Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is fast becoming the new normal in organisations across industries worldwide. This rapid adoption is enabling functions such as Human Resources Management (HRM) to streamline processes, boost efficiencies, reduce operational costs and increase productivity. The integration of artificial intelligence with HRM practices is redefining the way organisations engage with their workforce and their capabilities to analyse data, predict scenarios, and take appropriate action. 

AI paves the way for improved efficiencies across various HR processes in multiple ways, some of which are mentioned below. 

Talent acquisition 

The best use case of AI in HR is in the talent acquisition process. AI can decrease the time and effort required to go through mundane tasks and make the hiring process efficient and effective. It enables the HR team to focus on sourcing, employee management, recruitment marketing, and other productive areas.

Most importantly, AI helps build a predictive and effective recruitment process by bringing intelligence to examine a candidate's job fitment & skill mapping, predicting trends in offer-to-join ratio, and maintaining databases of all candidates across multiple dimensions of the recruitment process, to enable improved and faster decision making. 

Onboarding of recruits 

AI helps build efficient onboarding engagement processes along with building prediction around the engagement of the potential hire with the new organisation. Chatbots can have relevant conversations with new hires and AI can make the conversations meaningful by using its intelligence and building on the understanding captured with multiple chats. This enables the HR team to save time and build a data-driven onboarding module. Some of the key engagements that can be initiated within this parameter are:

• Introduce newly hired employees to the company information and regulations on the first day
• Provide essential information including details of job profile, company policies, information of team members, etc. to new employees
• Answer FAQs by new employees
• Explain job profile, duties, and company benefits
• Obtain important contact details of relevant people within the company
• Verify legal documents

Engagement of existing employees with AI-Backed chatbot to keep conversations going

Employee engagement is an area that measures and analyses employee sentiments on a day-to-day basis. AI-backed chatbots can be enabled to empower both the employee and HR professionals to keep the engagement conversation going at regular intervals. These chatbots provide a natural, human-like, and always-on communication tool that engages the user in personalised conversations.

These conversations are then analysed and leveraged to address the specific concerns, wants, and needs of the employee. But it doesn’t end there. The action after the conversation is just as critical as asking for feedback. AI-backed chatbots allow HR Managers to understand the sentiment so that they can address potential roadblocks through actions and let the employees know that their voice matters, thereby boosting engagement and reducing churn.

Learning & Development programs 

The number of learning and development departments using AI will increase tremendously over the next couple of years. This department in HR is expected to create agile and adaptable learning programmes that can meet the individual needs of employees. At the same time, they will use data and analytics in depth to show the impact on the business.

A few ways in which HR is adopting a data-first mindset building the employee experience through adopting AI:

• Personalize the learning journey based on job role, existing skill sets, development plans, and future goals, and proactively address any skills gaps that exist
• Assign stretch assignments and cross-functional projects based on employee skill sets
• Match content and recommendations based on relevancy
• Respond in real-time to frequently asked questions via chatbots accessible to all employees to type in questions and receive a quick automated response

Directorial Tasks

AI can pre-program recurring directorial and administrative tasks. It can evolve HR strategy, manage employees, analyse company policies, and answer general queries. 

With AI playing a larger role in the future, organisations should capitalise on advances in technology to encourage a holistic and innovative vision of the HR function. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to successfully manage the change, organisations should partner with their respective HRM to implement AI, to meet the changing expectations of teams across the world.