AI for HR: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Human Resources

Human resource management (HRM) involves hiring, developing, motivating, and supporting employees to help meet the company’s objectives. These activities can be taxing, with HR professionals reporting difficulty completing them. Fortunately, AI for HR is gaining ground and offers benefits that are hard to ignore. In this article, we look at how AI is transforming human resources. Specifically, we discuss the use cases of AI in HR, the benefits and challenges of adopting AI for HR, and the AI solutions tailored to meet the needs of HR professionals.

Role of AI for HR

A 2024 survey uncovered the major pain points of the human resources profession. Considering the accounts of 1,000 HR professionals across the U.S., the survey revealed that the role is often stressful and thankless. For context, 91% of the respondents reported difficulty completing their daily tasks due to increasing demands. 42% of them said they worked outside of regular business hours, while 28% felt overwhelmed by their workload and would need to outsource some of their tasks. The professionals said that on top of these challenges, recruitment and ongoing training overwhelmed the HR departments.

But many HR professionals are increasingly turning to AI to help handle the workload. According to the survey, 77% of them are of the opinion that AI training will enhance their roles. The survey also showed that 81% of HR professionals working in companies that have already adopted AI are using AI-driven tools to handle their daily tasks. A similar number say AI is helping automate routine tasks, allowing them to forge meaningful connections with employees. The result: AI empowers HR professionals to be more strategic and compassionate.

Uses of AI in HR

There are several domains where HR professionals can use AI tools. And as detailed below, each of these use cases includes a number of AI-supported activities.

1. Talent Acquisition

Talent acquisition involves identifying, attracting, screening, engaging, assessing, interviewing, and hiring candidates to fill specific roles within a company. Today, HR professionals and recruiters are using leading AI recruiter software like Promap to handle these activities. 

These AI-driven hiring tools can source candidates from LinkedIn, GitHub, and social media platforms. This way, they identify passive candidates, i.e., qualified candidates who had not applied. 

The tools then screen candidates, engage them through AI chatbots, create and administer skill assessments, conduct skill-based interviews or formulate relevant interview questions, generate follow-up emails, and onboard candidates. In addition, AI interview assistants help recruiters by suggesting follow-up questions and transcribing the interviews. 

2. Learning and Development

A 2024 AI in HR study by SHRM showed that 43% of HR professionals use AI to empower employees to grow their careers, upskill or reskill, and develop their knowledge and competency. Known as learning and development (L&D), this empowerment has been shown to improve work performance as well as workforce efficiency. But how exactly does AI for HR support L&D? Well, in the following ways:

• Identifying gaps in employee skills or knowledge to better inform future training programs
• Helping HR professionals create training and learning modules and outline new L&D programs
• Personalizing learning and development opportunities for each employee
• Monitoring employees’ progress at the different stages of their learning and development journey
• Measuring the effectiveness of the L&D programs
• Gamifying learning experiences
• Building content for the L&D programs

3. Performance Management

HR professionals are responsible for ensuring employees attain organizational goals. They do this by communicating with employees regularly and relaying details about their expectations and performance vis-à-vis their requirements. Known as performance management, this process can be augmented using AI. HR professionals can use AI tools to support the following performance management activities:

• Provide comprehensive feedback
• Help employees set performance-related goals
• Support employees as they prepare for performance reviews
• Analyze performance review data to identify trends in the results and potential biases in the evaluation metrics
• Generate reports from performance review data

4. AI-Driven Decision-Making

AI models power AI tools. These models can be trained on specific data to make situation-specific decisions and predictions. The AI technology for HR can also create scenarios and case studies that HR professionals can use to hone their decision-making skills. 

What’s more, AI for HR can play a supportive role. For instance, AI tools can summarize interviews, providing easy-to-read notes on candidates. They can also summarize employees’ respective performances. HR professionals can then rely on these summaries to make decisions.

When used in these three distinct ways, AI empowers HR professionals to make better decisions. AI solutions for HR management can be used during succession planning, to back promotion decisions, and to support firing or layoff decisions. These tools also help HR professionals anticipate changing talent needs and make decisions that keep their companies ahead of the curve.

5. Handling Administrative Tasks

AI tools excel at handling repetitive tasks. And in the context of human resources, AI for HR can handle the following administrative tasks:

• Generating and managing paperwork
• Scheduling meetings and interviews
• Sending messages and emails to employees, candidates, and new hires
• Answering questions during onboarding
• Monitoring compliance with training requirements
• Generating insightful reports on onboarding and recruitment trends

6. Content Generation and Writing

Generative AI, powered by large language models (LLMs), took the world by storm when in 2022 OpenAI released ChatGPT. It gave laypeople access to AI, enabling them to perform tasks that were previously only done manually. They would write a short prompt that generated text and whole articles. Using AI to generate content is still applicable today and in HRM. 

AI solutions for AI help professionals generate emails and training content. They can also generate video content and images. What’s more, recruiters use AI tools to write job descriptions that attract top talent.

Benefits and Challenges of Adopting AI for HR

Benefits of Using AI in HR

1. Improve HR Professional’s Well-Being

HR teams report that their role is often stressful, with many professionals reporting difficulties completing their daily tasks. They can nonetheless alleviate the stress levels by embracing AI for HR. With AI tools handling repetitive tasks that would have to be completed manually, HR teams end up having less on their plate.

