As developments in AI accelerate at a breakneck pace, there are many ways HR teams can embrace its features to not just make their work more efficient, but empower managers and engage employees, says Stan Massueras.Â
Imagine a future where engagement is heightened, compensation is fair, people programmes are always impactful and teams are consistently high performing.
Could the AI revolution mean this has already begun? The latest release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, ChatGPT-4o, is just the latest development proving that we’re moving at pace towards AI 2.0.
Maybe you’re currently wasting precious time imagining the AI opportunity and trying to work out how it can be successfully integrated into your HR strategy. Or maybe you’re still struggling with the niggling fear that AI is a threat rather than a tool.
Meanwhile others – the 15% of HR teams that have implemented AI, according to Lattice’s research – are realising genuine first-mover advantage and innovating faster than even AI’s originators believed possible.
Beyond efficiency
Today’s organisations are being asked to do more, often with less. Our 2024 State of People Strategy Report highlighted that 62% of HR teams report flat or decreasing budgets, despite increased pressure to perform.
It’s therefore not surprising that three-quarters of HR professionals are actively considering how they can implement AI to make their organisations more effective.
HR and AI adoption
This is great news. HR teams are overcoming the fear that AI is a threat to job security and instead realising they have a lot to gain by putting it to work in ways that can actually contribute to their confidence – automating repetitive tasks and allowing them to focus on the more strategic, high-value aspects of their role.
But let’s be honest – that’s just tech for tech’s sake. AI is about so much more than simple efficiency and productivity gains.
AI 2.0 is about making the employee experience more human, by fundamentally embracing its capabilities and genuine benefits for people teams.
AI can have a transformative effect on HR teams, employees and, most of all, managers.
When HR teams start truly understanding and embracing the AI opportunity and have data-driven tools to augment and improve decision making, not only will they elevate their own work, but also their entire organisation in the process.
Empowering managers
A new era of work requires a next-generation approach to how we enable managers.
They are the critical piece of the performance puzzle and a company’s greatest point of leverage – thanks to their ability to motivate, inspire and retain talented employees.
But being a manager is hard. Just like HR teams, they are trying to do more with less and struggling with more responsibility than they can handle.
Companies and HR need to get in the manager’s corner. Removing the need to do rote work and allowing for more focus on the strategic, impactful and stimulating aspects of the management role is paramount.
The good news is that AI is already playing a crucial role in augmenting manager effectiveness and enabling greater impact.
It equips them with the insights and knowledge they need to better understand individual strengths, aspirations and challenges and guides each team member to success.
It also unburdens them from the high-load tasks that all too often hold managers back and bog them down with onerous admin.
For HR teams, augmenting managers with AI can be the biggest lever to accelerate growth, innovation and performance. Think of it as a manager co-pilot, or career assistant, delivering:
- Actionable engagement insights gathered from survey results and feedback in a matter of seconds, as well as key drivers and trend analysis to quickly initiate positive change.
- Performance summarisation and recency bias checking (ie. the tools do not favour more recent events over historical ones), so that performance reviews are based on goals, feedback and growth aspirations across an entire review period.
- Personalised growth plans generated to guide every employee’s growth in line with wider business goals.
- Team health checks that enable managers to make changes before things go awry with real-time insights that improve participation and reduce attrition.
Employee journey
AI has a crucial role to play at every stage of the employee journey. From hiring and onboarding, it can produce detailed insights on how to fill gaps in team capabilities and AI-generated onboarding videos customised for each new joiner to make them feel welcome and provide a more human experience from day one. To the automation of routine tasks that ensure HR teams are at all times laser focussed on the strategic, high-impact activities that directly contribute to employee satisfaction and organisational success.
AI is already playing a crucial role in augmenting manager effectiveness and enabling greater impact
For example, AI-driven tools can help clarify and align employee goals, reduce friction and foster a productive work environment. They can also enhance employee listening and engagement.
Traditional engagement surveys, that all too often leave employees feeling unheard and fail to result in meaningful change, can be resigned to the past and instead a more nuanced and continuous active listening strategy can be developed that genuinely and continuously addresses employees’ needs and concerns.
It’s not even far-fetched to imagine what life would be like if employees could simply ask their workplace AI how to get promoted and instantly receive a tailored response based on their performance, their experience and the business needs and goals.
Every aspect of HR can gain immediate value from AI, as well as it being a force for good in the workplace. Far from losing what’s human about work, AI can make the employee experience more human than ever.
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