Since the debut of ChatGPT in November 2022, the world has been buzzing (with both excitement and nervousness) about its potential impact on everything from childhood development to how businesses are run. One particular question comes up again and again: Will AI replace my job?
For people professionals, artificial intelligence in human resources is a gargantuan disruptor in the world of work. In the short time since its debut, it’s already touched nearly every aspect of the HR profession, from workforce planning and company culture to L&D and performance metrics tracking. Not only must HR pros adjust to the new tech and its implications they must also calm panic from talent worried about becoming obsolete.
What’s important for all to bear in mind is that customers and business partners value genuine connections with human beings. Despite AI’s appeal to shrinking budgets and justifying downsizing—especially in rocky economic times—the role of AI in HR is to boost efficiency, lower stress, and reduce burnout rates for everyone (including you and your HR colleagues), and put the focus back on strategy and creative thinking—the pillars of differentiating your business from the competition.
Table of contents
- The initial impact of generative AI on the world of work
- 13 HR functions you can enhance with AI
- Using AI in HR is key for reskilling and upskilling
- The times they are a’changing in the HR space
The initial impact of generative AI on the world of work
Within just months of ChatGPT-3’s release, nearly 50 percent of companies in the United States started replacing people.
But just because some companies are replacing humans with AI doesn’t mean all will or should. After all, as HBR puts it, “AI should augment human intelligence, not replace it.”
Fortunately, it looks like organizations around the world are already getting on board with AI as a tool as opposed to a replacement for humans. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), using AI in the workplace is a top training priority for businesses, and 44 percent of professionals’ skills could “become disrupted.”
While it’s advantageous to incorporate AI and automation tools to stay competitive, it’s worth being wary of “cost-cutting strategies… where machines are introduced as the new super employee that may leave humans ultimately in an inferior role to serve machine.” Instead, the key to “a truly intelligent type of future work” is human and AI collaboration.
To remain relevant and thrive in the future, HR can help their organizations leverage automation tools, incorporate them into the normal flow of work, and use them to boost efficiency and optimize processes to make people’s lives easier and workloads lighter. Not only that, automation can help people boost their creativity and strategic thinking. This applies to all departments across the business—including HR.
13 HR functions you can enhance with AI
Artificial intelligence in HR isn’t new. In fact, some incredible HR automation tech has been making waves in boosting HR efficiency for several years already.
HR professionals already benefit from AI-infused HR automation tech for things like:
- Writing job descriptions
- Gathering and parsing benchmarking information such as salaries and benefits
- Automating tasks (e.g., onboarding)
- Improving employee self-service
- Workforce planning and recruiting
- Improving communication and workflow
- Performance and productivity
- Budgeting
- Reducing workloads
- Achieving DEI&B goals
- Tracking burnout levels
- Preventing attrition
- Training and L&D
1. Writing job descriptions
With the assistance of automation tools in human resources functions like recruitment, you can easily create keyword-optimized and compelling job descriptions that attract the right talent and resonate with them.
2. Gathering and parsing benchmarking information such as salaries and benefits
AI can analyze industry compensation trends, ensuring your company remains competitive in attracting and retaining top talent. HR automation tools can sift through vast amounts of data to provide insights on how your organization’s pay and benefits stack up against industry standards.
3. Automating tasks
By automating repetitive tasks like paperwork processing, data entry, and onboarding, HR professionals can focus on more strategic people-focused initiatives.
When it comes to onboarding, for example, AI tools intelligently handle candidate sourcing, screening, and initial communication to save valuable time and resources. Automated onboarding processes can also ensure a smooth and consistent experience for new hires, ultimately boosting satisfaction and retention rates.
4. Improving employee self-service
Whether team members need help with benefits enrollment, time-off requests, or access to company policies, they can quickly find answers to their HR-related questions through an AI chatbot.
This enhances efficiency and empowers your people to take more control over their HR needs. With AI, you can provide your people with 24/7 support, leading to an improved employee experience.
5. Workforce planning and recruiting
AI-powered tools can analyze your people’s skills and the latest industry trends to predict which roles you might need to fill. AI can even help you match resumes to job descriptions more quickly and sort through vast amounts of candidate information to predict future job performance within your organization.
This enhanced predictive capability saves time and supports more informed hiring decisions. With AI, workforce planning becomes more strategic and proactive, helping you find the right people at the right time.
6. Improving communication and workflow
AI can make it easier for teams to communicate and collaborate effectively by taking notes during meetings, collecting feedback, and troubleshooting communications issues.
Workflow automation powered by AI can eliminate bottlenecks, reduce errors, and ensure tasks are completed efficiently. AI’s ability to analyze data and provide insights helps you enhance workflows.
