Artificial Intelligence: The HR Professional’s New HR Tech Obsession

Artificial Intelligence: The HR Professional’s New HR Tech Obsession

Artificial Intelligence: The HR Professional’s New HR Tech Obsession

At this point, you may already be familiar with popular virtual assistant technologies such as Siri or Alexa. These Artificially Intelligent (AI) virtual assistants can do an array of tasks in an instant. Checking the weather, playing music, finding directions, and reading the news are all tasks that can be done simply by prompting the tabletop device in your home. Which brings the question, if these devices can help people every day in their homes, what are the ways they can bring AI into their workplace?

The good news is that they can, and this service isn’t happening as far into the future as you may think. AI exists today in many business areas including HR departments, to do routine tasks that occupy valuable time. While these tasks are necessary to the internal workings of an organization, this time could also be used to work towards superior goals.

AI currently acts as a “personal assistant” to complete everyday tasks such as scheduling and debriefing meetings, data entry, and analyzing statistics, but soon, AI will be able to take on more unique responsibilities.

Continue reading to learn the ways that AI is the newest HR tech craze and can be used in the workplace, and where it is predicted to take HR in the future:

Very soon, organizations may be able to use AI in their HR tech to help them better manage employees and their needs. Organizations can program their employee manual and company policies into an AI program to give an AI “bot” the knowledge it needs to take on the role of an HR assistant. Rather than employees relying on their HR department to answer questions regarding pay, benefits, FMLA, etc., they can chat with the bot from their office or homes instead. According to a Forbes article on the use of AI in HR,

“Chatbots deliver an unmatched level of employee experience, from real time answers for HR questions to personalized learning and development. In addition, they are critically important to the 3.7 million workers, or 2.8% of the workforce, who work remotely at least half time and do not have easy access to an HR department.”

In addition, AI tools could assist with an organization’s onboarding process by using the policies and details it earlier retained to instruct new hires during their first few weeks on the job. An AI assistant can track employees’ work performance and habits, using its observations to give them information about benefits they may be unaware of, or assisting them with coaching and training services they can utilize to improve certain skills.

It can be difficult for customers to directly reach someone within a business. To improve this problem, AI can be programmed to answer client questions, similarly to answering employees’ questions internally. If your organization runs a customer service line or department, this may be particularly beneficial because it can provide a 24-hour help desk service with minimal wait time. Chat bots currently exist to give customers objective answers, but the future of AI and HR tech involves making this interaction much more personalized and empathetic.

AI can gather data based on the needs of the individual to help promote an organization’s products and services. This could aid not only HR departments, but marketing departments as well.  Rob May, the founder and CEO of Talla, a new Artificially Intelligent HR service, has observed from his experience with this technology that,

“Once you give these programs a goal, they will experiment on their own and find the best ways to achieve that goal. The thing that makes me most excited about intelligent software is that, compared to traditional software, it just gets more valuable over time as it learns from user interactions. So the more areas of human resources where you can implement such software, the more you can build a learning organization that automatically improves year over year.” 

From Rob’s observations, we can clearly see that implementing this technology into a workplace increases the opportunity for better external communication.

Sometimes, the communication between an organization and their new employees can get ambiguous. Applicants and new hires alike may experience feeling left in the dark after interviewing, or in between being hired and their first day. This lull in communication reflects poorly on an organization, and could potentially thin out their applicant pool.  AI can assist in keeping this communication active by providing interview follow-ups and a timeline for hiring. It can begin by searching the internet for candidates based on the needs of an organization. Once it finds candidates to fit the criteria, it can reach out arrange interviews with them.

In the future, we will likely see these bots administer the the interviews. Once a candidate is selected, the bot can provide specifics for onboarding. Overall, this HR tech could increase talent acquisition, assess skills to make decisions about candidates, and expedite the interviewing process.

Whether you’re familiar with the increasing popularity of HR technology or not, it is quickly taking over HR departments in all types of businesses today. Using this technology to better your interoffice communication, customer service, and recruiting process can give your organization’s HR Department the freedom to work on strategic HR issues and make advancements in your line of work.

Remember, this technology has the ability to be self-teaching, so it will continue to make advancements as it learns more about your organization and its interactions. Contrary to popular belief, this technology isn’t here to take the jobs of HR professionals but to assist them while they make breakthroughs in organizational strategies.

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