Conversational AI – must-have tool in HR

You may be wondering what human resources (HR) has to do with artificial intelligence (AI). They actually share a lot more than you may believe. As the name implies, human resources is a human business, and humans interact via language.

Natural language processing (NLP), which is essentially AI for language, is used in conversational AI. Due to language underpinning both HR and conversational AI, it stands to reason that HR departments would leverage conversational AI to automate jobs and procedures that result in improved employee experiences.

The human resources department is probably the only staff in a firm that communicates with every employee. As a result, it is no wonder that HR staff is inundated with messages, requests, and queries. Many of the queries that HR teams receive are repetitious, easy to detect, and simple to respond to. This is the trifecta of conversational AI automation, making virtual assistants a win-win situation for HR departments and employees.

Let’s look at the benefits that conversational AI brings to the company that uses AI in human resource processes. 

·      Save time and money.

Consider how much time your HR staff could save if they answered a question once instead of many times each week or day. An HR staff may save 10 to 20 percent of their time by using a virtual assistant to answer employees’ most commonly asked queries, depending on the scope.

·      Concentrate on complicated subjects.

You may redirect the extra 10 to 20 percent of time saved by your HR staff to more challenging tasks. There are always a few employee issues that require more follow-up, such as meetings and phone calls, which your HR staff now have time to handle. Instead of being tethered to their email inbox answering simple queries, your HR team can solve problems and help your employees on different scales. That’s the true goal of an HR professional, isn’t it?

·      Minimize the possibility of human mistakes.

Errors occur, undoubtedly, whether you fail to send an email, send the erroneous link, or forget about a policy modification. Human resource managers are simply humans. A virtual assistant, on the other hand, is designed to follow a standardized logic with pre-defined replies, making slight errors practically impossible. HR managers may focus on the more complicated issues outlined above instead of wasting time and energy memorizing little facts.

·      Strengthen your company’s culture.

A chatbot is an excellent tool for reinforcing your company’s culture and values. Its personality may be tailored to be precisely who you want it to be, and it will never have a bad day. Furthermore, it is equally content answering a question for the first time as it is for the 200th time.

Moving on, employees can also take advantage of the possibilities that conversational AI proposes.

·      Availability and access

A virtual assistant is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and can answer an employee’s inquiry in seconds. There are no office hours, lengthy lines, or messages that last two weeks.

·      Customization of encounters

A virtual assistant interfaces with your company’s platforms, allowing you to identify your employees and adapt bot replies to their requirements and profiles. Kathy from the Marketing Team, for example, messages the bot on Microsoft Teams and requests a copy of her most recent pay slip. Her job profile is recognized by the bot and matched to her file on the business payroll system. The bot then collects her most recent pay slip link and distributes the PDF download link over the Teams conversation.

Most queries are individual to an employee. Thus, HR staff must personalize replies based on the employee’s profile.

·      Interactive communication

It is way more fun to talk and connect through dialogue than it is to write a ticket and send it out into cyberspace, hoping it falls in the right mailbox. Chatting allows employees to obtain rapid acknowledgment of their questions and follow up with more inquiries.

·      Diverse implementation

We can now incorporate a virtual assistant into practically every channel. This allows you to communicate with your staff using a channel that they are already familiar with. It is quicker to ask a query on your intranet, via a corporate app, or via workplace messaging (for instance, Teams or Slack), rather than sifting through an outdated onboarding paper or the internal organogram to find the email of your HR business partner.

Keeping everything into consideration, where can companies apply conversational AI?

A virtual assistant may assist your HR team in a variety of ways. Here are a few use cases to pique your interest:

·      Informal job applications

·      Candidate screening

·      Scheduling interviews

·      Requests of vacation time

·      Scheduling of shifts

·      Access pay slips

·      Address commonly asked questions about (potential) employees

·      Create pre-boarding, onboarding, and deboarding processes

·      Collect employee feedback

·      Facilitate performance evaluations

·      Submit your costs

Leveraging the advantages of conversational AI in HR procedures can speed up time, decrease operational costs and leave room for other tasks in several areas. Both companies and employees can find implementations of AI.

What is left for the future of conversational AI in HR? 

Conversational AI will be adopted at varied speeds by HR departments, depending on their company’s digital maturity and desire to innovate. Here are our predictions for how artificial intelligence will affect HR departments in the next years.

#1 Most major corporations will have a robot on their human resource staff. 

Virtual assistants are readily available and scalable. Companies will look to conversational AI for assistance as they strive toward digitalization goals and automate internal operations.

#2 Transfers to online HR agents will take the role of shared HR email accounts.

A great virtual assistant is never left alone. When the VA is unable to continue the discussion, a team of human employees takes over. This implies that instead of actively sending a query to a common HR email, employees will begin interacting with a chatbot. When the chatbot needs extra human assistance, it will connect the employee with an HR person via an offload or live handover route.

#3 Chatbots will become the single point of contact for all internal needs.

Instead of having an email for payroll, a website for mobile expenditures, an app for holiday requests, and a phone number for healthcare benefits, we see it all rolled into one conversational AI system. Not only it is easier for employees to use as they visit one location, but it is also easier for HR teams to manage.

#4 NLP will be the primary driving force behind process automation. 

Because HR is all about communication and language, it stands to reason that conversational AI will be the primary engine for automating HR functions. Virtual assistants will take the lead in enhancing HR efficiency, from instantly answering queries to referring staff to the appropriate contact.

#5 Interviews will be conducted by virtual assistants.

We anticipate that larger organizations will use bot-run screening interviews in the coming years. A virtual assistant may simply take over the duty of asking simple questions and analyzing replies against a defined criterion. You may educate a virtual assistant the same things you would teach a junior recruiter about what to look for in a prospect. By automating the screening process, recruiters will be able to focus on interviews that need emotional intelligence.

Two of the most prominent arguments against using AI tools to accomplish tasks traditionally handled by people are that AI will displace human employment and that AI lacks the human touch required to execute specific tasks. The last point is especially relevant in the context of human resources. While it is vital to explore these issues, they must be done in the correct context. Conversational AI is best suited for jobs in HR that do not require a human touch fundamentally and that detract from more significant and higher-level human labor. As a result, conversational AI for HR increases the effect of an HR team and frees up team members to do the more satisfying and consequential job that they likely entered HR to do in the first place.

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If you want to dive into the specifics of the field, contact DigiTech Consult for any further information and consultation to begin your automation journey.