What Is the Role of AI in Human Resources?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been making waves in the human resources world — really, the entire world — for a while now. We’re all figuring out how to use this advanced technology responsibly and how it will fit into our work and impact our jobs. The HR function, in particular, stands to benefit from AI's game-changing potential in talent management. It’s poised to free up time for your team, taking on their repetitive tasks and streamlining manual processes.

From recruiting and engagement to analytics and reporting, AI can be a valuable tool for savvy, strategic HR teams. It’s also quickly becoming more than just an exciting piece of tech for only the most agile teams. Soon, leveraging AI will be a necessity to remain a competitive employer —a recent SHRM survey found that half of HR leaders say their department will be using AI by 2025.

Whether you’re already an avid AI user or just beginning to explore its possibilities, there’s always more to learn about this technology.

How HR Is Using AI Now

AI technology is already enabling HR teams to automate time-consuming tasks, analyze data in record time, and offer increasingly personalized employee experiences. Let’s take a look at some of the ways HR teams are applying AI to different functions.

Recruiting and Onboarding

Today, using AI in recruiting and onboarding processes is among the most common ways HR teams are applying the technology. Generative AI assists with writing tasks like composing job descriptions, offer letters, and messages to candidates.

To speed up the recruitment process, many recruiters use AI to surface potential candidates. AI can quickly identify talent with the skills and experience that are the best fit for the open roles, helping recruiters prioritize outreach. Then, they use AI to create, schedule, and send those outreach messages.

When it comes to onboarding, AI is a valuable tool for increasing employee satisfaction from day one. The virtual assistant ensures new hires receive the right documents and information for their role, resolves simple questions in seconds, and keeps track of new hires’ progress. It also gathers valuable data about process efficiency, which means HR teams can make refinements to their strategy based on facts rather than guesswork.

Employee Engagement

Your HR managers and leaders are no doubt aware that U.S. employee engagement is trending down. In fact, only 30% of employees are engaged, down from 34% in May 2023 —an 11-year low. It’s no surprise that companies are turning to new tactics and tools to reverse this trend, including using AI in employee engagement.

Many companies use surveys to measure engagement and understand workforce sentiment as a whole. AI reveals patterns and trends from that data and then takes it up a notch, offering tailored recommendations for how to increase engagement. In addition, the personalized employee experiences that are possible with AI increase engagement throughout the employee lifecycle.

Employee Performance, Learning, and Development

Learning and development programs are rising in popularity as companies look for the best ways to attract and retain employees. Opportunities for growth are continually a top priority for job seekers, and AI is making it easier for employers to offer those opportunities.

AI-enhanced HR software helps companies create personalized learning paths based on employees’ performance, strengths, and learning styles. It can also take into account companies’ goals and skills gaps when designing development plans, ensuring that employees' training benefits both their own professional growth and enables company success.

3 Predictions for the Role of AI in HR

We’ve watched AI evolve lightning-fast over just the past couple of years, and it’s clear that we’re just scratching the surface of the benefits of AI in HR. Though we can’t tell the future for certain, what is certain is the continued development of AI technology. With that development moving at breakneck speed, these predictions may come to fruition much sooner than it seems. Take a look at our top three predictions for AI’s role in HR.

1. HR professionals will need to develop AI skills.

AI is here to stay, so closing the AI skills gap must be a priority for companies that want a strategic HR department. 76% of HR leaders believe they’ll be left behind if their company doesn’t adopt AI tools in the next one to two years, and 80% of CHROs say they’re already training or have created a plan for training their teams on how to use AI.

Your team needs to learn both how to integrate AI into your processes and how to use it responsibly. As you develop your own tactics for training your team on AI, it’s essential to include information about the risks of using the technology. That way, your team will have the skills required to harness the power of AI without violating employees’ rights or jeopardizing compliance.

2. AI will continue to require human oversight.

Luckily, AI replacing human resources is an extremely unlikely scenario. Why? It’s right there in the name of this business function. Humans are necessary for companies to successfully navigate the nuances of managing employees.

While AI will take on many duties in HR, the technology isn’t perfect. Like the humans who created it, AI is susceptible to bias, and its outputs must be checked for accuracy. It’s also incapable of handling complex employee relations issues, like conflicts between coworkers and terminations. While there are no formal laws around AI in the workplace, the federal government has released some guidelines, and there’s always the chance of new regulations that require human involvement or ban the use of AI for certain activities.

Not to mention, no one really wants AI to take on these types of tasks. For example, 71% of Americans are against companies using AI to make final hiring decisions —with only 7% in favor.

3. HR roles will evolve.

Though AI will not totally eliminate most HR roles, you should prepare for the technology to impact nearly all of them. As your team grows its AI skills and learns the most practical use cases for AI at your company, they’ll have more time for strategic work. Instead of spending hours sourcing candidates and screening resumes, they can focus on building relationships, improving the candidate experience, and making hiring decisions.

That’s great news for most HR teams. Imagine eliminating mundane, repetitive work completely and spending that valuable time on perfecting your talent management strategies. AI will take over tasks like mind-numbing data entry, eliminating errors and saving hours of time, while also providing you with data-informed recommendations that help you refine those strategies.

In addition to the increased demand for strategic HR practitioners, you can even expect to see a demand for brand-new roles, including AI ethics experts, data analysts, and change management specialists.

AI-Enhanced Software for HR

While it’s important to be aware of the risks associated with AI, there’s far more risk in failing to explore its potential at all. Understand AI and its best practices so you can choose AI-enhanced HR software with confidence and apply the powerful technology to HR processes as effectively as possible.

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