The Ultimate Guide: Artificial intelligence in HR Service Delivery

Depending on who you listen to, artificial intelligence might be the greatest advancement since the printing press—or an existential threat to jobs, our way of life, and even humanity itself. Or anything in between.

But however you look at it, there’s no question that AI is revolutionizing the way we work.

Smart analytics give leaders deep up-to-date insights to inform better decision-making. Automating routine tasks makes business processes faster and more efficient, accelerating digital transformation in businesses. McKinsey research predicts that generative AI could automate the tasks that make up 60 to 70 percent of employee time.

For HR teams too, AI holds huge potential for creating a more positive employee experience, which itself is essential for employee engagement, retention, and the productivity and profitability of the business.

“76% of HR leaders agree they will be lagging in organizational success if they don’t adopt and implement generative AI in the next 12 to 24 months.” Gartner - Top 5 HR Trends and Priorities for 2024

This guide examines the fears surrounding AI in the workplace, before diving into how employees and HR leaders alike can leverage artificial intelligence to increase workforce satisfaction, minimise HR ticket time and improve employee experience at every stage.

Chapters:

• The future of artificial intelligence in HR: 5 statistics
• Why people are worried about AI in the workplace
  • Fear of replacement
  • Lack of awareness and trust
  • Bias
• How AI benefits HR departments
  • Virtual assistants and AI support
  • Content generation
  • Intelligent search
  • Personalization
• How to get the best out of artificial intelligence
  • Involve employees
  • Be transparent
  • Provide training
  • Be vigilant

• Conclusion

5 use cases for AI in HR service delivery
This report delves into the dynamic intersection of AI and HR Service Delivery, unveiling five compelling use-cases where AI technologies can catalyze significant improvements. Read Now.

The future of artificial intelligence in HR: 5 statistics

• Cloud and AI-driven spending will climb 20% to 25% over the next year, outpacing expectations for a modest increase in IT budgets.
  

  Wedbush analyst Dan Ives

• 53% of engaged employees said they’re comfortable with AI at work, versus 30% of disengaged employees.

  Qualtrics, 2024 Employee Experience Trends

• 86% of HR and business leaders’ said either they or their team members use generative AI in their roles.

  Cypher learning, Generative AI in 2024

• 60% of workers will use their own AI to perform their job and tasks.

  Forrester Predictions 2024

• 25% of jobs will change over the next five years.

  World Economic Forum. Future of Jobs Report 2023

Why people are worried about AI in the workplace

Ask a natural language processing app like ChatGPT to sum up in a sentence how it will change the world of work, and it will tell you:

“AI will revolutionize the future of work by automating routine tasks, augmenting human capabilities, and reshaping industries, leading to increased efficiency, new job roles, and the need for continuous upskilling.”

Which sounds great. But of course, it would say that, wouldn’t it? In fact, many people remain resistant to using AI at all—and HR teams need to understand employee concerns, and help mitigate those concerns.

The most common fears around AI are:

1. Fear of replacement

The fact is, for many tasks, conversational AI can do in the blink of an eye what a person could spend hours on. According to the OECD Employment Outlook, 27 percent of jobs are at high risk from automation, especially in highly skilled fields such as law, science, and business.

However, AI is better at some things than others.

As Dan Turchin, CEO of People Rain, writes in Forbes: “What can be predicted is better left to machines. What requires rational judgment will always be better left to humans.”

💡How HR can help
Reassure employees that AI is being used to augment their productivity and make their job more enjoyable, rather than to replace them.

2. Lack of awareness and trust

Employees may feel overwhelmed—even threatened—by the rate of change. Indeed, Canva found that more than a quarter of surveyed employees said they have pretended they know more about AI than they actually do.

What’s more, they may be concerned about privacy and data security—especially when it comes to HR data, which is often especially sensitive.

Above: Applaud uses the power of next-gen AI and large language models throughout the platform to allow HR to deliver on an outstanding people experience with unmatched HR efficiency.

