Article: 5 ways HR will be affected by Artificial Intelligence

Recruitment

5 ways HR will be affected by Artificial Intelligence

One area where AI will shine and standout is in the corporate world, more specifically in HR. There are many ways in which HR can be affected by AI and even potentially change because of it.
5 ways HR will be affected by Artificial Intelligence

If the 19th century was electricity’s and the 20th was electronics’, this century will definitely be the century of AI. This is but the inevitable result of our exponential growth. What we have achieved in the past few years totally surpasses decades ago, and marks up an evolutionary point. Just take a look at how far AlphaZero has come, not to mention Alibaba’s AI that topped top Standford records at comprehension tests. 

Personalized Employee Experience:

Providing personalized experiences in human resources management is by far the most robust and productive option there is. It can drive the employee to excel and grow at tremendous rates. AI can provide a personalized experience straight from the onboarding. Imagine if the first thing employees start interacting with is a custom mobile application, powered by AI, to know more about the company, the people and in the process, acquire any type of information they feel they need. There’ll be no need of shyly asking Joe in the neighboring office and hence they’ll get a confidence boost straight off the bat. 

Using sentiment analysis, AI can identify when the employee is stressed and needs a break, or if he’s sleepy and needs a cup of coffee. Basically, AI will provide a better understanding of the employee’s changing states and moods, and will be able to act upon it.

This in return, will make the employee feel more appreciated and understood and eventually will grow productivity and a sense of belonging. Solutions like Talla will be more popular in the future; and will eventually become a must.

A world without biases:

Whether consciously or unconsciously; we tend to be inclined in a way or another towards certain biases. It’s simply due to our human nature that is prone to error in taking decisions. While there are many professionals who are able to limit the effects of our human biasing, AI doesn’t know any biasing at all. In a recent study that involved 350 HR leaders, it turns out that more than 90% of them believe ChatBots are extremely effective in the corporate world right now. Due to their neutrality and human-friendliness, employees feel more comfortable reporting inquiries to chatbots. 

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Some predict that by 2020, AI chatbots will be adopted worldwide at a 75% rate, which is quite a massive change to adopt in the span of less than two years. 

Automation of repetitive low-value tasks:

We usually label the word AI to automation and low-value tasks altogether, but it’s not entirely true. They will soon play a huge role in high-value non-repetitive tasks, but they will also be quite useful in the other low-value tasks. AI will be able to take care of these tasks and allow the HR staff to focus more on strategic ones. Whether it’s allocating space or provisioning a device, some tasks are better off automated. Not to mention the long list of common HR questions and requests and benefits management as well. The staff will then be more oriented into creative and strategic work that adds value to the company and drives it forward.

AI recruiters:

Employees and applicants always have their expectations set when they apply for a new post. To be able to create custom recruitment experiences based on your needs and those of the applicants, might be quite challenging. Textio, for example, is an AI-based writing platform that helps create effective job posts that target talents and unique intellects. The process also becomes much faster, and their client stories already include big names like Atlassian and Johnson & Johnson. 

There’s always interviewing, which is a critical task where AI can give us a hand. In a digital era, high volumes hiring and selection processes to choose from a vast sea of candidates becomes a problem of increasing orders of complexity. Technologies like MontageTalent, powered by AI analytics bridges the gap between talents and their desired destinations. 

It’s not at all a distant fantasy that interviews will be totally held by AI bots, interviewing thousands at the same time. 

Team training and coaching:

The mere selection of talents is not enough to drive a company forwards and allow it to gain an edge over its competitors. That’s why training and coaching are essential for any business.  

Some AI programs are now able to assess the employee’s needs and create custom programs and mini-courses that fit them best and helps them grow. Some systems can even interpret the employees work and recommend certain learning paths and options.

Tools like MobileCoach are also taking a leading role in an engaging chatbot that can start a conversation and orient employees to what needs to be done. 

Challenges:

Surely, there’s a great room for improvements and the real AI revolution is yet to come. One of the main challenges that encounter such a major shift is the fact that employees’ data are not present in one single location. In most cases, the data is distributed over many different data sets; and often the absence of one set in the analytics could lead to a totally wrong estimation. 

One other challenge is that the world of HR is not one of the black and white decisions. There’s often no such thing as the best option and it’s just a tradeoff between two or multiple things. So algorithms used might often miss out on certain points. 

Also, learning Artificial Intelligence has been tough for developers, but nowadays with so many open source tools and so many course providers like Udemy, Coursera, edX, etc., it is getting easier for the developer to learn artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Conclusion:

The world of HR and basically everything else will keep on getting disrupted by the breakthroughs of AI. It’s hard to see what the future depicts for a world where machines are as intelligent, or more intelligent than humans. The corporate world will then be led by machines and HR, among other corporate pillars, will follow. For the meantime, AI will continue to play a major role in the HR business even without singularity happening. 

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Topics: Recruitment, Training & Development, Employee Relations, Technology, HR Technology

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