7. Performance and productivity
AI can analyze key performance indicators (KPIs), such as engagement levels and project completion rates, to help you make data-driven decisions that boost overall productivity.
And by quickly analyzing data, AI provides personalized recommendations for improving individual and team performance.
It can even assist with forecasting future performance trends based on historical data. This enables HR departments to proactively address potential challenges and capitalize on opportunities for improvement.
8. Budgeting
AI can simplify budgeting processes, enhance accuracy in financial forecasting, and identify cost-saving opportunities more effectively—allowing your HR and finance teams to allocate financial resources appropriately.
9. Reducing workloads
AI can automate administrative tasks such as scheduling, payroll management, and data entry, freeing up HR professionals to focus on more strategic tasks.
This increases efficiency and allows HR professionals to provide people with more personalized support, ultimately leading to a more engaged and productive workforce.
10. Achieving DEI&B goals
AI-powered tools can play a key role in promoting diversity within your organization by analyzing candidate data objectively. This helps eliminate biases and promotes a more equitable and diverse recruitment process.
AI technology can also aid in creating an inclusive work environment by identifying patterns in people’s feedback that might indicate where you could improve inclusivity. With this information, you can create a culture where every person feels valued and included.
11. Tracking burnout levels
HR departments can use tools to track factors contributing to burnout, such as workload distribution, overtime hours, and stress levels. With this kind of data, HR professionals can identify potential burnout risks and put targeted initiatives in place to support people’s wellbeing and productivity.
12. Preventing attrition
AI can help you recognize potential turnover risks early on by analyzing data points such as job satisfaction surveys, performance reviews, and employee sentiment.
This insight allows you to implement targeted retention strategies such as personalized development plans, wellbeing programs, or flexible work arrangements, to address people’s needs.
13. Training and L&D
AI can significantly improve L&D within an organization. Learning experience platforms already use AI algorithms that analyze training data to identify trends and personalize individual learning paths.
This boosts engagement and provides people with opportunities for career progression by giving them the necessary skills to reach their goals.
If this list of examples of AI in HR seems exhaustive, that’s because it is. Nearly every HR task will become faster, easier, and more effective as a result of automation and AI technology—something for HR pros to rejoice about. The bigger challenges, then, are to understand how to mitigate people’s fears of being replaced and use AI to strengthen, not displace, the workforce.
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Using AI in HR is key for reskilling and upskilling
Despite their fears of the challenges associated with artificial intelligence and employment, humans will always be essential to business operations. After all, the customers will remain human, and they are the ones businesses will communicate with and sell to.
That being the case, learning to work with artificial intelligence in HR can only benefit your people as they progress through their careers. The key is ensuring your workforce knows how to integrate and apply AI tools to optimize efficiency, improve outcomes, and keep up with the demands of today’s (and tomorrow’s) working world.
Here are some important things to keep in mind when devising how to incorporate AI into human resources:
- Beware of AI inaccuracies. ChatGPT and other generative AIs currently do not promise (or necessarily deliver) factually accurate information. Note that many of AI’s inaccuracies are not only wrong but also harmful, and could easily lead to defamation and privacy lawsuits.
- Don’t lose the human touch. It’s important to keep up your interpersonal skills and empathy, which are absolutely essential when it comes to creating, growing, and maintaining customer and partner relationships.
- Prepare for anti-AI laws, which are already emerging in the United States, like in New York, Illinois, and Maryland, which have all passed legislation regulating the use of AI in hiring—and Washington State may soon follow. Federal lawmakers in the US are also proposing a variety of possible regulations for the use of AI in business and the European Parliament has passed its first AI law.
- Prepare for new career paths. Chief AI officer, anyone? As fears surround the issue of AI and employment, new roles revolving around the ability to understand, wrangle, and implement AI arise, such as digital transformation, data labeling, and prompt engineering.
The times they are a’changing in the HR space
There is no debate: AI is unequivocally changing the fabric of the work world forever, and organizations can adapt by figuring out how AI and human resources professionals can work together to make life easier for themselves and their people.
Generative AI in HR can offload much of the administrative burden, cutting down on time and pressure to allow HR professionals to focus on more strategic tasks, relieving stress and burnout.
In the grander scheme of things, AI is a tool professionals can now learn to incorporate into their daily workflow—and while it can never replace the innovation people bring to their brands, one of the main benefits of AI in HR is that it can offload the burden of repetitive administrative tasks. HR can help organizations adjust, placing a heavier emphasis on upskilling and reskilling to keep talented professionals skilled, relevant, and creative—the essential components of business agility, no matter what comes next.