“Many employees feel they have been left behind by technology,” says entrepreneur and investor Matthew Ramirez. “They have grown up with the idea that a human being is taking care of their HR issues, so many have concerns with how new technology will handle their personal information.”

💡How HR can help
Ramirez suggests starting small. Allow employees to get used to how AI tools manage low-risk tasks first, and gradually apply it in other ways over time.

3. Bias

Recent trials have demonstrated that AI-driven HR algorithms have replicated racial and gender bias in recruitment recommendations. This is because AI is only as good as the data it can access.

If there is bias in the data, there will be bias in the AI.

This is where HR teams need to be vigilant to weed out any unintended output and ensure equity and fairness are maintained.

“We realized early on the need for human oversight and critically assessing AI outputs. As AI gains prevalence, it proves that corporate learning and power skills like critical thinking are critical.”

says Janice Burns, Chief Transformation Officer at learning platform Degreed.

💡How HR can help
New technologies will naturally be treated with caution, even skepticism, by some. For leaders and HR teams, it’s vital to treat those concerns with openness and respect.

“Employees’ feelings about AI vary,” says José Moya, Outreach Manager at Capicua Full Stack Creative Hub. “Some have concerns about job security: others appreciate AI's efficiency and support. Ultimately, clear communication about the role of AI and its benefits is crucial in ensuring a positive perception among employees.”

How AI benefits HR departments

“By 2026, more than 80% of enterprises will have used generative AI APIs, models and/or deployed generative AI-enabled applications in production environments, an increase from fewer than 5% today.”
- Gartner, Inc

When employees can self-serve many of the routine HR needs with automation, bots, and personal assistants, it reduces pressure on HR teams, so they can focus on creating a better employee experience.

Here are a few ways that AI-enhanced HR software can make HR teams more efficient and effective:

1. Virtual assistants and AI support

Automating time-consuming repetitive administrative tasks, such as data entry, document management, and reporting, helps make HR processes much more efficient.

Applaud’s next-gen assistant, for example, allows you to combine imperfect knowledge and data from disparate sources - for example PDFs, Word Docs, Excel and real-time employee data like time off.

When an employee asks the chat bot a question, the assistant gives them a perfectly written answer based on the relevant document.

As a result, HR teams can focus on the human side of human resources, prioritizing strategic initiatives that can have a major impact on organizational culture.

2. Content generation

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2023, generative AI and its possible use cases have been a key topic of conversion. One critical application for HR teams is the ability to generate content to achieve a robust knowledge base, often an arduous task to complete manually.

With generative AI, HR can quickly author knowledge articles, news and other content with one click, so any gaps can quickly be plugged.

Above: Within the Applaud platform, HR can generate branded content using generative AI with just one click, saving hours of time.

These resulting articles can then be used to answer questions individual employees are bringing to chatbots and virtual assistants, providing a personalized experience.

“76% of HR leaders agree they will be lagging in organizational success if they don’t adopt and implement generative AI in the next 12 to 24 months.”

- Gartner, Inc

3. Intelligent search

AI tools for HR can let employees self-serve their queries about benefits, payroll, or time off, without having to open a ticket with HR.

This doesn’t just save everyone time—having the autonomy to manage their own HR issues and troubleshoot their own problems can improve employee engagement.

“Chatbots connected to an employee’s HRIS record can answer questions like ‘Have I accrued enough time to take a sabbatical?’ or ‘Who do I contact about medical leave?’” explains Ayanna E. Jackson, founder and Leadership Coach at AEJ Consulting LLC. “Rather than requiring HR time to look up records, calculate time, or run an eligibility report, AI can provide this information faster.”

Above: AI-driven vector sector in Applaud empowers employees to effortlessly find content and obtain the answers they need. Fast.

As well as obtaining this information through virtual assistants, search bars can massively reduce time employees spend scrolling through navigation pages.

They can instead effortlessly find content and obtain instant answers through intelligence AI-driven vector search.

4. Personalization

Instead of having to sift through generic catch-all content, AI-enabled platforms can offer each employee a UI that reflects their particular priorities and preferences, so that everyone has their own unique view.

