this, training departments have adopted AI to help manage learning pathways. These recommender programs assist employees in identifying career paths and growing skills in their chosen domain.
2. How can AI transform HR in the future?
In the coming decade, it’s possible that machines will outnumber people in terms of workforce. This means that a new leadership model will have to be created to handle Ethical AI and automation. The concept of “Leading Machines” will become increasingly important as C-level executives grapple with the integration between AI and people operations. This includes how human skills are deployed, alongside the mix between build, buy, and borrow staffing levels. At a transactional level, AI will help automate most HR shared services. However, it will also help with strategy formulation by identifying opportunities for employees to partner on projects and leverage shared expertise.
3. How can AI improve decision-making for better business outcomes?
It’s important for CHROs to understand that data privacy is part of the employee experience. A key aspect of Ethical AI is ensuring that data is effectively managed across organizations. This includes establishing a chain of custody for sensitive information, alongside a policy framework for how data will be used to make talent decisions. Companies that excel at this process will enjoy stronger engagement. Separately, AI helps provide an objective opinion to executives before they make a decision. Whether it’s a capital investment or talent decision, many leaders are challenged by competing viewpoints. The objectivity that AI provides allows executives to filter both positive and negative elements. This helps minimize downside risk, while identifying new opportunities for reinvestment. If implemented correctly, AI can help reduce organizational bias. However, the same tools can do the opposite if utilized poorly.
Prianty Rojo
Talent Acquisition US Manager – PepsiCo, Latin America
1. What is the current role of AI in HR?
HR roles are more and more connected to business strategy. AI helps to be more efficient and measure our processes so we can play an active role with the organization and be more focused on our pilar: People.
2. How can AI transform HR in the future?
AI it’s an enabler to create business acumen cross-function. In the future will help to talk “the same language” with the rest of the organization and create more accurate strategies from a holistic perspective.
3. How can AI improve decision-making for better business outcomes?
For HR has been challenging to set down conversations, strategies, and results into KPI’s, SLA’S, etc. Transform qualitative into quantitative, is a big advantage so we can talk, think, and plan with clear data. Be people and results-driven.
Lucas Velmer
Human Resources Business Analyst, United States Department of the Army, The USA
1) What is the current role of AI in HR?
The current role of AI in HR is largely dependent on the organization. An organization dictates priorities and both AI progression and HR progression need to be priorities for there to be a role in HR. Otherwise, HR will continue to progress as societal norms continue to evolve, but still, be largely dependent on human-to-human interaction with some degree of automation in support. That said, AI helps HR professionals save time while providing quantifiable metrics for both people management and strategic business decisions.
2) How can AI transform HR in the future?
AI can assist HR professionals through automation of mathematics, statistics, and information management, saving countless people-hours. A computer can calculate advanced formulas and parse statistical data in a fraction of a second whereas it can take human several hours to draw the same calculated conclusion. This allows the analyst more time to understand the metrics and their impacts, identify potential bias, and solidify information for knowledge sharing.
3) How can AI improve decision-making for better business outcomes?
Bottom line: humans are more important than hardware. AI can and should always play a role in decision-making, provided the inputs are correct, inclusive, and bias-free. AI can run calculations, algorithms, and provide statistical information in an instant which then allows someone to analyze the information and potentially use AI to run predictive algorithms to analyze potential outcomes. This, coupled with experienced HR professional analysis, helps executives understand the impacts of their decisions on their current and future employees. On a final note, AI should never be the priority over humans. AI cannot and should not quantify human sentiment, feelings, or anything else that is subjective and truly unquantifiable. These things should always be left to humans.
Alfredo López Luján
People Analytics Manager in Middle Americas AB-InBev, Latin America
1. What is the current role of AI in HR?
Artificial intelligence has become a hot topic as it has transformed many businesses. The current role of Human Resources and becoming another user of this methodology is to focus people to interact with technology. Many people are afraid of this transformation. Every day we read that a robot is going to replace us. What is necessary is to show people how to interact with the new tools. We have to help people grow and evolve. As humans, we can transform our behaviors and our habits. The important thing is to show how to learn to “get along” with technology.
2. How can AI transform HR in the future?
Basically, it will be in charge of providing a lot of information for decision-making. Processes such as Recruitment and Selection, commitment to the company, staff retention, and performance measurement have changed today thanks to more data and deeper analysis. Not only will it speed up and facilitate your work, but it will also allow you to see “details” or “situations” that would never have been detected. With this, you will be able to observe and understand interactions. We are currently looking at issues of leadership, team building, and communication between staff. Behavioral analysis shows you that we have a large number of personalities, which also change with situations. But analyzing this, each time will bring us closer to the study and understanding of humans.
