HR teams can't seem to catch a break between tackling a year of layoffs, limited budgets and new compliance challenges. And while new
According to hiring management platform Greenhouse, 80% of HR professionals have used or are considering using generative AI in their hiring processes, with 62% believing the technology will help them choose the best candidate. However, New York City's
If HR teams want to take advantage of AI, they need boundaries, says Carrie Cherveny, senior vice president of client strategic solutions and chief compliance officer of the U.S. south Region for insurance broker Hub International. She reminds HR teams that while they may have used automated tools, today's AI is a different beast.
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"We've seen AI in HR practices and processes for as long as we have had applicant tracking [platforms] like Monster.com," says Cherveny. "Where we saw AI first appear in the world of HR was around managing volumes of resumes and building out algorithms that sort and filter. But in the last few years, we've seen an enhancement, sophistication and expansion of those tools."
Newer platforms like
Jorbin and Cherveny agree that HR teams should utilize AI, but it's not as easy as plugging a question in ChatGPT or telling an automated tool to narrow down applicants. EBN spoke with Cherveny and Jorbin to gain a clearer picture of what the future of AI has in store for the HR industry.
From what you have noticed with your clients, what is the current relationship between HR and AI?
Jorbin: Larger employers, at least in my experience, are using AI a little bit more than some of the smaller employers. Although, some of the smaller employers, if they had the time and capacity to [integrate] it, could probably benefit from it a little bit more than large employers. From a compliance perspective, HR teams use AI to answer certain questions and even make a quick version of [workplace] policies they might need.
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Cherveny: In my experience, I don't see AI dominating HR practices. HR people generally, as a group and as a culture, take the human part of their job very seriously. Being connected to employees, being in touch with the workplace, being close to the culture, especially through and after COVID, has been an uphill battle. A lot of HR people don't like the idea of intentionally creating distance between themselves and the people when they fought so hard to avoid that distance.
What boundaries should HR maintain with AI if they do want to utilize it more in their practices?
Cherveny: The rule of thumb is you have to keep the human in human resources. For example, when we had vaccine mandates, many employers were struggling to deal with requests for accommodations under the American Disabilities Act. So, an insurance carrier that specializes in disability benefits created an algorithm and an AI engine based on questions and prompts that you would provide to an employee to help HR determine whether or not that individual was entitled to an accommodation and could avoid the vaccine. It was five or eight questions for the individual employee, and then the system would provide an answer to human resources. That freaked me out.
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I told the [carrier] that this process requires an individualized assessment. It requires somebody to review the facts and circumstances, and you can't rely on technology to come up with a conclusion — you can use it as a screening tool, and then HR can review it and make an independent, individualized assessment on a case-by-case basis.
Ultimately, AI is a tool, but it is not the sole approach or the final answer. You've got to have a human being overseeing and interacting with the AI and making final determinations.
How can AI transform the way HR teams work for the better?
Jorbin: AI will allow HR to leverage their own data to really understand their populations and who their employees are. This has become more important since COVID, with more and more employers becoming multi-state employers, and this remains important for larger employers with diverse and spread-out populations.
Cherveny: HUB has a tool that coalesces all kinds of data from our clients — we can identify where employees are physically located, their ages and demographics, and then apply that knowledge to make better decisions for our clients. On the heels of COVID, we had employees pick up and move all over the country. Now we can actually build a dashboard with all of this data, identify where these employees are and look at the state laws, like leave requirements, so employers can be sure that their handbooks are up to date.
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Jorbin: It's about understanding what the technology can do and how to use it, but it's also about having the skills to understand if AI is giving you the correct information. A tool like ChatGPT sounds very competent in the information it's presenting, but the problem is that the information might not be accounting for the different practical circumstances and all the other variables.
AI is something you have to use to understand. It is going to be something that students learn about, and then they are going to bring it to the workplace. And ultimately, this could make many of our jobs easier. And if our jobs are easier, then we're able to focus on higher-level work that AI is not able to step in and really assist with.
