The Benefits of AI Copilots in HRtech and HR

Are you ready for the HR AI Copilot Renaissance?

We are still in the early days of the AI revolution, which certainly didn’t start with ChatGPT—some of the earliest commercial adoptions of AI technology were by HR. I’m talking, of course, about the infamous recruiting chatbots on career sites. The ones that asked you to upload your resume then spewed out a bunch of “best matching” jobs that seemingly had no connection to your resume. Luckily, the advent of Generative AI made these a thing of the past and HR is once again ready to embrace AI. This time with colossal consequences not just for HR, but for organizations and industries as a whole.

Every large organization has an HR department with responsibilities ranging from recruiting to onboarding, payroll, learning and development, compensation, and more. Most of these responsibilities, despite having the word “human” in the name of the department, are quite removed from people. These are administrative tasks, many of which are completely automatable by AI in the foreseeable future. What is much harder to automate is the human part of HR, interacting with people. This will require HR departments to reinvent themselves. But here is the good news, they have a powerful new ally – the new generation of AI Copilots for HR.

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The Future of HR with AI Copilots

The main reason why HR never truly excels in people-related matters is simply a matter of scale. There are too many employees in an organization for every single HR person. An HR person can’t keep track of every person, to know their strengths and weaknesses, challenges and aspirations.

In many large organizations, this need is addressed by “people managers” who are typically not experts in anything other than managing employees. As someone who has worked in this type of environment, I can share with you that most people managers are not well-liked by their reports. This is simply because most professionals despise being managed by somebody whose only expertise is managing others.

Here is how AI Copilots for HR will change that:

• Talent data is already enriching different parts of the HRIS. More relevant and granular talent intelligence will power a new generation of People Analytics that will be available to HR teams via AI Copilots. This data will include skills, personality, goals, communication style, and more.
• AI Copilots will allow for a great level of personalization on all matters related to employee-specific decision-making by leveraging skills data (most importantly, soft skills information).
• Some AI Copilots will be available to employees and managers, not just HR, allowing them to make better career pathing, development, and communication decisions.

The Application of AI Copilots in HR

How would all this look in practice with the use of AI Copilots? Let’s look at a specific example of a chore every employee and a manager begrudgingly goes through at least once a year: performance reviews and setting development goals. Here is how it will work:

1. HR will facilitate the process with AI Copilots, creating a detailed overview of last year’s objectives for each employee combined with all the relevant information about their progress during the year, evaluating the attainment of performance and development goals.
2. Each manager will receive this information and use an AI Copilot to explore each employee’s track record, combine it with their input, receive feedback, and consolidate all this information into the overall evaluation.
3. A manager will then proceed to set development goals for the next year, which will also be done with an AI Copilot that will suggest development priorities based on the understanding of the current employee’s strengths and weaknesses as well as the knowledge of their role and the organization’s business objectives.
4. In preparation for the review, employees will brainstorm their results, preferences, and ideas for career development with an AI Copilot.
5. A manager and employee will meet to discuss. Real people talking to each other! An AI Copilot will have to be filled in on the results of this discussion or may record and annotate it.
6. Following this meeting, an employee will explore how to best achieve their new goals further with the copilot. A copilot will recommend specific next steps, learning content, and other ideas aligned with employees’ objectives.

Throughout this process, HR will have to play not just a facilitating role but also remain involved to provide any necessary assistance, consolidate and analyze the results with an AI Copilot, and ensure the performance reviews are free of biases and contribute to the organizational objectives. This will transform HR from a cost center that doesn’t contribute to the company’s bottom line to a strategic player, on par with Marketing, Sales, and other departments.

Some may see these upcoming changes as somewhat damning and anti-utopian, but if done right these new AI capabilities will benefit not just HR and corporate profits, but everyone involved, including employees. Everyone will benefit from a more harmonious and informed work environment, with more constructive discussions, fewer miscommunications, more fulfilling career opportunities, and fewer biases.

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