For example, imagine a company operating in 60 different countries with a different time policy for each one. If you are an employee based in the UK and you search “time off”, you would expect to see the policy for your country first.

Sadly that is often not the case with platforms that do not use AI for personalization.

Leveraging the same technology that power consumer sites such as Amazon and Warner Bros, Applaud uses AI recommender systems to provide a hyper-personalized people experience every time (see left).

How to get the best out of artificial intelligence

“90% of US and UK organisations consider AI to be a business priority and have projects planned or already in production.”
- SnapLogic

AI in business is here to stay. So, having looked at how artificial intelligence can help your HR teams enhance your business’ employee experience, what’s the best approach to encouraging employees to engage with it?

Here are 4 strategies:

1. Involve employees

It’s important that employees feel part of the AI integration process, and that their input matters.

Actively engage with employees and seek their concerns and opinions with pulse surveys.

Encourage them to start using AI in small, manageable ways, so that they gain confidence and experience in how it can benefit them.

“It is imperative that you stay human on all key touch points,” advises John Pennypacker, VP of Sales & Marketing at AI service provider Deep Cognition. “My advice is to strike a balance. Use AI to automate and make processes efficient, but don't forget the human touch, to employ empathy and emotional understanding."

2. Be transparent

Employees and new hires will tend to be more trusting if they understand how and why your HR teams use AI.

Let job candidates know that you use AI tools and tests in the recruitment process.

Make sure employees understand that AI can be an enhancement to their roles, not a replacement for them.

The below video provides clear examples of how AI assistants remove repetitive and tedious tasks from the desk of the HR department. Such materials are critical for educating and changing the preconceptions of employees concerned about replacement.

 
“The perception of AI depends on how it is introduced and integrated into the workplace,” explains Theresa Fesinstine, “In my experience, employees tend to embrace AI when they see it as a tool that enhances their work experience, rather than a replacement or a surveillance mechanism.”

3. Provide training

The artificial intelligence field is changing rapidly, so it’s vital for teams and individuals to be able to adapt to the changes. Use your Learning platform to provide employees, HR teams, and managers with accessible online training and upskilling on how to apply AI tools and processes to their work tasks.  

“We see AI as a way to accelerate our innovation,” says Janice Burns. “Everyone is on an upskilling journey to build AI skills like prompt engineering and to critically assess its output.”

4. Be vigilant

As much as automation and AI facilitate work processes, human oversight is still vital. To ensure errors and historical biases don’t slip through the cracks, it’s important that HR information systems have clean and thorough data sets.

“An HR, Legal, and IT partnership is a must,” advises Ayanna E. Jackson, founder and Leadership Coach at AEJ Consulting LLC, “All three should be involved in how AI is utilized and monitored, what systems it will access, and what checks and balances will ensure fair and consistent use.

Enhance your employee experience with artificial intelligence

It can be hard to keep up with the pace of change, especially when it comes to the breath-taking expansion of artificial intelligence in the workplace.

But by treating AI as a work support partner, employees and HR teams alike can enhance not just productivity but the overall employee experience.

AI can also maximise the ROI of your employee experience platform (EXP). Learn more about how Digital Employee Experience can unlock your team's potential and impact your bottom line significantly in the webinar below.

The rapid rate of change in the AI landscape over the last 18 months has been unsettling for some employees, with fears that artificial intelligence may eventually claim their role in the workforce.

However, with education, vigilance and transparency, businesses can reassure their employees and effectively communicate positive changes this revolution could bring.

From reducing administrative burdens to supporting learning and professional development, AI tools have the potential to make working life better.

Want the big picture on Digital Employee Experience?

Get the tools and industry insights to embrace generative AI's transformative power with confidence, helping you craft a strong business case for adoption. Download the 2024 Digital Employee Experience Trends Report today.

About the Author

Rachel James is the Chief Marketing Officer at Applaud, responsible for elevating the brand and creating market demand. With international experience spanning Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, she brings a global perspective to our product offering and an acute awareness of widespread market trends.