Much like customer service, healthcare, and even education, artificial intelligence, or AI, is on pace to make a considerable impact in the workplace and revolutionize human resources as we have come to know it. Human resource managers have a great responsibility of identifying and vetting potential talent for their respective companies and also ensuring that they are delivering, supporting and managing communications regarding benefits offerings and company policies. With the addition of AI, HR managers are empowered to further streamline standard processes, leverage data in decision-making, and optimize the efficiency that goes into researching and retaining the best candidates.
There are many important factors that go into attracting the right talent. Not only do HR managers have to ensure that each candidate meets the standard requirements on paper, but they must also properly manage the pipeline of talent for future opportunities within a company. AI now has the ability to allow companies to “attract and repurpose talent,” as referenced in The Economist, which can prove to be invaluable when looking to scale a team in the workplace.
Taking this one step further, once a strong candidate has been added to a team, AI has proven useful for helping HR teams to manage employees through performance and functional data. Companies are increasingly looking to advanced AI tools to suggest candidates for new roles by taking a look at different variables such as employee data and job requirements that fall in line with an employee’s core strengths. As employees mature in their roles and the needs of the business continue to expand, AI has been seen as a great resource for HR managers tasked with needing to keep a pulse on new growth opportunities.
A lack of strategic management in HR operations will likely result in costly challenges that can be hard to overcome. One of the most costly areas of human resource management to-date lies within employee retention. According to Business.com, “Businesses with a high turnover rate end up spending thousands of dollars on employees that don’t end up staying with the company, which is a costly waste of resources.” The article also states, “With big data, HR representatives can get a more accurate picture of who is leaving and if there are any patterns among those seeking employment elsewhere. At the same time, big data can be analyzed to identify patterns for people choosing to stay with the company, eventually coming up with a model for employee retention.”
Although human resources will likely remain a ‘people-focused’ role, managers should not be afraid to use technology to their advantage. Targeted data can lead to many insights that may have otherwise gone undiscovered and evolve into new strategies that can be implemented for long-term success. Access to tools like analytics, machine learning, and big data, among others, will help to increase the value and efficiency of the HR manager role and lay the foundation for more high-level assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of the company.
As conversations around salary and equal pay continue to resonate in the media and the wider professional community, it has been discovered by company leaders that AI can be leveraged to assess pay data for their teams, in order to make more informed salary decisions. For starters, this information can include market-relevant pay ranges by role and geographic location. Providing managers with such capabilities can help determine pay decisions for employees and avoid grievances regarding salary and compensation with employees in the future.
Despite the noise and concerns around AI ‘stealing’ jobs and replacing human talent, we like to look this technology as an added resource that complements human intelligence and supports strategic decision-making. For as far as we can see, HR will remain a critical element to managing a healthy workplace, so why not explore the tools that have the potential to take your processes to the next level and add to the strengths of your workforce? To sum this up, we side with Forbes in saying that, “with intelligent, data-driven people management, the top priority is to add value to the organization in the smartest way possible, using all the tools at the HR team’s disposal.”