Understanding how AI in HR will affect your business is crucial if you want to take advantage of its many benefits.
Many HR departments already rely on AI and other machine learning technologies to help streamline the hiring process, reduce inherent human bias, and improve analytics. However, HR leaders must also pay attention to the downsides and limitations of AI for specific processes.
In this article, we’ll explore the many benefits of using AI in HR management, when to avoid it, and what additional uses we could see in the future.
How HR teams are using AI today
Eightfold AI recently surveyed over 250 HR leaders and over 1,000 employees to understand how AI is being used in the workplace today. The survey results offer some unique insights:
- 92% of HR leaders plan to increase their use of AI within the next 12 to 18 months
- 78% of HR teams use AI for employee records management
- 77% use AI for benefits administration and payroll processing
- 73% use AI for recruitment and hiring
- 72% use AI for performance management
- 69% use AI for onboarding new employees
These uses can often help streamline processes and improve overall performance. Keep reading to see some real-world examples of AI in HR.
Recruitment and hiring
Recruitment and hiring were some of the first HR tasks to use AI technology. HR leaders use AI to help create job postings, sort through resumes, and send job offers. These AI-powered tasks can help speed up the hiring process by taking on more labor-intensive tasks and completing them quickly.
HR teams can also use AI technology, like ChatGPT, to help generate more role-specific interview questions.
Onboarding
AI is also a great tool during the onboarding process. It can help make the process faster and more personalized for each new hire. It can help:
- Conduct onboarding training
- Handle administrative tasks
- Verify employee documentation
AI-powered chatbots are an intuitive tool for onboarding and beyond. As new hires are getting trained, they can ask chatbots any questions they might have and quickly get the answers they need. As the AI technology gets to know what skills the new hire already has, it can customize the training to fit the employee’s needs.
Learning and development
Beyond the onboarding process, AI can create customized training protocols for each employee based on their skills, interests, and learning styles. Instead of being offered a generic training path, employees can explore training recommendations specifically suited to their needs.
Employee monitoring
One of the best uses of AI technology in HR is for employee monitoring. Instead of having to manually scour through mountains of data, machine learning can quickly alert employees and managers to problems and violations.
AI technology can instantly monitor vital employee data, but more importantly AI can identify signs of employee burnout before it's too late. This can help HR departments with early intervention strategies and boost employee engagement.
AI machine learning payroll
Many companies are turning to AI technology to help reduce and remove human errors, particularly with payroll. Payroll must be 100% accurate. Depending on the size of a business, it can quickly turn into a monumental task for any HR payroll department. With AI-powered machine learning, salary calculations are no longer susceptible to human error.
AI and machine learning can help improve numerous payroll tasks, including:
- Calculating taxes and other withholdings
- Making data-backed decision making
- Creating new payroll strategies
- Resolving queries quickly using chatbots
- Improving compliance with regulations
- Enhancing employee expense tracking
- Reducing fraudulent employee work hours
Overreliance on AI can remove the “human” element needed in HR
For some AI processes, we still need human input and oversight. Without that “human touch” from the HR department, employees can be left feeling confused or hurt.
As an example, Amazon’s AI technology made headlines in 2021 for using algorithms to track workers and fire those who didn’t seem to be doing their jobs properly. While some of these firings may have been warranted, others were caught off guard and felt betrayed by a company they relied on and trusted. Former Amazon managers reported that the company knew mistakes would happen but felt it was cheaper to let the machines make the decisions, because it was so easy to replace the fired employees.
Letting algorithms make decisions that can so severely impact real lives without repercussions is something that most businesses should avoid.
There are other things to consider before adopting new AI tools for your HR department:
- What are the limitations of AI? While using AI tools can help save time and money, it isn’t flawless. Some AI tools used to evaluate resumes often reject qualified candidates or use unrelated assessments to predict a candidate’s success on the job. These tools may make you miss out on well-qualified candidates. Businesses must continually evaluate their use of and reliance on AI to find the ideal balance between machine learning and human experience.
- Is your data secure? With business information stored on AI systems, your information must be secure. Employees need to feel confident that their personal information, such as social security numbers, addresses, and banking data, is secure and not susceptible to cyber hacking. Thoroughly vet each AI system before adding it to your HR processes to avoid potential data breaches and lawsuits.
- Are you alienating your workforce? Relying too much on automated processes instead of human interactions can cause your workforce to feel alienated and possibly resentful of the HR department. Make sure you monitor your AI tools and do routine checks to make sure things are running smoothly and new problems are not being introduced. If employees have problems, be sure to offer them a real human to help find a solution.
What is the future of AI for HR?
As artificial intelligence and machine learning move further into nearly every aspect of the business world, we must consider where they will take us.
Many businesses are currently battling with the ramifications of AI technology like ChatGPT. If they allow employees to use this technology, are they exposing the business to copyright issues or inadvertently letting employees share proprietary company information?
On the other hand, predictive AI technology like ChatGPT can help create better, more accurate job descriptions that attract the best candidates with the right qualifications. Job seekers can also use this type of technology to help them expand their career opportunities by matching them with the ideal type of job for their unique set of skills.
In a recent McKinsey Talks Talent podcast, HR leaders discussed the implications of AI and what it could look like in the future, including the possibilities of using it to streamline performance reviews and lead employees to new training opportunities.
As you navigate the complexities of AI in the HR department, consider using data from Mercer to help guide your decisions. We offer a host of products covering numerous categories, including policies, benefits, and salary surveys.
Contact us today at surveys@mercer.com or 855-223-8180 to learn more about how Mercer can help improve your HR processes.