3. How can AI improve decision-making for better business outcomes?
In the case of Human Resources, it will allow us to know the employees with the highest performance, to recruit and retain more effectively, to make financial decisions about the construction of projects where people are involved. How could you select the right employee for a position from the hundreds of applications that come to us? How to know if induction is adequate for the requirements of the personnel, not only at present but in the future when they are required? How will you communicate and how will you be prepared for the next crisis or disruptive event? How are your employees going to interact with customers by knowing their preferences? We will solve all this with AI.
Kirsi Elina Kallio
Learning and Development Specialist, CEO and Founder of Kasvun Katalyytti Oy, Finland
1) What is the current role of AI in HR?
One of the most unutilized resources in modern organizations is AI. Already, organizations collect a lot of data related to their personnel, stakeholders, and customers. Data as such, however, does not yet provide support to evidence-based decision-making. AI-based solutions are needed to refine big data masses to relevant knowledge.
2) How can AI transform HR in the future?
HR is still under presented in the management teams of large corporates, although a human resource is the most valuable resource of the companies.
Today, data is power. By offering relevant data-based knowledge to support business decisions, it is possible to raise HR’s profile.
Traditional operational HR processes are easy to automate This releases more time to HR professionals to do more strategic planning and developments based on data.
3) How can AI improve decision-making for better business outcomes?
The problem in big organizations is, that the higher-level managers are not able to see what is happening on the front line. With more efficient AI solutions, HR is able to generate vital data about performance and learning at the customer interface. This helps to better predict e.g. future competence needs.
At the moment, the decision-making process is largely based only on feeling. AI-based analytics has been criticized for producing distorting data to support decision-making. However, it must be remembered that it is always a human being who decides where and how data is collected and for what information obtained is used.
Marcin Gabryel
Recruiter / Senior HR Specialist, Arla Foods, Poland
1) What is the current role of AI in HR?
Artificial Intelligence has more influence to HR then ever before. The number of processes that can be taken care of by AI is still increasing. These are low-value and low-risk tasks like tracking systems, document verifications. In my role, more focused in recruitment area AI is also more involved in pre-selection processes, but also helps with repetitive tasks, like scheduling of meetings.
2) How can AI transform HR in the future?
I believe that automation processes that are ongoing in many different fields will be slowly taking over more and more tasks. In my area for example – the initial stages of recruitment processes like phone screens (1st interview) are already handled using AI in some companies. Even selection (or pre-selection) processes can be assisted by AI (algorithms). This allows us to focus more on different tasks and saves time.
3) How can AI improve decision-making for better business outcomes?
AI has the ability to analyze huge amounts of data in a very short time and this is definitely crucial. Providing valuable insight (or even predictions) based on analyzed data can be helpful in many areas such as finance, marketing, HR.
Ella Kiselyuk
Executive Director of Human Resources, City University of New York-Baruch College, The USA
1) What is the current role of AI in HR?
During these unprecedented times and impact of COVI19 on HR overall operations, an immediate need to shift to AI is inevitable. The current role of AI in HR is relatively new as many organizations are still the midst of modifying their policies and procedures to incorporate hybrid and/or fully functioning business operations. For example. a response time to employees’ daily inquiries regarding their benefits, time and leave, retirement, etc. has tremendously changed. HR professionals spent more time on checking multiple databases/software before a complete and accurate data is released to the employee. There is an increased demand to automate some of the transactions in order to improve HR operations.
2) How can AI transform HR in the future?
AI will transform HR operations by allowing HR professionals to become more strategic and engaged. A lot of transactional operations that are currently performed by HR personnel, will shift to AI. This will resulted in streamlining some of the transactional processes as well as it will reduce a “human” error factor, especially when it comes to data entries. Moreover, a presence of both, human and technology in HR daily operations will create an inclusive and non-biased environment during recruitment and on-boarding activities. A pre-selection process will be significantly reduced and the most accurate, valid and comprehensive data will be shared with senior leadership and stakeholders. HR will be able to define and produce various metrics on a regular basis relying solely on AI findings.
3) How can AI improve decision-making for better business outcomes?
The leadership has to take into account how employees will embrace and respond to AI. While some may think AI will replace a human factor during HR interactions, the current business environment and its innovative trends demonstrate the need to automate more HR transactions. Once an accurate, data-driven information is shared with the leadership, it will help to focus on many factors including cost, retention, savings,etc. AI will assist in determining whether the company’s resources are properly allocated and positioned in a competitive environment. It will also help improving business operations by branding the company’s innovative and diverse approach and its impact on well-being of the employees. A reduction in hours spent on compiling data will also have a significant impact on employees’ morale and performance.