AI Is Humanizing HR

HR has always been viewed as a paper-intensive, non-innovative area, where salary decisions are made, and people get hired or fired. Adding to the challenges comes the manual work involved in making sense of the reams of information that HR deals with daily. According to CareerBuilder survey, one-third of employers (34 per cent) do not use technology automation for recruiting candidates, 44 per cent do not automate onboarding and 60 per cent do not automate human capital management activities such as payroll, benefits and personnel administration.  

It is kind of ironic that in the digital era, HR suffers from overly administrative processes. This bureaucracy in the workplace often keeps HR from connecting with employees as people. The need of the hour is such a technology that could take out all the mundane and repetitive tasks from HR and can free their bandwidth to work on more people-friendly initiatives and thus adding more humanity to the human resource function. Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to solve this problem by automating the myriad mundane management tasks, and thus freeing them to do a better job of relating to employees as people.  

‘Personalizing and humanizing’ employee experience is critical to HR irrespective of the business or the size of the workforce. It helps foster greater engagement and makes the workplace more positive and productive. With AI, personalization is about to become more than just an afterthought. It will be the new norm in the workplace. There is no “one size fits all” approach when it comes to workplace productivity as every employee is a unique individual with a unique set of capabilities, challenges and aspirations. Respect for this uniqueness is crucial in fostering a high-performing culture. With AI in HR, one can individualize the entire employee lifecycle according to their uniqueness, right from recruitment, onboarding till the exit of the candidate.  

Talking more about the human touch, with sentiment analysis, AI can help determine when an employee is stressed or tired and requires a little time off; in other words, one can better understand employee work patterns, state-of-mind, and the most conducive work atmosphere. HR executives and managers will thus be able to focus more on improving employee experiences. It will delight employees and motivate them to work smarter. It will also bring a significant impact on the business and hence reshape the entire work culture.  

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help bring in qualities the same as social media to HR solutions. Imagine, for example, a redesigned user interface for employees learn and determine what’s most important to each individual user, giving them a personalized snapshot of everything they need to know, without having to dig through hundreds of emails.  

Not just the personalization, AI can make HR more proactive. The training systems which utilize a broad range of data to provide employees with customized training and development recommendations. These proactive training alerts can encourage employees to take advantage of training opportunities which are suited to their performance objectives and long-term goals.  

The conversation about AI and social media is incomplete without mentioning chatbots. Automating customer service and chatbots have transformed the world of customer service, and upcoming HR solutions have also started leveraging these bots to make life easier for HR. An office chatbot can inform employees about basic questions like about filing tax, insurance and leaves instantly and thus saving time for HR and employees alike to focus on the higher value work they’ve been hired to do. 

AI and emerging technologies based on AI will continue to make HR processes faster, simpler and more joyful to use and in the process providing businesses an exciting new way to attract and engage candidates. Although AI is going to significantly innovate the HR services and work culture, change in attitude and mindsets of existing employees will play a key role in the success of this transformation. Right steps and corrective measures will further cater to the AI revolution and hence evolving the future of workplace.