Mankind has incessantly pursued speed, accuracy, and efficacy in its problem-solving endeavors by inventing tools, machines, and more recently – artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning processes.
What Exactly Is AI?
In its simplest form, AI is a computer system that performs tasks that otherwise needs human intelligence. It is a controlled imitation of human intellect and decision-making skills. In most cases, AI uses a programmed set of algorithms to guide the machine and produce results as a human would.
You May Wonder Where AI Fits With HR?
HR teams are constantly struggling to keep up with shifting workforce requirements, in an increasingly competitive talent environment. Essentially the workforce planning at its core stays the same – taking stock of the resources at hand, identifying the competencies required for the future, and then filling the skill gaps.
What AI Has Radically Changed Is The “How” Of These Processes
In the past decade, there has been a sea-change in the implementation of HR planning strategies. The significant leap has been the strategic shift from the mere number of resources to the focus on skills.
Consequently, the HR teams have now become responsible for maintaining headcount inventory, besides mapping competencies and proficiency matrixes for each resource. This is a highly manhour-intensive long process that involves multiple departmental touch-points. It remains a laborious undertaking that is plagued by the far-reaching drawback of information redundancy. Hence, by the time a report is published, its usability generally becomes a crippling disadvantage. The complexity of the data, the ambiguity of information, and the long duration of manual processes usually render irrelevant insight, particularly when a business is continuously evolving and is in the need of quick decisions.
AI Addresses This Challenge Effectively
AI tends to match employees’ historical skill data with vacant positions by analyzing the existing skill inventory. It goes a step further and in its “artificial mind” connects the dots among the employees’ desired work areas, proficiency levels, and performance in their previously performed roles and experience. This empowers the hiring managers with handpicked candidates, internal or outsourced, to fill the skill gap faster. The notable transition takes place from an intuitive and manual approach to a data-driven approach, which allows for eliminating the unconscious biases humans accumulate over time. An employee also gets better access and greater visibility to a broader kitty of projects and openings within the organization. These are the missed opportunities that in the past were not available due to mismatches, poor networking, or just not being on the radar of a recruiter or hiring manager. This ingress to relevant opportunities enhances employee engagement and retention in the long run.
The resultant throughput of an AI-supported HR application sorting mechanism is a notch higher in reliability compared to that of its human peers. With a well-thought-out and planned articulation of algorithms, AI can construe multi-level data points regarding job families, domains, industries, and competencies to present unexplored, but welcoming findings from existing talent pools.
A talent acquisition team reports a marked reduction in the time to fill roles. The team further adds value by moving from a generic gap-filling approach to a more personalized approach, involving competency mapping and vacancy fulfilling.
AI can create clear pictures proactively where pre-programmed reports can:
- Suggest internal transition opportunities
- Indicate roles that are fit for outsourcing, consulting for cost-effectiveness and quality of output
- Raise timely warning bells of potential outgoing skills
- Predict redundant skills which need to be re-skilled or retrenched
All of this information and analysis converge towards the ultimate goal of accurately forecasting the competency needs of the future and on the process of how to fulfill that need. The role of the human factor cannot be side-lined in any AI effort all the more in an HR strategy. Why?
It is the people-run HR and finance teams who deliberate and dictate the variables and logic that go into an algorithm.
Instead of depending on seasoned employees’ gut-feeling, network, and experience to search, the HR team has the machine suggest avenues to source the requisite skill. It calibrates the software and produces increasingly appropriate and accurate results over time. The AI-enabled application is in charge of “suggesting” which then are reviewed by a talent team for either pursuing or rejecting, depending on external factors.
The need of the hour is workforce agility that adapts to the rapidly evolving economic landscape. With the current turmoil in the skills market that Covid-19 has forced upon us, HR teams are in the relentless pursuit of finding that delicate balance. It is a tight-rope between – full-time employees, part-time contributors, project-based gig-workers, onsite staff, remote supporters, and fixed-term contractual employees. Without AI-assisted forecasting, a business may end up gambling blindly at the talent table.
