Artificial intelligence and machine learning are slowly taking over the world.
Becoming an indelible part of our daily lives, whether in business or in leisure. The capacity for automation to increase efficiency and make our daily working lives easier is nearly limitless, and in recent years AI technology has found a foothold within HR departments.
AI’s presence in HR departments can provide a huge boost to a team’s productivity, for example, by making the hiring process smoother and easier. Automated CV reviewing has been one of the most commonly utilised forms of AI in HR. This allows a business to automatically screen candidates to ascertain whether they’re suitable for a position. Particularly for roles where you might expect hundreds of candidates, the time-saving benefits of automated tracking is incredible, as is the capacity for consistency in candidate selection.
But of course, there are drawbacks. For roles that require a specialised, hands-on touch from the candidate, automated CV screening will likely be unhelpful — machines can’t detect such intangibles as ‘soft’ skills, cultural fit, creativity and adaptability. CVs can be optimised to surpass automated systems — and what if there’s a candidate who has one year and eleven months of experience in a role where they’ve surpassed expectations, but it’s the middling candidate who stuck to a safe role for five years that gets to the interview stage?
Many HR leaders have concerns about automated CV screening, and understandably so. Empathy and the ‘human touch’ remains essential to the vision of leaders. It is called human resources for a reason!
Another area of HR where automation has found popular usage is in the use of Right to Work checks to determine whether a candidate has the legal right to work in a given workplace. A thriving industry of apps and software now exists, making what was once a mundane administrative task now swift and simple; giving you the added benefit of avoiding the hassle of paper copies and potential GDPR issues.
Of course, there are downsides here again — these apps can theoretically fall foul of GDPR or data protection legislation themselves, if their protection policies are not up to scratch.
And yet the fact remains that AI, machine learning, and the wider scope of digital transformation is irrevocably changing how we interact with, hire, and manage workforces. Those who benefit the most from the usage of AI in the workplace won’t be those who adopt it wholesale, but those who find a way to combine machines with the human touch, bringing the best of both worlds together. Automation is unavoidable. The question is how and where you approach this wide-ranging shift.
Every business has its own unique needs and challenges. Considering which automation, AI and machine learning tools are worth investing in is a question of which tools are best for the job — don't simply allow yourself to be wooed by every amazing pitch!
Your objectives and aims as a business are central to the effective use of artificial intelligence — it is, after all, your human intelligence that got you here in the first place!
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