How AI and ML Technologies are Changing the Role of HR

The most common modern-day questions are: Why is the HR industry looking to adopt Artificial Intelligence (aka AI) technology? And Why are the organizations investing substantially in the HR functions handled by artificial intelligence? The sole reason for this drastic shift to artificial intelligence is to achieve automation that has thinking and judgment capacities similar to human beings. It induces high productivity, reduces operational costs, reduces business risk, and ultimately helps sustain AI in the competitive digital world.

Given its development through the past few years, it doesn’t look like AI is planning to leave anytime soon. This trend may come across as a little more nerve-wracking than exciting for the old-school HR professionals. This feeling can linger for a while before they start getting used to technology and view it as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Since approximately a decade, the human resource and recruitment world has evolved a lot. Thanks to various (and mostly) technological factors, the human resource department has drastically transformed from arranging the physical resume copies to absorbing technology in the recruitment process.

Every talent pioneer understands the urgency to start accepting the emerging technologies viz., artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, etc., to reinvent how the people work in the company and how they hire the talents. HR professionals believe that organizations must focus on building their employee strategies for productivity, collaboration, experience, work simplicity, and goal setting to bridge the gap. With AI and ML technologies, organizations can invent new processes or reinvent and transform the existing ones.

Effects of Artificial Intelligence in Human Resources

Artificial intelligence is a broad branch of computer science concerned with creating smart machines capable of performing activities that generally require human intelligence. AI is an interdisciplinary branch of science with multiple approaches, viz, machine learning and deep learning.

Artificial intelligence’s impact might not be visible immediately; however, one may discover the short and long-term benefits. If we talk about short-term benefits, artificial intelligence can significantly benefit the company in terms of better experiences, improved output quality, and enhanced accuracy. In terms of medium-term benefits, development can help in self-learning tasks, prediction analytics, and communication. As for long-term advantages, amplification can assist in decision making, automated tasks, and increase workforce productivity. 

Effects of Machine Learning in Human Resources

These days, the way people perceive the HR department is constantly changing. Before this, organizations linked human resources to find the right candidate, managing evaluation, giving offers, and managing the employee careers/ exits. Today, human resources need to step up to meet the employees’ and the organization’s rising expectations. The HR department is required to help the candidate succeed.

Machine learning refers to teaching the computers/ machines to recognize the patterns in the same way a human brain does. It is learning through examples and experience instead of the old-fashioned, hard-coded programming rules that help answer the questions.

Without machine learning, the HR department used to manage the data, either manually or semi-manually. HR must collect, store, and process the data to create analytics. All these operations need to be completed in a short period as the data would become irrelevant swiftly when the situation changes (which is very often), and the data would need an update.

How AI and ML Change the Role of HR in an Organization?

Besides all the other factors affected by AI and ML, the two major processes are screening and onboarding. Here’s how.

1. Screening

Numerous AI tools that engage the candidates before or after they apply for a position in the organization are available in the market. Companies observe their candidates by their interaction with the chatbot or AI tool. The AI can answer the employees’ FAQs while subtly gathering information about the candidate through feedback and input.

Machine learning can analyze the blog/ social media profiles and identify candidate skills that might not be evident in the resume. Recruiters can use machine learning to search for the right person for the vacancies proactively. ML uses software that finds internet sources prospects. The key benefits that ML brings are the experience and deep insight into candidates’ skills. Although their relationship status on Facebook or their food pictures on Instagram don’t correlate with the job performance, it is still useful to know their interests and the class of people they deal with.

2. Onboarding

Recruiting the employee is just the first step in the candidate’s journey in the organization. A good onboarding program can influence the recruit’s decision to stick in the organization or plan their exit after the first week. From an admin’s perspective, AI can free the HR employees from the onboarding tasks, which might take hours. AI can guide the employee 24*7 to ensure that they receive whatever help they need without blocking much time for HR personnel.

Machine learning disguised as a virtual assistant can take over the repetitive and routine tasks like employee onboarding. Technologies like chatbots free the HR from answering lengthy questions. They serve the employee any time by providing prompt, human-like accurate answers using the ‘intelligence.’ It may lack the warmth that an actual person gives. Still, in a world where COVID prevents people from getting anywhere between another person, this practice is highly appreciated.

Ending Notes

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have taken giant steps to cover the gap between people and data, and it has had a metamorphic effect on the field of human resources. But if you are an HR, you have no requirement to fear losing your job to a machine, not now, not in the future. It should not be ignored that AI can mimic people’s behavior, not replace them. Thus, it should be used in moderation when it comes to human resources. People have feelings, and AI and ML cannot always do justice to them. Many organizations have adopted the phrase ‘augmented intelligence,’ which refers to the belief that one cannot entirely replicate human capabilities through technology. Augmented intelligence motivates us to invent and integrate the technology to improve human capacity and not replace it.

Author bio:

Divyang Metaliya is a Business Consultant at FactoHR, an India based HR and Payroll Software solution provider. He is a creative business strategist with more than 8 years of experience. He loves to create content that is innovative and engaging for the readers.

DepositPhotos – machine learning

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