10 Ways for HR Professionals to Use AI – and How to Operationalize Them

An HR professional and a robot working together at laptops, illustrating the integration of AI in HR processes. A calendar and data charts are displayed in the background, signifying the use of AI for data analysis and decision-making.

How AI Tools for HR Can Transform Your Business

It’s no secret that generative AI’s value for HR professionals lies in its ability to streamline HR processes, augment decision-making, and enhance overall business operations.

It’s also why we were pleased to host a webinar recently featuring industry experts Ian O’Keeffe, Founder and CEO of ikona Analytics, former Amazon, JPMorgan, and Google and Davina Erasmus, VP of Product, Crunchr, on how insights from Generative AI can empower people-driven businesses.

During their conversation, Davina and Ian covered more than just the basics of AI and how HR can utilize it; they outlined critical strategies for HR to lead AI processes for the entire organization.

This article highlights key points from their discussion, including the top 10 ways HR professionals can leverage AI and ethical ways to operationalize them. Keep reading!

1. Streamlining HR processes

The benefits of AI in HR process improvements are vast, from automating labor-intensive processes to answering complex questions instantly. The bottom line is that the sooner you learn how to ask AI a question, the more time you’ll have to focus on crafting strategic business initiatives.

Use cases:

  • Automated payroll processing: AI can handle complex payroll calculations, tax deductions, and legal compliance.
  • Sentiment analysis: AI can analyze employee feedback from surveys, emails, and social media to gauge overall employee satisfaction and identify potential issues.
  • Skill gap analysis: AI can identify skill gaps within the organization and suggest targeted training to bridge these gaps.

2. Enhancing decision-making

​AI can analyze vast amounts of HR data to uncover patterns, trends, and correlations that might not be apparent through traditional analysis. This enables HR professionals to make more informed decisions based on data rather than intuition alone.

3. Automating routine tasks

When most people think about utilizing AI, no matter the business function, the first thing that comes to mind is streamlining mundane tasks. The same is true for HR.

GenAI can, among other things, screen resumes for quality candidates, automate the collection of required documents from new hires, and even assist employees in selecting the best benefits options.

4. Improving talent acquisition

AI can enhance recruitment by generating new content for job postings, adapting postings based on context, and drafting personalized communication with candidates. In fact, according to McKinsey, talent acquisition, recruiting, and onboarding​​ are the top areas where AI brings potential value to HR.

5. Providing real-time feedback

By offering real-time feedback and coaching during training sessions, AI can eliminate the need for periodic evaluations. This immediate (and objective) guidance helps employees refine their skills while reducing the potential for human bias.

6. Supporting employee engagement and retention

When it comes to supporting employee engagement and retention, AI can help HR teams better understand and strengthen these efforts.

Use Cases:

  • Tailored communication: AI can analyze employee preferences and communication styles to deliver personalized messages, ensuring more meaningful interactions.
  • Automated surveys: AI can design, distribute, and analyze employee engagement surveys, providing actionable insights into employee satisfaction and engagement levels.
  • Turnover prediction: AI can analyze historical data and identify patterns that indicate which employees are at risk of leaving the organization. This insight provides HR leaders with valuable knowledge to develop strategic and proactive retention strategies.

7. Enhancing performance evaluations

AI-powered tools can automate and standardize performance evaluations, providing a comprehensive and objective assessment of employee contributions. With the click of a button, AI can analyze performance data from various sources to identify trends, strengths, and areas for improvement.

8. Promoting diversity and inclusion

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) have become essential pillars of modern organizational strategy. AI has the potential to transform how HR approaches D&I, offering tools and insights that can help organizations build more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplaces. By leveraging AI, HR can identify biases, ensure fair hiring practices, foster an inclusive culture, and continuously monitor and improve D&I initiatives.

For example, we know that AI can analyze employee engagement data and sentiment to reveal insights into the employee experience, right? Layering this over demographic data gives a rich overview of the perspective of diverse employees. This allows HR to address concerns and implement targeted initiatives based on data and insights.

9. Optimizing workforce planning

AI can analyze internal and external data to predict future human capital needs and identify skill gaps. By linking skills data to the employee lifecycle for actionable insights, HR leaders can proactively plan recruitment efforts and develop programs for internal mobility.

10 – Democratizing data with People Analytics

AI’s capabilities in People Analytics include aggregating vast amounts of HR data for comprehensive analysis and utilizing predictive analytics to anticipate future trends. Additionally, AI empowers HR professionals with actionable insights and recommendations, significantly enhancing data storytelling capabilities that are handy at the decision-making table.

Experimentation and implementation of AI in HR

Diagram illustrating the experimentation process for integrating AI in HR, including five steps: research, identify problem, define objective, define experiment, and run experiment. Each step highlights key actions for HR professionals to implement AI effectively.

No matter what process you want to improve or the mundane task you aim to automate, it’s important to maintain transparency and ethics in AI decision-making, which is crucial for building trust.

During the webinar, Davina encouraged HR leaders to start with small experiments to understand AI’s impact and refine its applications from there. She suggested focusing on specific workflows where AI can add the most value, such as talent acquisition, onboarding, and employee development.

Ian reflected on this, citing some of the guiding principles for testing new processes within HR. He remarked, “Think about the HR org chart. Think about the programs and processes that nest beneath big chunks of the org chart as a loose proxy for where you’re probably going to find your core global workflows. Within those workflows, where do you have informationally dense, intense manual steps and units of work? That is a good place to start thinking about generative AI applications.”

Generative AI holds immense potential for transforming HR operations. By starting with small, controlled experiments, HR professionals can learn and adapt to AI’s capabilities effectively.

Are you using AI for one of these HR use cases? Ready to test it out? Let us know how your company adapts. Join the conversation on LinkedIn!

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