Human resource management involves handling tasks as complex as sourcing candidates and workforce planning and as simple as sharing the PTO policy with an employee and scheduling interviews. Unfortunately, many HR teams are spending more than their fair share of time on these seemingly simple tasks, leaving them with fewer hours to spend on important strategic work. Fortunately, HR chatbots are helping teams save time — and improve the employee experience while they’re at it.
Today, chatbots are capable assistants for HR, providing employees and candidates with a reliable avenue for communication. They streamline recruiting processes, help employees access important information, and engage with candidates 24/7. When applied effectively, chatbots are a valuable resource for your HR team.
Learn more about the chatbots that are popping up in HR software solutions and how teams are using the technology to work more efficiently. We’ll also share some of the benefits of using HR chatbots.
What Is an HR Chatbot?
HR chatbots use artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to “talk” to users —human resources departments, employees, candidates, and job applicants — and automatically perform easy, repetitive functions like answering FAQs or asking for feedback. A chatbot is an always-on virtual assistant, available 24/7 to field those questions and take on those tasks.
Chatbots are a familiar AI tool —they’re often our first point of contact when we need customer service. Chatbots are great at helping us find tracking information for our orders or informing us of our bank’s routing number. Similarly, HR services often include answering a few basic questions on a near-daily basis. A chatbot means that HR professionals can field fewer emails and Slack messages from employees asking where to find their paystubs or where to find the company’s holiday calendar.
5 Benefits of HR Chatbots
Chatbots can benefit HR departments of all types, especially if your HR team is lean, your company is remote or hybrid, or you have few employees who work at a desk. The HR bot is available when they are and ensures employee queries don’t go unanswered when small teams are spread thin. Let’s take a look at just a few of the benefits of chatbots for HR.
1. Increases Efficiency
87% of HR employees say they’re operating at maximum capacity, which means it’s essential to find ways to help them work more efficiently or risk burnout and lost productivity. Imagine how much more your team members could accomplish with a chatbot fielding their simpler tasks. With HR processes completed faster than ever, your team can renew its focus on developing and refining your company’s talent management strategies.
2. Streamlines Recruiting Processes
HR chatbots can accelerate recruiting efforts by pre-screening candidates and automating interview scheduling. Your AI assistant is able to sift through a large volume of applications and surface the candidates whose experience and skills most closely match the role. That enables your recruiting team to prioritize those candidates rather than spending days sorting through applications.
Automatic interview scheduling can be enabled via a chatbot on your career site or via recruiters’ outreach emails. The career site chatbot first asks a few screening questions, and if the candidate passes the screening, they can schedule an interview. In outreach emails, recruiters can automatically generate a virtual interview link where the candidate can choose the time that works best — without the days of back-and-forth messages.
"For many companies, HR is highly manual, and AI can help alleviate some of this admin burden, allowing HR leaders to focus more on strategy, creativity, and people-focused work.”
- Aaron Goldsmid, Head of Product, Payments & Integration at Deel via HRD
3. Available 24/7
An always-on HR chatbot is immediately available when employees who want to adjust their 401(k) contributions at midnight or eager applicants who have lots of questions about an open role in the middle of a busy day. You can’t beat an assistant who can schedule interviews while you sleep.
4. Consistent, Accurate Responses
HR chatbots can’t make up their own responses —they follow decision trees and generate consistent responses. That enables your team to provide a consistent level of service, too, meaning all employees have the same experience interacting with the chatbot. You can be sure that employees and applicants aren’t receiving a range of responses from different customer service agents.
5. Enhances Employee Experience
HR chatbots help provide a great employee experience by ensuring they can get help when they need it. In some cases, employees may even prefer interacting with a bot over a human, especially if they want to ask about a sensitive topic. HR chatbots can even offer personalized experiences, such as allowing employees to choose their preferred language, which may be a limitation for your HR team.
6. Cost-Effective
HR chatbots can help your company manage costs by reducing the need for additional administrative staff and resources. It can also help HR and other employees settle into new roles and become productive faster, reducing costs associated with training and onboarding processes.
Top Chatbot Use Cases
The rise of AI in HR means that we’re surrounded by tools that claim to save time, automate HR processes, and help us work smarter. But how can it be used most effectively and responsibly? Let’s look at some of the top use cases for HR chatbots.
