AI CAN ACTUALLY HELP YOU ENGAGE AND ACCELERATE YOUR WORKFORCE

Artificial Intelligence is not the future, it is already happening. And since Human Resources is the most complex, the most handcrafted and the most data-dependent internal business, it can benefit most from a technology that simulates human performance and behaviour and reimagines the employee experience by learning from our data.

By using AI, repetitive tasks can be eliminated or taken over by learning machines. Employee attrition is minimized and employee engagement maximized. AI-powered People Analytics provide data driven insights on shaping tomorrow’s organization. The recruitment process can be greatly accelerated. AI makes it possible to link job performance and competence management to the recruitment process, so their effectiveness can finally be measured.

AI can help you do all this and more. Still, it reacts faster than people in helping draw out the insights and inferences that might otherwise take reams of manpower or will not be uncovered at all. And on top of this, the algorithms in AI-applications train themselves to be smarter and smarter.

However, while AI is changing the way man and machine co-operate and we manage our work relations, many HR-professionals are reluctant to embrace this breakthrough technology.

This is partly due to a perception problem. Some feel algorithms can never replace human empathy and intuition. There are doubts about the availability and quality of data. And sceptics claim that AI can add nothing new to what we already know about the dynamics of the workforce. 

But this is the era of autonomous intelligence transforming the workplace. Man and data-driven algorithms are working closely together in neural networks. They are powered by data in the cloud and use big data techniques to analyse them. Because of these, to everyone available, new technologies, decision makers can have access to billions and billions of structured and unstructured data and to the capacity to process and storage them. New businesses and jobs are created, new competencies required, and above all, other workplace relationships rule.

The digital transformation is a force that crosses a wide range of disciplinary and organizational boundaries and requires a massive shift in thinking about how to execute and operate. And the HR-function, usually the last to go digital, cannot - and may not – turn its back to this development.

AI forces HR to rethink its added value and licence to operate. The judgment calls of the human professionals are, and always will be, decisive in workforce management. But you need AI as one of the enabling new technologies to provide you with more time, more budget, more capacity, and better information to do so. 

So, the question here is not whether AI is a threat to HR. No, it is whether HR embraces the capabilities of AI in time to claim its new role in a more and more digitalized workplace. If you do, you have a powerful instrument on your hands to gain influence, boost information and collect efficiency gains.

According to research, 40 percent of the HR-functions of international companies are currently using AI-applications. Most of them in the US, companies in Europe and Asia are still trailing behind. Seen the outcome of PwC’s latest CEO Survey (edition 2017) things are about to change. More and more business leaders see the value of autonomous learning software supporting the management of human relations.

50 percent will invest in data analytics to find and develop talents and keep people loyal to their organizations. 39 percent is considering the impact of AI-applications on future skill needs. And: 69 percent of the CEO’s is re-thinking the role of their human resources department. 

Robert Charlier, Partner within PwC People and Organisation

Sander Kloppenburg, Lead People Analytics within PwC People and Organisation