Eight in 10 organisations have so far failed to provide employees with training in artificial intelligence, according to a survey by Brightmine (formerly XpertHR).
It found that only a third of HR professionals felt they had grasped the full potential of AI tools, even though 35% had been involved in discussions with senior leaders on the adoption of the technology.
Despite this, HR teams have identified areas in which AI could be useful to them, including carrying out administrative or repetitive tasks (cited by 74%) and helping with data and analytics (59%).
A quarter had not been involved at all in senior leadership discussions about AI, despite the potential of the technology to impact employees’ jobs.
Scott Walker, Brightmine’s CEO, said the lack of awareness among HR teams was “alarming but understandable”.
“Generative AI has had a meteoric rise and there are huge amounts of noise surrounding it, but there is still a lot of demystification needed not just among HR professionals but across senior leadership teams,” he said.
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“Take AI which has the capacity to augment decisions and enhance efficiency within the HR department. There is a real danger if the knowledge isn’t there, HR will not be able to make full use of the benefits of this technology.”
Brightmine estimates that approximately one-fifth (20%) of HR’s time is spent on administration and a further 5% is spent on collecting or analysis of HR data, meaning there is an opportunity for AI to significantly reduce how much time HR professionals need to spend on these tasks.
Walker added: “Not only is technology changing the way organisations operate, but technology is also impacting every phase of the employment lifecycle, generating demands for new skills and impacting the way people work.
“As agents of change, HR leaders should be actively shaping and driving the transformation agenda. It is vital that HR teams develop capabilities in digital fluency and data literacy to take advantage of technology to increase efficiency and unlock business value to help their organisations stay relevant and profitable.”
Brightmine’s research comes as IBM’s 2024 CEO study suggests that almost two-thirds of organisations could be pushing the adoption of generative AI faster than people are comfortable with.
The study, which captures the views of CEOs in the UK and Ireland on how they are navigating AI, found that 64% felt they were pushing their organisation to move faster than some were happy with.
Sixty-three per cent said that succeeding with AI would depend more on people’s adoption of the technologies than the technology itself, and 59% said it was imperative for businesses to take advantage of technologies that change faster than people can adapt.
More than a third (37%) of CEOs said they planned to hire additional staff because of generative AI, and 35% said their workforce will require retraining and re-skilling over the next three years.
Earlier this month, investment bank JPMorgan announced it would give training in AI prompt engineering to all new employees, “to get them ready for the AI of the future”.
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