AI in HR: The C-Suite Perspective of Innovation and Impact
The Society for People Analytics (SPA) recently hosted our February webinar. Held on Wednesday, February 19th - AI in HR: The C-Suite Perspective of Innovation and Impact featured 5 panelist who shared their perspective on AI and HR.
Introductions
The panel kicked off with each panelist introducing themselves and describing how they’ve recently used AI in the workplace.
Tristan Hack, Director, People Analytics, iHeartMedia: He has recently used AI to refine ideas, generate new ideas, and expand creativity. He also just used it to create illustrations for a children’s book he is writing.
Dr. Reece Akhtar, Co-Founder and CEO, Deeper Signals: He uses ChatGPT for everything from drafting documents to writing emails to helping him write codes.
Dr. Shonna Waters, Co-Founder and CEO, Fractional Insights: She recently used AI as a meeting note taker, to summarize notes, and to revise proposals. She views AI as a valuable time saver and thought partner and also uses it to understand how others might perceive something.
Adriana Bokel Herde, Chief People Officer, Risepoint: She is one of two functions leading the AI implementation at Risepoint. One of her official goals for this year is to have a people function AI strategy. She recently used AI to think through designing leadership competencies for different employee levels.
Dawn Burgess, Director, People Analytics and Employee Listening, First Citizen Bank: Professionally, her organization is currently conducting a pilot using Pulse AI to do sentiment analysis, text analysis, and meeting note consolidation. Personally, she uses AI to help her with emails, performance evaluations, and language translations.
Historical Perspectives on AI in HR
The panel emphasized the importance of viewing new trends through a historical lens. Disruptive technologies, such as blockchain or the metaverse, were initially overestimated in terms of their impact. The same applies to AI, where its true impact on organizations remains uncertain and emerging. Organizations should embrace innovation while focusing on people-centric aspects like leadership and culture. HR's maturity in AI adoption varies, with some organizations quick to adopt AI and others needing to improve data quality and performance management. Dr. Reece Akhtar encourages organizations to remain open to AI, explore new tools, see how they work, and ultimately experiment. Dr. Shonna Waters shared HR can play a useful role in helping organizations think through how to design work with AI in mind. She encouraged organizations to consider “how is work getting done when humans aren't the only way?” and “What criteria matters?”
Balancing Speed and Readiness
In considering implementing AI, HR teams must align their ideas and aspirations with the business's readiness. Assessing the company's current state and future direction before implementing AI is essential. Tristan Hack advises organizations to not go to fast. He encourages organizations to assess where they are today, where the company is headed in the future, and then consider what is realistically feasible to implement. Panelists also encouraged focusing on quick wins that demonstrate value can build excitement for AI within the organization.
Leveraging AI for Employee Experience and DE&I
Dr. Reece Akhtar pointed out AI has the potential to counter human bias in decision making at work. This would ultimately make hiring and promotion processes more transparent and equitable. AI can also enhance the employee experience by helping people understand themselves and each other better. Generative AI can turn assessment and people analytics data into qualitative, easy-to-understand insights, impacting personal development, team engagement, and organizational culture.
Designing HR processes and communication with an employee-centric approach is also crucial. We should also be mindful of research that shows increased use of AI is associated with greater loneliness
Balancing Job Competence, Job Experience, and Working With AI
One perspective is that we need to focus on designing AI solutions with the human experience in mind. Early stages of AI implementation in HR show confusion around what AI can do, such as differentiating between various forms of AI like ChatGPT. It's crucial to have high-quality information to ensure AI tools provide accurate and helpful responses. Dr. Shonna Waters shared the same principles that apply to getting the best of employees in the workplace apply to AI. To get the most out of AI, we will need to be really clear about the role you want AI to play, provide the right context, and provide clear success criteria. Adrianna Bokel Herde, advises organizations to maintain a focus on what you are wanting to use AI to do and how it will impact the end user. She encourages HR to always remember who they are designing for and optimize for the HR function, employees, people managers, and those on the receiving end. Dawn Burgess agreed with Adriana and recommended keeping the employee experience in view as AI is being integrated into work. She shared AI needs to be embedded in such a way that it feels organic and seamless so employees actually use it. Per Dawn, AI should feel very organic and embedded in the things that employees are doing so that they're not even aware that they're truly utilizing AI
People Analytics and AI Solutions
People analytics teams play a crucial role in leveraging AI to solve human problems. Serving stakeholders and providing answers with AI solutions can demonstrate AI's value. Numerous tech partners and solutions enhance people analytics. Navigating the space mindfully, considering costs, and ensuring chosen solutions address organizational needs is essential. Showing how AI can solve human problems can excite people about its potential.
Panelists' Perspectives: Excitement and Concerns
The webinar concluded with panelists sharing their excitement and concerns about AI in HR. Excitement revolved around AI's potential to accelerate decision-making, enhance employee experiences, and enable better data-driven strategies. Concerns centered on ethical considerations, data privacy, and the need for critical thinking to avoid short-sighted adoption.
Tristan Hack shared he is excited about AI helping us make better decisions, auditing our brains, and challenging the way that we look at things. Dawn shared that she is excited about multimodal inputs and having AI tools help us see, hear, and provide a lot of data, feedback, and pattern recognition. She believes it can supercharge our decision-making. Adrianna shared that while she worries about the data we enter into AI and how it is used, she is excited about the possibility for people to be able to shine and do even a better job than they do in their jobs today.
Conclusion: An Era of Experimentation
HR is in an era of experimentation with AI. Practitioners are encouraged to pilot and iterate on solutions before committing to long-term contracts. Playing with AI, learning from experiments, and gradually embedding AI into HR practices are key to enhancing organizational success.
One thought to leave you with: If you could apply everything you know today about AI to the start of the internet era, what would you do differently? Take that answer and apply it to the AI era. The future is already here, and it's time to embrace it.
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