Consider this rapid shift: In 2023, 22% of HR functions reported experimenting with or using gen AI. A year later, that figure has soared to 41%, according to research from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp).
“Today, we’re starting to see HR catch up,” says Kevin Oakes, CEO and co-founder of i4cp, who spoke last week during HR Tech in Las Vegas.
One of the significant findings of its 2023 study, Is HR Already Behind in the AI Revolution, was that HR was not being included in strategic conversations around AI in a meaningful way at their organizations, Oakes says. “It was unfortunate because if there’s one thing AI affects, it is the workforce. And, HR should be the experts on the workforce.”
The reason HR leaders weren’t included in those discussions? C-suite executives had little confidence in HR’s capabilities around AI, Oakes says.
“HR wasn’t using AI that much, nor demonstrating knowledge around AI,” he says. “But that is starting to change. … HR still has a ways to go, but I would love to see more CEOs recognize that they’ve got to really make sure HR is involved.”
HR’s increased involvement in strategic AI discussions this year is making a difference, with 51% of employers overall using gen AI in some way, according to i4cp’s upcoming report Workforce Readiness in the Era of AI, which surveyed 930 mid-level and high-level executives across the globe who are primarily in HR.
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6 HR functions using AI today
Today, a half-dozen HR functions are using gen AI, each in several ways, i4cp’s research shows. The functions are talent acquisition and mobility, talent development, total rewards, DEI, people analytics and employee experience. Here is a look at how teams in each of these functions are using the technology to improve efficiency, productivity and execution, according to the latest report.
Talent acquisition and mobility
Talent acquisition leaders have been among the early HR adopters of gen AI, Oakes says.
“They certainly thought of all the different functions in HR to use it and more so than most others,” he notes. “They’re doing some simple things like creating job descriptions, synthesizing data, both internally and externally, and using it for video or chatbot interviews.”
One company reported using gen AI to write emails to passive candidates and saw significantly more candidates responding to those emails than to a human-written email, Oakes says. In addition to the higher response rate, TA teams spent less time and effort on these candidates, he added.
Talent development
Talent development teams are using gen AI as much as talent acquisition teams, says Oakes, particularly to personalize development plans and create L&D courses. This is affecting the instructional design role for many companies, according to Oakes.
“I come from a training and development background, so we know how time-consuming some of this can be,” he says. “It’s amazing to see how quickly companies are creating content.”
Total rewards
Although total rewards teams aren’t as commonly associated with gen AI as other functions, they are using the technology in many ways, Oakes says. This includes analyzing skills-based compensation and salary data in key markets.
In addition, uses in total rewards can be shared with other functions. A compensation chatbot, for example, could automate some of the compensation questions that managers receive from employees, or gen AI could be deployed for pay equity analysis, he says.
DEI
By training the tool with a DEI lens, Oakes says, gen AI can find bias in job descriptions and employee pay equity, as well as identify the disparate impact that organizational changes can have on diverse employees, Oakes says.
He added that when DEI teams use gen AI to review pay equity, total reward leaders also often participate.
People analytics
Gen AI already is heavily used in people analytics, he says, to conduct both qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
People analytics teams also rely on gen AI to synthesize and gather insights from open-response questions, he notes, and to help with natural language processing efforts around bias and employee feedback.
Employee experience
Some companies, like Walmart, are using chatbots to respond to employees’ HR-related common questions or to help resolve different workforce issues, Oakes observed.
This use of gen AI is like having an HR service center chatbot, where it can also analyze employee listening data to improve the employee experience, he adds.
Even though HR’s experimentation or use of gen AI has improved in recent years, only 13% of an organization’s HR function is using it extensively, according to i4cp’s report. Another 28% use gen AI to a moderate extent and 34% to a low extent.
“Those aren’t great statistics for HR and need to be higher,” Oakes advises. “HR has to be more ready in this conversation about gen AI.”
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