Here's How Consumerization of AI and VR Could Transform HR Management Traditionally, tech was employed in automating HR processes and functions, often overlooking its end user – the employee. Things are set to change...
By Pallavi Jha
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Employee Experience is a 21st century reality that no organization, big or small, can escape. But it is a concept that has been forced to be reinvented time and again because of the changing nature of workplace, technology and the shifting definition of an "employee'.
Today, many employees are working from remote locations, or are project based and contractual or are simply not human! How then, can organizations uniformly extend an employee experience aligned with their employer brand and culture?
The Consumerization of Artificial Intelligence in HR is addressing questions such as these and much more. Traditionally, technology has been employed and encouraged in automating HR processes and functions, often overlooking its end user – the employee.
From HR Tasks to Holistic Employee Management
While the key HR tasks that benefit from Artificial Intelligence are mostly related to deciphering employees' data to help detect anomalies, predict attrition patterns, verify background and personalize content, these efficiency improvements may have little if any effect on the employee experience. But AI is soon transgressing into every part of human capital management, breaking the glass ceiling for the reach of AI in people strategy.
As technology gets smarter and helps in solving more complex cognitive tasks, organizations will holistically adopt deep learning to understand the employees better and provide personalized experiences at the workplace.
Personalize Employee Experience
Soon, chatbots are going to be your tea-time buddies with whom you can discuss career aspirations, learning choices and salary expectations too. Advanced technology like speech recognition is getting savvier due to deep learning and will soon be able to comprehend accents and mimic human voice effectively, making it easier to adapt in functions such as HR. Natural Language Programming is making it possible to extract data from speech, draw data-driven text to provide insights, which in turn increases the accuracy of these insights in a big way.
Imagine having a "google-like' support to find any information you need in office! AI will enable personalization in every experiential facet of an employee's lifecycle. And soon, it will be up for grabs! It's only a matter of time before AI becomes mainstream and easily accessible for organizations of all sizes.
Imagine this. You are ushered into your office through a fingerprint or iris scan. Your preferences for light and temperature are pre-fed into the system. You are welcomed with your drink of choice and even your internal software opens up a dashboard full of your most-worked on projects. That day is not far and is a living reality for many employees across the globe already!
Leave it to the Robots
Eventually, organizations will be able to wash their hands off the dirty jobs of firing employees, dealing with emotional upheavals at work and address sensitive topics because your friendly neighbourhood robot will take care of it!
We are living in a world where there's an app to perform almost every task that normally humans are responsible for. Typically, organizations have been slow to adopt AI in HR function, especially small and mid-sized companies. But the rapid expansion of AI across the industry has fuelled its entry into HR too. In fact, Artificial Intelligence is transforming almost every touchpoint in Human resources ranging from recruitment, talent retention, employee engagement and learning & development too. Technology has helped in making this function agile, enabling leaders to make quick data driven decisions.
As most repetitive and analytical tasks in HR become the purview of machines, HR leaders can spend time having qualitative conversations with employees. While AI has the ability to cut any human biases and inconsistencies in HR, it might not have the extent of emotional intelligence and empathy that a human can offer.
The Future of HR
Many would argue that Artificial Intelligence is actually contributing towards humanizing HR. It is making the function more employee centric and giving personalized solutions for complex concepts such as employee engagement and experience.
The Dale Carnegie whitepaper on Success in the Era of AI reveals that over 62% of employees are ok with being appraised by robots if they are aware of the appraisal criterion. The whitepaper further states that 70% of employees feel alright about shedding some of their repetitive tasks to their machine buddies.
AI is going to fuel the consumerization of HR and make HR products more employee centric and easily accessible. Having said that, achieving the full potential of AI depends on a successful partnership between humans and machines
