Strategic AI: Transforming HR Now and Beyond

Artificial Intelligence is credited with a lot of technological advancements cutting across industries and domains, and this has been further accentuated by the meteoric rise of Chat GPT, a form of generative AI capability. Chat GPT took the world by storm scaling up to a million users within just five days of its launch and then up to about 100 million in the following 4 months or so. While it’s immense success is attributed to its potent use cases, it’s overnight adoption is because of the ease of usage such that even a not-so-tech-oriented mind is willing to embrace this technology. AI has time and again proved its profound potential to transform industries, and HR has been no exception to this. A June 2023 study by Gartner had some not-so-surprising revelations:

• More than 50% of the 130+ respondent leaders believed that GenAI has the maximum potential to be used for automating and bringing in efficiency to Administrative tasks in HR operations, crafting Job descriptions (Recruiting) and HR service delivery by way of employee facing AI chatbots.

• The other potential and popular use cases that emerged were around content curation for Learning & Development, developing personalized career plans, guidelines around interview questions, etc.

• Interestingly, barely 7% leaders said that they didn’t intend to use any of the potential use cases in Gen AI.

  
  

For organizations to truly leverage the power of AI, it requires a deliberate, cohesive strategy that

seamlessly integrates AI with the broader organizational goals. Once AI adoption is strategically aligned, a steadfast commitment to upskilling and reskilling becomes essential. This ensures that the workforce is not only capable of building and utilizing AI tools but also prepared to embrace these technologies with confidence. Furthermore, aligning data quality with AI initiatives is crucial, as poor data input leads to poor outcomes. All these efforts should finally culminate in to empowering decision-makers to rely on data-driven insights, creating significant value for the organization.

AI revolution in HR: Shaping the future of work

The marvels of AI in HR extend beyond mere automation; they mark a profound shift in how

organizations manage talent, engage employees, and drive strategic decision-making, enhancing

efficiency for almost every HR process. It is indeed fascinating to see how predictive analytics can

foresee future hiring needs before they arise or potential resignations even before they are logged. Or how AI-driven chatbots can offer personalized, instant support to job candidates around the clock. Or how machine learning algorithms now tailor employee training programs to individual learning styles, enhancing effectiveness and engagement. New age tools like eightfold.ai, for example, provide solutions spanning the entire spectrum of talent management, right from buy (Talent Acquisition), borrow (Talent Flex) and build (Talent Intelligence and Management). There are several other tools as well in this space or other areas in HR that offer AI based solutions to make HR processes more efficient.

Payroll precision: AI in action

One key impact area of AI is revolutionizing mundane and repetitive processes such as payroll

management. Managing payroll across multiple geographies involves matching and validating diverse data sets, such as employee identifiers and details, tax regulations, and currency exchange rates. AI automates these complex tasks through use of technologies such as OCR or otherwise, pulling relevant information from across multiple documents like employee attendance sheets, employment contracts and validating them against pre-set rules to ensure accuracy and compliance. Tools like ADP Assist, for example, exemplify how AI can validate payroll information, detect anomalies, and resolve issues related to tax regulations, making the payroll process more efficient and reliable.

Hiring smart with AI

Traditional recruitment methods often rely heavily on individual credentials. AI, however, allows for a more nuanced skill-based approach. AI-driven tools can not only help create job descriptions that are highly accurate and tailored to the specific skills of the role, it can further help with skill-match analysis to identify the best fit. They can ensure a more objective hiring process and overcome typical human biases by turning ‘blind’ to characteristics such as race, age, gender etc. Numerous organizations are embracing AI in recruitment: leveraging LinkedIn Recruiter, for example, for talent sourcing, IBM's "Watson" engaging with potential hires and mitigating human biases, organizations like "Apna" and "Taggd" promoting AI-based skill matching through their digital products, and PwC employing predictive analytics for candidate assessment, showcasing the vast potential of AI-driven recruitment strategies.

AI as a career coach

AI can serve as an effective career coach to candidates and employees alike, recommending tailored opportunities basis analysis of an individual's skills, interests, and career aspirations. This helps individuals navigate their career paths with greater clarity, enhancing their engagement and satisfaction with the organization. For instance, platforms like Mastercard's "Unlocked" use AI to match employees with projects and mentors, leading to meaningful career advancements and a more dynamic workforce. This approach to career development, driven by AI, ensures that employees are not just progressing but are also being developed in areas that are aligned with both their personal goals and the strategic needs of the organization.

Nurturing talent through AI

AI's impact extends to talent management and development, a key element of the overall employee value proposition. AI can help identify trends and plausible issues in performance thus enabling individuals and managers to address performance issues well within time; carry out skill matches to suggest possible future career paths for the employee as well as enable an organization to identify future leaders within. Further, AI can enable personalized capability building programs, tailoring them to the specific development action plan of employees. This helps ensure a robust pipeline of talent for critical roles within the organization.

AI: Empowering HR with smart data insights

AI helps automate the collection, analysis, and visualization of data. This allows HR professionals to track organizational key metrics and accordingly align HR strategy to best align with the business strategy, helping improve overall organizational effectiveness.

In conclusion, AI has transformative capability that can help organizations to become more efficient, equitable, and strategic in their HR practices. As AI continues to transform organizations (and the world of work at large), the investment in to one strategic asset, i.e. people, will become utmost important. Having looked at the what, why and how of AI in HR, we look at one common thought that often bothers many professionals - is AI here to take away jobs? The answer to this is a resounding No. AI is here to ‘transform’ jobs and make them more enriching. While some routine and repetitive tasks will be eliminated, new roles will emerge that require human oversight, strategy, and creativity. Hence, while the nature of jobs changes in favor of efficiency, jobs will still continue to exist, and in plenty!

For example, a routine task like resume screening or writing job descriptions from the scratch could be automated, and recruiters only need to validate the system generated output and marry it to the given context. This frees a large part of their bandwidth to focus on more strategic and meaningful work – such as stronger relationship building with candidates and stakeholder, developing targeted talent acquisition strategies, concerted efforts to build a stronger employer brand etc. This shift creates new opportunities, with emerging roles centered around managing AI systems, interpreting data-driven insights, and shaping the future of jobs and workforce. To thrive in this new landscape, professionals will need to upskill, embracing AI as a powerful tool that enhances efficiency while allowing them to concentrate on what truly matters—building a strong, engaged, and resilient workforce.

In conclusion, AI is not here to replace us; it is here to empower us. It is not the power of AI against us, it is the power of AI with us. Let’s embrace this change, with a promise to continually upskill and reskill ourselves for our own long term success!