by Lacey Partipilo and Brandon Laws
There’s been a lot of excitement lately around the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in business. Smaller businesses especially have begun relying on AI tools for tasks they don’t have the staff to cover. For example, if a company has been sending eerily persistent follow up emails, chances are it’s the work of an AI assistant.
As of this writing, the most popular tool is Chat GPT, a “natural language processing tool driven by AI technology”. Chat GPT, like many of its contemporaries (and competitors) can have full conversations with people, allowing it to “learn” from these interactions and evolve. It can also be used to assist its human counterparts in a variety of tasks.
For businesses too small to have their own onsite HR department, the ever-increasing proficiency of AI tools might make it tempting to use it for some HR related tasks. But can AI really fill the human shoes of an HR professional?
What kinds of things can AI do?
The number of tasks that an AI program is capable of performing is actually very impressive. AI tools can be used to solve complicated math problems, compile summaries or outlines based on transcripts, identify themes in collections of raw data, and check for and fix errors in lines of code. However, it takes more than just a data dump to produce results.
Once you’ve entered the data you want to use, you’ll also have to provide a prompt of what result you’re looking for; perhaps you ask it to solve a math equation. But, the better and more detailed the prompts you provide, the better the resulting product. Expertise in prompting AI is quickly becoming one of the most important and needed skill sets in business.
Once you’ve mastered the art of engineering and perfecting your prompts, AI can drastically cut back hours of time-consuming prep work and increase your productivity.
The up side to using AI for HR.
Since it can be prompted to create almost any document, there are definitely some advantages to using AI technology to help with your HR needs. It can be used to:
- Craft job descriptions
- Create employee handbooks
- Write policies and procedures
- Compile interview or survey questions
At this stage of the game, these are usually “first drafts.” They’re documents which still need edited and shaped to your specific circumstances and your company’s culture and voice. And in the case of HR, there are often documents which need to be reviewed for compliance issues, but they do give you an incredible head start.
There are also AI tools being deployed to monitor employee performance and engagement. Again, they aren’t perfect and need a human touch to interpret the data, but they do create powerful layers of visibility into performance metrics.
Particularly for small businesses, AI takes care of a lot of work that your limited team doesn’t otherwise have the time or resources to do. But could you use AI technology in lieu of outsourcing your HR needs altogether?
The dark side of AI for HR.
No matter how much help AI can be, relying solely on technology to fulfill your company’s needs is a recipe for disaster.
- AI can’t replace experience- On the surface, HR processes can seem very black and white. The whole point is to make sure that everyone is adhering to established rules and policies, right? However, like everything in life, HR operations require nuance.
No single person or situation is the same. Navigating human resources is complex, and automated AI responses can’t replace the ability to read a situation and react according to individual needs. Only years of experience can teach that.
- There’s a lack of critical thinking- While it is astounding what AI programs can create, it’s no substitute for critical thinking. AI-crafted job descriptions could contain unintentionally discriminatory language or exclude key requirements.
AI creations can be a great jumping off point, but should always be reviewed and edited by a qualified professional.
- There are no sources- In many tools, AI does not cite sources when creating content, leaving users at risk of using plagiarized materials or information from unreliable sources.
- Potential inaccuracies- Many may not realize that the training for Chat GPT was done back in 2019, meaning much of the programmed information is no longer accurate. HR laws change fairly often, and it’s imperative to work with professionals who are tracking the most recent developments.
- The risk of biases- But how can a non-human be biased? Even though AI is not a person, it’s created and programmed by people. The engineers who created these programs possess unconscious biases that find their way into the programming.
Additionally, AI “learns” by the information that users enter into it, millions of users who also have their own set of conscious or unconscious biases.
A particular HR use case where this could come into play is the use of HR for screening resume submissions. Since AI uses historical data from your organization, it could start to identify past hiring patterns and treat them as requirements. If your company has historically hired more people of one gender or ethnicity than another, AI programs may begin to exclude anyone that doesn’t fit those criteria from future searches, which is definitely not what you want.
You shouldn’t have to navigate the use of AI in HR on your own.
As time goes on, AI technology is bound to become more ubiquitous across all industries and software platforms, and that’s not a bad thing. There is so much valuable time to be saved by taking advantage of these tools, but they will never truly replace a trusted HR professional.
At Xenium, we’re working to stay on the cutting edge of how AI can best be used to enhance HR practices. Rather than navigate this wild, new frontier on your own, you can do it alongside our team of experts who have dedicated their time to solving the riddles HR presents.
It takes a combination of resources and expertise to develop new strategies for technology like AI. We’re able to combine our knowledge of compliance and best practices in HR with a passion for innovation in our search for the best pathways forward.
Schedule a call here to learn how Xenium’s Complete HR + Payroll partners with your business to solve the most complicated HR, payroll, and benefits challenges facing your business.
Our team of more than 80 experts transforms the human resources experience for both you and the people under your care, relieving you of the burden of keeping up with constant change and empowering you to focus on business growth.