5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Influencing Human Resources

We all know to a certain extent what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is. We also know that AI is changing the fundamentals of many business areas across almost all sectors. Over the last decade alone, advancements in AI have presented 3 key opportunities viz (a) automate business processes (b) differentiate product offerings (c) transform customer experiences. Many high tech organizations have already seen encouraging bottom-line benefits with their AI strategy. Having understood this, the relevant question for us as HR Leaders is how AI is influencing the HR space? Read on to explore!

Forbes says “Artificial intelligence is not the future of the workplace, it is the present and happening today.”

Human Resources <-> Artificial Intelligence

Since 2012, Human Resources has seen a steady increase of companies in the “HR Tech” space, primarily includes workforce management, employee training development, payroll and benefits administration among others. CB Insights reports that investors plunged $2.4 Billion [ That’s 15,600 Crores in INR ] into this space.

With the right applications of AI in HR, organizations will firsthand experience better talent management and automation of non-core functions among many others. In our opinion & research, below are the most influenced functions of HR.

“Robots are not going to replace humans, they are going to make their jobs much more humane. Difficult, demeaning, demanding, dangerous, dull – these are the jobs robots will be taking.”  – Sabine Hauert Co-founder, Robohub.org

AI in Recruitment / Talent Sourcing

• Adoption in Talent assessment and employee onboarding is at the top, aided by unbiased intelligent assistants cum chatbots. The conversational user interface (CUI) supplemented by high efficiency of the hiring process is one that no HR would want to miss.

• From pre-screening applicants, scheduling interviews to pre-joining engagement,  onboarding them, AI has a fair share everywhere. AI tools can filter eligible candidates based on gender, eligibility, performance, reliability & honesty too. Not only this, AI tools are pretty good at scheduling interviews for these handpicked applicants. A big load off the back for HR managers. Using AI makes these flawless, reliable & efficient as well.

• Take a look at how Xobin (https://interact.xobin.com/) works to help you hire the right & best fit. Try Belong (https://belong.co/) and x.ai (https://x.ai/) to get an idea of how applicant tracking and scheduling works

• Advanced assessment tests, like a psychometric test built inside a chatbot, can match candidates to jobs through a ‘fit score’ based on career experiences and skills.

“Recruiters spend 60% of their time reading CVs,” Juergen Mueller, SAP’s chief innovation officer, told the Wall Street Journal. “Why should a person read 300 resumes if a machine can propose the top 10?” –  As Quoted on WSJ

AI in Employee Engagement, Health & Wellness

• Recent studies prove that nearly 71%, i.e.more than half the workforce lack the engagement quotient. Artificial Intelligence can help you combat disengagement by E-learning, being much exciting and more personalized. How is this possible?

• The AI tools analyze each employee’s behavior, cognitive ability, and other criteria to predict his learning capacity and performance. Now, it optimises learning content accordingly to create a very engaging employee experience. Learning as well as engagement clicks when your HR intersects with AI tools for engagement.Try InFeedo (https://www.infeedo.com/) to make your employees’ opinions heard using Artificial Intelligence

• AI is already doing the rounds with fitness apps and trackers in the workplace. Taking a leaf out of Amazon’s AI personal assistant Alexa, many forward-thinking companies target at employee health and wellness with AI. AI in health and wellness understands employee’s habits over time, knows what’s hitting their healthy lifestyle and offers personalized health solutions & stress management too.

AI in Attrition Mitigation

• AI-based talent management solutions don’t pause with just recruiting and engaging employees. The scarcity of talent and skill gap problem can emerge at the least expected times. To brace for this, AI plays a proactive role in identifying employee blues and does its best in addressing employee concerns and reducing attrition rates
• AI may not be able to prevent attrition completely but will proactively identify such Individuals or teams who are at the risk of attrition. Awareness is the first step towards betterment.
• See how HiQ labs ( https://www.hiqlabs.com/ ) is using public data to indicate employers about staff attrition risks and assist in retention strategies.

AI in HR Support, Case Management

• One of the TOP users of AI, support and case management functions which are highly human-driven have been simplified. Challenges like multiple time zones, languages, cross-cultures can be mitigated swiftly with the use of AI & AI enabled chatbots. More importantly, these tools can be more forthcoming with answers even before the questions being asked.

• Companies are using smart badges and even heat detectors to see where employees spend their time at work, then rearranging facilities to improve exercise, collaboration, and productivity.

• AI enabled wellness platforms can analyze an employee’s exercise regime, activities related to fitness and other health programs and give them a score and specific recommendations to help them be better.

AI in Performance Management

• There is a huge amount of time organizations invest in performance management & AI comes in handy. AI helps in certain performance metrics more versatile, data-oriented and unbiased.

• While this may seem like a cutthroat style of management, productivity data does not have to be the sole performance measurement to determine an employee’s worth, but a supplemental tool to back up decisions. inFeedo’s AI chatbot Amber braces itself to take care of PR processes very soon.

• Post Performance Management activities such as training, mentoring, coaching can be automated using AI tools to a certain extent. AI can schedule programs, collect feedback from attendees and evaluate if the goals of the training programs are being met. 

HR is being enabled by Artificial Intelligence

“Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don’t think AI will transform in the next several years.” – Andrew Ng Former chief scientist at Baidu, Co-founder at Coursera

The storm of AI is taking over the world, unexpectedly and intensely. We can’t escape it for much longer. Now, the question is, Does AI in HR mean ALL in HR henceforth? Would you hear less of human voices around and more of machines clanking along? Actually, No. AI in HR would mean augmenting human capabilities to gain maximum efficiency. Neither AI nor HR exclusively would win the race, rather it is an intersection of both. The people-centric department can do 4x as much when you embed AI in it.

The research from TopBot below indicates the recent players joining the race.

Reference:  https://www.topbots.com/essential-landscape-overview-enterprise-artificial-intelligence/

If HR were a cake, AI would be the icing on it. Relativity specializes in managing all your HR and Finance needs with utmost accuracy and compliance at its very best. Reach us on 0-93611-41436 or sales@relativity.co.in to know more about our customised products and services.

 Disclaimer – We do not recommend or support any of the companies mentioned in this article. They are purely for referential purposes only.

About the Author: Akash Mahagaonkar is the Director & Head of Operations & Business Development with Relativity Management Solutions India Pvt Ltd, responsible for Relativity’s overall service delivery. He is also a mentor with various institutions such as NEN, TiE, etc and helps companies and entrepreneurs to build sustainable businesses. Akash is also a noted speaker in areas of Finance, Taxation, Small business compliance and the like. With over 12 years of experience, he still says he has to learn more. You can connect with Akash on LinkedIn here.

References :

https://www.allegisgroup.com/insights/ai?ecid=ag_ag_gen_ai-2017_20170530_7ce53882#

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2017/03/01/the-future-of-work-the-intersection-of-artificial-intelligence-and-human-resources/2/#1c3447d767ee

https://medium.com/@itsquiz15/how-ai-helps-to-improve-performance-management-2a7ef816d49b

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https://elearningindustry.com/employee-engagement-and-artificial-intelligence-elearning

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