Recruiting
The use of AI in recruiting is one of the most common ways HR is applying the technology. It’s no surprise this is where teams are leveraging new technologies —36% of HR leaders say recruiting and retaining employees is their top challenge this year. These are just a few ways HR is using chatbots for recruitment.
- Virtual Recruiter: HR chatbots take over simple tasks, like screening candidates (for some roles), leaving recruiters more time to focus on building relationships with top candidates.
- Interview Scheduler: Did you know that 68% of recruiters say coordinating to schedule interviews with their candidates and hiring teams is one of their biggest challenges at work? With an HR chatbot, candidates can only choose times that work for the entire hiring team to take hours, and often days, off of this step of recruitment.
- Application Updates: Candidates want to know if they’re out of the running for a role ASAP —even if they’re not hired, communication leaves them with a positive impression of your company. With an AI chatbot assistant, you can automatically send rejected candidates an email to let them know. That’s also a chance to maintain that relationship with the candidate by asking if they want to be informed about other opportunities at your company.
Onboarding
Onboarding is a critical part of the employee journey and often determines whether the new hire will stick around for a matter of months or become a loyal, longtime employee. With an AI chatbot, you can ensure new hires can easily access the information they need about their role and the company.
- Welcome Aboard: Set up an AI chatbot in your employee portal or intranet to walk new hires through setting up their internal account, learning a bit about company history, and getting a quick virtual introduction to their team members.
- Onboarding Task Management: If you’ve switched to modern, paperless onboarding, an HR chatbot can help new hires complete onboarding tasks like filling out the documents they need to complete. Then, those documents are effortlessly stored as part of the new hire’s virtual employee records. The AI keeps track of which tasks are finished and which are still on the docket.
- Training Guides: Many roles have standard training courses every new employee needs to take, and an HR chatbot can help walk them through the training program or modules.
Employee Support
Sometimes, you can spend the entire day answering a stream of simple questions from employees, leaving no time to focus on sourcing candidates or engaging with your talent pipelines. An AI chatbot for HR can take all of that off your plate — while boosting employee engagement with fast, accurate responses.
- Your HR Helpdesk: Employees can ask about the PTO policy, find the org chart, and get a reminder about the closing date for open enrollment with an HR chatbot. What’s more, they can ask these questions at any hour of the day and get an answer promptly.
- Leave Management Support: An HR chatbot can assist employees with submitting leave or PTO requests and answer inquiries about their accumulated leave balance and historical leave records —what they’ve already used up. It can also answer simple questions about vacation or leave policies and share appropriate documentation.
Learning and Development
Professional development is a driving force behind why employees leave —and why they stay. Did you know that 94% of employees say they’d stay at their company longer if they had opportunities for growth? Find out how HR chatbots are helping companies execute successful learning strategies.
- Tailored Training Recommendations: HR chatbots can analyze employee data, including their skills, goal achievement and progress, performance evaluations, and more to create recommendations for an employee’s learning path.
- Monitoring and Tracking Progress: An AI-assisted chatbot can send reminders when employees need to update their goals and send managers notifications when updates are made so they can stay on top of direct reports’ progress.
Performance Management and Engagement
- Gathering Feedback Effortlessly: Often, after using a chatbot, you’re asked a few questions about your experience. An HR chatbot can gather employee feedback to find out whether the bot was able to answer their questions thoroughly. Then, you can be sure you’re using the chatbot for the right tasks.
- Performance Review Reminders: HR chatbots can help keep your team —and everyone else —on top of performance reviews. Get a reminder when it’s time to launch the next cycle, and then set up reminders for review participants. They’ll automatically receive reminders, helping increase completion rates and reduce the time HR spends wrapping up review cycles.
When you employ them strategically, HR chatbots offer your team the chance to shift their focus from the menial to the meaningful —building relationships with employees and candidates, managing interpersonal dynamics, and shaping workplace culture.
Embrace AI, chatbots, and other advanced HR technologies to keep your business at the forefront of the competition for top talent. By using modern software solutions, you stand apart from other employers, attract forward-thinking candidates, and equip your HR team with time-saving tools.
Get a demo of ClearCompany and ask about our AI-enhanced features, including our Virtual Recruiter chatbot. Sign up for your personalized demo.
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