HR Insights
October 24, 2024

How HR can bring structure to AI confusion

HR teams are eager to use AI to enhance workforce performance, but they want to make the right choices for their organisation. Having a clear AI vision is essential for responsibly adopting new, transformative tech. 

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AI has the power to become an indispensable assistant in the workplace. The modern HR professional’s work does not need to consist of highly manual tasks and administrative repetition; it needs to drive towards even higher strategic importance and employee experience. But without a clear AI vision, it can be challenging for HR leaders to determine the right strategy for embracing advanced technologies and applying them to help create the time to solve more complex work tasks. 

We believe AI has the potential to forever change the way we work by responsibly transforming the employee experience and helping unlock your organisation’s potential. And we’re not the only ones. Nearly three quarters (72%) of surveyed American workers said they hope AI will allow them to do more of the work they enjoy by automating the tasks that they don’t, according to an online poll conducted for Dayforce by Harris Poll. When employees are free to focus on the most important and rewarding work, they can reach new heights of productivity, creativity, and fulfillment.  

While employees want AI, HR teams must act as stewards of thoughtful adoption for emerging technologies, helping ensure these tools are used ethically, and protecting data. Having a clear approach to AI strategy requires a plan for how and when these tools are used, controls in place to manage risk, and goals for the specific value that this new technology will generate for your people.  

Leveraging HR’s wealth of data 

HR holds the keys to workforce success, leading initiatives on employee engagement, career development, retention, and more. However, the ability to make real-time decisions is essential. Many HR teams are stuck with disparate legacy systems and manual processes that make it difficult to change course. 

Within their systems, HR leaders have a wealth of data to better understand how to enhance performance and empower their people at every step of their career journey. Some examples include:  
 

  • Measuring workplace energy levels on a company-wide or team-specific basis 
  • Recommending personalised career development plans focused on skills  
  • Empowering employee experiences with effective self-service and escalation 
  • Enabling Just-In-Time learning and development based on gaps, performance, or future path 
  • Setting predictive key performance indicators (KPIs) that enable proactive approaches to retention, development, and time-to-hire 

With this type of data as a single source of truth, HR leaders can unlock valuable insights to trigger real change. AI can help you cut through complexity, remove data analysis barriers, and proactively nudge information about your workforce into the right hands. 

Guiding ethical AI use 

As the gatekeepers of employee data, HR teams hold the responsibility of ethically using and protecting this highly sensitive data. Before implementing any type of AI that uses people data, your organisation should have a solid base of clean, secure, and private data.  

Just as importantly, organisations with clear HR vision should have a transparent plan for how their data is used. We’re focused on this permission-based approach of “AI by choice” and trustworthy innovation. With our AI Ethics Principles, we believe in a deliberate and responsible approach to AI and the foundation of data that powers our technology. Organisations should not be required to opt out of how their data is used and should continually strive for AI tools that are understandable and explainable.  

Before jumping on the AI bandwagon, leaders should consider “can, should, and how” AI could potentially help their HR teams and broader workforce.  

Maximising your people potential 

Consider what your people could be capable of with access to better information and less manual tasks. Fifty percent of respondents to Dayforce’s 2023 Pulse of Talent Report believe AI can improve their productivity at work, and 80% were interested in their employer using AI to recommend new internal career and skills development opportunities.  

AI can help organisations realise their people potential and work smoothly with employees to make their work lives better. When your people have an AI teammate to help automate routine, tedious operational tasks, this can increase their job satisfaction by giving them time back for more creative, strategic work. AI can assist your people by helping answer questions that HR hears repeatedly and enable them to make more informed decisions. At a more personalised level, AI can help provide career pathing that focuses on skills and completely reimagines the way organizations offer tailored learning and development programs.  

Key takeaways: Turning chaos into order 

AI has enormous potential to assist organizations with the right use cases and at the right times. What leaders should consider: 

Invest in your AI education 

It’s important to understand what AI is and what it isn’t. Take a few hours to increase your knowledge on YouTube, Coursera, LinkedIn, or your learning and development platform.  

Build your team 

Bring together subject matter experts, including your Chief Information Officer (CIO) and legal team, to develop AI principles. Your goal is to achieve “Privacy by Design” for your organization. 

Help increase AI literacy in your workforce 

Focus on educating your people on guidelines and core principles, including privacy and security.  

Generate ideas for better processes 

Create processes that support AI ideas by building a pipeline of input from employees to prioritize both simple and complex use cases. 

Track your success 

Not every idea and approach will make an impact. Measure the success of your different initiatives to help you focus on the most fruitful areas of your AI strategy.  

Now is the time for organizations to take a different approach to manage the boundless workforce and embrace the right technologies to transform how their people work. HR can transform how people work with the support of AI technology to help boost productivity by automating key tasks to free up time for strategic work, elevate job satisfaction by reimagining career pathing, and remove barriers to improve decision-making. Our focus is on trustworthy innovation that helps assist, automate, and augment your people’s performance and effectiveness at work.  

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