How responsible AI can reshape HR

Utter the phrase ‘talent shortage’ in a room full of HR professionals, and you’ll likely see a collective shudder. Labour is a top-of-mind concern for CHROs – not just from an organisation-wide perspective but within their own function too. With many HR offices operating leaner than ever, leaders are keen to embrace efficiency measures that enable their colleagues to offload mindless tasks and instead focus on more value-added responsibilities.

That’s why HR leaders from companies like Air Liquide, On and Mondelēz International are embracing automation. And they aren’t alone: in a recent Workday survey of 1,124 HR technology decision-makers from around the world, 70 percent said AI will be a critical support to HR functions – from candidate matching to career and skills development – over the next five years. 

However, reinventing efficiency within the HR function doesn’t happen overnight. Success hinges on thorough planning, collaboration and education. Below are some best practices to consider for your organisation’s transformational journey with automation.

Automating the right tasks

To formulate an automation strategy, you must first gain a clear understanding of which tasks need a human touch – and which do not. For instance, employees may feel comfortable querying a chatbot to find out how many sick days they have left for the year, but it’s less likely they’ll want to use that same technology to file a complaint of workplace harassment.

“HR leaders must identify the appropriate avenues for automation before deploying it across their organisation,” says Volker Schrank, Senior Director of HR Technology and Employee Experience at Mondelēz International.

“We have to deal with sensitive topics. We have employees that come to us in the moments that matter where they need a person, a human, to talk to,” Schrank says. “The only way to do this is by automating all the mundane processes. Everything where it is not important to have a human-to-human connection and conversation, everything that is more administrative, we want to get out of the way of our HR colleagues.”

Automation frees up HR leaders for more high-touch tasks, ramping up both efficiency and efficacy. It also may make traditionally error-prone processes more seamless and successful for employees. Before Mondelēz launched its onboarding automation, about three-quarters of employees’ laptops and other devices did not arrive before their start date, resulting in lost productivity and, for employees, an unfortunate first impression of their new company. Now, with automation, over 90 percent of devices are delivered by employees’ first day on the job.

“Most of the activities around onboarding are very standardised: you need a badge, an email address, a company credit card and maybe a device,” Schrank says. “If you take all of this away from the HR department and automate it, then HR can focus on the cultural onboarding into the company.”

Like Mondelēz, athletic shoe company On has been determining the optimal tasks for automation, says Julie Muggli, Head of Talent (HR) Operations, Technology and Analytics. “We’re identifying those gaps where we think AI could really serve us,” Muggli says. “For example, we’ve launched scheduling and time tracking with Workday, which has machine learning (ML) for forecasting and AI for the generation of schedules. On the recruiting side, we have AI with a note taker in the interview process, which is also a coach that can give guidance to the interviewer.”

Securing buy-in

“Automation solutions can increase HR’s efficiency only if employees utilise them, so involving workers in the implementation process as early as possible is imperative,” says Schrank.

“It’s all in the way you do it. If you do something to someone, they will not feel integrated, they will not feel valued,” he says. “But if you implement it with your colleagues, they stay engaged and they understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and they bring their ideas too.”

Schrank learned this lesson the hard way during the launch of a self-service Mondelēz product. “When we started with self-service, we just said, ‘Here it is. Use it.’ And guess how many people used it? Not too many, and the ones who did were very unhappy about it,” he says. “But then we worked with our employees to understand, ‘What is it you would like to do with self-service? What information would you like to see to manage your team?’ Then we designed it with them, tested it with them and brought it to market with them. And there was acceptance and excitement.”

In addition to taking into account employees’ wants and needs, new technologies need to be accessible to employees and meet them where they are. For industrial gases company Air Liquide, which has a mix of white-collar and blue-collar employees, placing self-service within reach of all employees was crucial, says Agnès Le Guern, HR Transformation Project Director, Air Liquide. “We offer all of our employees the same level of self-service, regardless if you are in the manufacturing environment or if you are office-based,” Le Guern says. 

In Europe, Air Liquide provides self-service tablets that proved so popular that about 90 percent of the manufacturing workforce uses them. And the organisation ensures the remaining 10 percent can always reach an HR team member by phone or by chat on one of the computers available in the manufacturing facilities.

Deepening the HR function

As HR offices increasingly leverage automation and become more efficient, leaders will need to reassess not only HR colleagues’ daily tasks but also their organisational function and roles.

“A lot of times, people come into the conversation with the headline that automation and AI are going to be taking jobs. But I think AI is going to be a tool we lean on to be able to focus on those moments that matter, that human touch,” says Muggli. “That means we’ll become more and more specialised.”

Le Guern agrees: “I think we will move to a more focused role. One of the key elements of transformation is to better define the role of each member of our HR community and go deeper into an area of HR expertise. I’m convinced this will be a great evolution for HR: more focus and more rigour.”

As automation becomes more integrated, HR leaders will need to foster an environment of learning among their HR colleagues, so that utilising technologies that harness AI and ML becomes second nature.

“We need to make sure that we take our colleagues with us and educate them on the technology angle, because this is something I’ve seen in HR not being very developed,” says Schrank. According to a Workday survey, 42 percent of HR leaders reported that their team is not fully prepared for AI – the highest percentage of unpreparedness among all functions surveyed.