CIPD chief executive Peter Cheese has called for HR professionals to find their role in building ‘responsible’ business amid geopolitical and economic uncertainty.
Introducing the HR body’s annual conference and exhibition (ACE) in Manchester, he asked: “How do we create organisations that are able to respond in an uncertain world?”
Cheese pointed to challenges facing HR teams such as rapidly changing job roles and the skills needed for them, the impact of and ethical use of artificial intelligence, and how the profession engages with government and unions on new developments such as the Employment Rights Bill.
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“There will be more focus on fundamental and core skills such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence and the ability to collaborate,” he said.
“AI will impact the work we do on an accelerating basis so we must make sure the jobs we create from it are good for people, that we derive them from the principles of good work.
“We need to think about how we engage with technology to shape good jobs for the future, that work is human-centred, that we get the best out of our people as well as technology.”
He pointed out that the CIPD had been involved in discussions with the new Labour government on aspects of the Employment Rights Bill, acknowledging that while there were many “themes close to our heart”, some aspects of its implementation would be complex, such as day-one rights.
Delivering the keynote at this year’s ACE, Professor Michael Wooldridge, professor of computer science at the University of Oxford and director of foundational AI research at the Alan Turing Institute, echoed Cheese’s thoughts on the need for employers to take an objective view of the role of AI in the workplace.
“For most of us, we’ll find that generative AI is just another tool in our working lives like we use browsers or computers. But productivity is a sweet spot for AI, and we have a productivity problem,” he said.
For example, HR could use AI effectively to mine insights from unstructured data such as policies and minutes from meetings.
But because there are risks with the reliability of AI, such as offering the most plausible rather than the correct response to a question, he urged the audience to use “the AI version of critical thinking”, learning how to question the responses produced by AI tools.
This, he explained, involves learning how to question the responses produced by AI tools. “If you ask it a question and it says yes, do you know why? This is the single most important skill, not treating AI as if it’s a superbrain that knows all the answers.”
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