AI and HR: Enhancing the human experience

If AI and HR work effectively together, they can enrich the employee experience rather than automating out human interaction or replacing human workers.  

In this blog

AI and HR: More efficiency, better experiences

The future outlook for AI and HR

Conclusion and key takeaways

AI and HR: More efficiency, better experiences

This is because the technology helps boost efficiency by handling the routine, transactional aspects of HR work. The result is to free up practitioners’ time to do what they do best: connect with employees, understand their needs, and provide the support they require to thrive. This, in turn, enhances the employee experience, boosting engagement and productivity levels in the process. 

There are four key areas where it’s possible to see the practical benefits of deploying AI in HR today: 

1. Streamline and automate administrative tasks 

Most HR professionals spend more time on repetitive, manual tasks than they would like. For instance, processing leave requests or managing payroll calculations can be laborious and time-consuming.  

But automating these processes saves time and effort while enhancing employee experience too. Here are various AI applications that can make a big difference and examples of how they can help: 

• Content generation. AI HR software can draft job adverts on behalf of professionals using the company’s tone and standard job description structure. It can also create letters, contracts, summaries, and management reports. 

• 24/7 assistant. These tools can send relevant alerts to HR professionals, such as which employees have outstanding holiday entitlement for the year and how much they have left. 

• Workflow and agents. This functionality provides line managers with the insights they need to run their teams smoothly. For example, they can use the system to book employee sick leave, and it will notify the payroll department accordingly. 

• Company knowledge retrieval. Provides employees with enhanced self-service capabilities. This includes navigating company policies and handbooks or dealing with help and support issues. For instance, if an employee loses their security pass, they can report it in the system and post a query asking what to do. 

Automating these kinds of processes using AI enables practitioners to focus on more strategic activities. These include resolving conflict, building stronger workplace communities, and fostering a more inclusive culture. 

2. Enhance recruitment 

AI can make recruiters more efficient and effective by: 

• Screening CVs to identify promising job candidates 

• Scheduling interviews and managing communications 

• Analysing how job seekers interact with the organisation to enhance the overall hiring process. 

Management consultancy McKinsey cites a major automotive company that introduced a generative AI-based avatar into its recruitment process to provide each job applicant with personalised feedback. By deploying AI in these ways, HR professionals have more time to build positive relationships with candidates, assess their cultural fit, and make important judgement calls.  

3. Improve payroll processing 

AI-based systems enable employers to automate repetitive payroll tasks. This includes undertaking complex calculations, tax deductions, and compliance checks.  

Intelligent anomaly detection, addresses errors and incongruities as soon as they arise. Intelligent data input functionality quickly scans information from HR forms and documents, automatically entering it into employee records. 

This kind of approach increases accuracy, boosts the speed of payroll runs and ensures regulatory compliance. It also means payroll professionals can focus on tackling issues that make a difference in employee experience and engagement terms. These include addressing compensation-related matters and explaining benefits.  

Just as valuable here are AI-based interactive payslips. These explain every element of an employee’s payslip to them, which includes net versus gross pay and tax codes. This helps to boost employee financial wellbeing and, in turn, productivity. 

4. Support employee development 

One of the most exciting applications of AI and HR is personalised employee learning and development. The technology can analyse data, such as skills gaps, performance patterns, and career trajectories, to suggest tailored development opportunities for each worker.  

HR professionals can subsequently use these insights to hold meaningful career development conversations. For example, the HR system might flag up that a particular employee would benefit from leadership training. Next, HR and the individual’s line manager could discuss their aspirations with them. These insights could then be used to craft a development plan that aligns both with the employee’s personal goals and the organisation’s needs.  

The future outlook for AI and HR 

According to Gartner, between June 2023 and January 2024, the number of HR leaders conducting AI pilots and implementations doubled. The most common use cases here included employee-facing chatbots, automating admin tasks, rewriting job descriptions and analysing skills data. 

Certainly, Gartner and McKinsey believe the technology will bring about significant change within the HR function over the next few years. For example, McKinsey estimates that using generative AI alone, HR professionals will spend between 60% and 70% less time on automated admin work. This will free them up to focus on “important human-to-human interactions”, generating a “massive cost efficiency factor for the HR function”. 

Conclusion: AI in HR is good news for all 

The main narrative around AI in the workplace has to date been about job losses and robots replacing humans. But in fact, AI’s ability to handle routine tasks enhances rather than replaces human activities by boosting efficiency.  

As a result, HR professionals are freed up to focus on the more strategic human-focused interactions that matter, enhancing employee experience in the process. In other words, the future of HR is clearly one based on human-AI collaboration. 

Key takeaways

• AI helps boost efficiency by handling the routine, transactional aspects of HR work.
• Automating routine, repetitive tasks frees up HR practitioners’ time to focus on more strategic activities, which in turn boost employee engagement and productivity.
• AI is already generating benefits in four key areas: automating admin tasks, supporting recruitment, payroll processing, and supporting employee development. 
• The most common AI use cases are employee-facing chatbots, automating admin tasks, rewriting job descriptions, and analysing skills data. 

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