2. Time-Savings

AI tools handle repetitive tasks, seamlessly source candidates from different platforms, and screen thousands of candidates relatively quickly. They, therefore, the time it would take humans to accomplish them. Promap, for instance, has cut down the hours spent on end-to-end recruiting by over 70%.

3. Reduce Hiring Costs

One outcome of reduced time-to-hire is the lower cost of the entire process. HR teams take less time identifying and recruiting candidates, meaning companies do not have to allocate massive resources, as would have been the case if the process were lengthy. For its part, Promap lowers the cost of end-to-end recruiting by up to 80%. 

4. Enhance the Overall Employee Experience

AI solutions for HR professionals free them to create lasting relationships with employees. HR teams that embrace AI technology for HR are able to address employee frustrations without worrying about how and when they will complete other administrative tasks—the result: better employee experiences.

5. Enable More Data-Driven Decision-Making

The AI tools can summarize large volumes of data and support data-driven decision-making. They ensure that HR teams do not have to manually review the data.

6. Increase the Effectiveness of Learning and Development Programs

AI-driven HR tools can personalize learning programs according to the employee’s needs and skills. They can also measure the effectiveness of such programs, identify gaps in employee skills and knowledge, and offer more immersive learning experiences. Overall, these interventions enhance the effectiveness of such programs.

7. Enhance Workforce Efficiency and Performance

AI for HR enhances workforce efficiency and performance in several ways. First, AI solutions for HR support learning and development, empowering employees with skills and knowledge to better execute their responsibilities. Second, by supporting performance management activities, AI for HR ensures that employees achieve organizational goals.

8. Reduce Bias

AI solutions for HR professionals help teams make data-driven decisions instead of relying on past practices that may be founded on bias and assumptions. 

9. Improve Diversity and Ability to Find Top Talent

AI for HR improves a company’s ability to find and hire top talent, including candidates from diverse backgrounds. AI tools source candidates from different sources and even reach out to candidates who may not have expressed interest in the job.

Challenges of Adopting AI in HR

1. Data security and privacy: About 40% of the HR professionals surveyed in the SHRM study expressed concerns about data security and privacy. These concerns stem from a lack of clarity and trust in how the AI tools use the data and whether their company data trains AI models. 
2. Resistance from employees and executive members: Some employees and managers may not fully back the use of AI for HR tasks. This may be due to concerns about AI exacerbating bias or AI being too robotic.
3. Lack of transparency: AI tools may not be forthcoming about how they make decisions.
4. Resource constraints to audit, retrain, or correct AI models: AI audits are necessary to prevent the AI tool from propagating biases or making unethical decisions. However, such audits require resources (labor, money, or both) that may not be readily available. 
5. AI bias: An AI tool powered by a model trained on biased data will propagate the inherent bias in the data. AI bias may cause the AI technology for HR to skip certain candidates, for example.
6. Insufficient data to train AI models: Companies that wish to use AI to complete specific tasks may not have enough data to train the AI models to perform such tasks.

AI Solutions for HR Teams

There are eight different AI solutions for HR professionals. While they offer different functionalities, these tools collectively and individually streamline HR activities, helping boost workforce performance and efficiency. These solutions include:

1. AI Interview Assistants

AI interview assistants help recruiters conduct interviews. For instance, Promap’s AI interview copilot, an AI interview assistant, takes notes during the interview, suggests follow-up questions, and uses proprietary technology to detect inconsistencies in the candidates’ responses.

2. AI Recruiters

An AI recruiter is an all-in-one AI solution for HR professionals. It intelligently sources candidates from different platforms, screens them based on their skills, administers assessments, and evaluates their performance. Leading AI recruiters include additional tools like an applicant tracking system (ATS), a candidate management system (CRM), and an AI-powered interview platform.

3. AI-Powered HR Software

HR platforms like Workable use AI and other intelligent tools to streamline hiring, manage employee data, and track payroll and time. Such tools comprise various systems, including an ATS, an HR information system (HRIS), a time and attendance system, and a hiring suite.

4. AI Scheduling Assistants

An AI scheduling tool helps HR professionals optimize their schedules. These assistants use AI to manage calendars, suggest the best times for meetings (and schedule these meetings once you approve the suggestions), and send out meeting invitations. They integrate with video conferencing platforms, calendars, and productivity tools.

5. Generative AI Tools

These tools generate content. Powered by LLMs, these generative AI tools produce content such as job descriptions, training material for L&D programs, emails, messages, and interview questions, just to mention a few.

6. AI Applicant Tracking Systems

An ATS intelligently tracks candidates. It monitors them from the moment they apply for a job through the entire recruiting process. This tool is also designed to use AI to evaluate and rank candidates.

7. AI-Powered Candidate Relationship Management Systems

AI-driven CRM tools enable HR professionals to foster lasting relationships with job candidates. They also act as a talent pool that recruiters can use to reach out to previous candidates whenever an opportunity arises. 

8. AI Chatbots

AI chatbots are a category of AI recruiting tools used for candidate engagement. These tools promptly respond to candidates’ queries, enhancing the overall candidate experience. These AI tools for HR can also screen candidates by asking certain customizable questions. They also schedule interviews.

Conclusion

AI for HR management significantly improves workforce efficiency and performance. HR professionals can leverage AI tools like interview assistants, scheduling assistants, AI recruiting software, AI-driven HR platforms, chatbots, and more to make their work easier. These tools handle repetitive tasks, freeing HR teams to focus on other core responsibilities like addressing employees’ frustrations. AI tools can also be used in performance management as well as creating and monitoring learning and development programs.

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