HR Deserves Digital Investments—So Why is it Always Overlooked?

Physical separation has challenged us in many ways. IT has been overwhelmed by calls from homebound people searching for answers. Finance departments have faced a flood of inquiries about changing policies.  Human resources departments are being inundated by WFH permission requests and corporate Covid-19 protocol inquiries.  With no one at the office and situations changing every day, employees wonder, “Who do I call when my HR staff is limited, and now dispersed?” Yet while other departments are being embedded with new technologies to handle changes, HR is often left with traditional methods.

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The perception of HR as a cost center challenges investment at a time when companies are capital constrained.  The department is often understaffed, under resourced and is the last to receive budget allocation. As a result, instead of being among the first support functions to benefit from artificial intelligence, HR is typically the last that a CIO would consider for such an investment.

It’s time for HR professionals to reframe that dynamic. HR leaders have taken on tremendous responsibility since the onset of the pandemic. Today they manage protocols and issues that organizations have never faced, yet they are still held by the same constraints. What CHROs do now will have a significant impact on the trajectory of the business. By championing their broader impact on the business, they can win the tools they need to create even greater value within their organizations and actually use this period to their advantage.

But when you broaden the focus and look at talent acquisition, assessment and supporting employees after they’re hired, the merits of HR spending increases and the return on investment is crystal clear.

Enhancing HR’s contributions

The case that HR is a value-add is easy to make. HR is intimately involved in the most aspects of a company, including employee care and revenue generation. It brings people into the organization and helps them connect to the business, its mission and objectives. Through talent acquisition and benefits support, HR is also the platform for employees to serve as revenue generators. All of these functions are essential to companies’ bottom lines. Unfortunately, many of them have been hobbled by mass transition to remote work. HR leaders deserve technology that can help them adapt and ultimately come out stronger than they were before the pandemic.

Digital workers have the capacity to offer meaningful, human-like support to staff. Vodafone deployed them to great success. The global telecom deployed a chat-based intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) to perform HR functions in its workforce of nearly 60,000 employees. All employees were instructed to communicate with the IVA for all issues related to HR, and as many as 57% used the IVA within the first few weeks, relieving HR staff of routine updates and communication. In the weeks to come, usage jumped to roughly 80-90%, proving that chat was not only an acceptable but highly effective method for HR-related inquiries. It also served as a proving ground for how intelligent automation could be applied to better serve external customers.

Getting everyone on the same page

Problem-solving has become a key expectation of HR staff this year. They have conceived of new operating policies during a pandemic, managed widescale transition of employees to remote work and devised, disseminated and revised policies in an environment where no two days are the same. The addition of sophisticated AI to this department would go a long way toward making these adjustments easier, faster and more cost-effective.

Managing policy changes is a perfect example. In a traditional HR department, it’s natural for some employees to miss a memo or to misremember the details of a new program, especially if they haven’t had sufficient time to digest the details. Digital assistants can serve as whisper agents or on-staff support to help employees avoid these stumbling blocks and focus on the things they do well, such as creating new programs or meeting complex tasks.

Digital assistants can also diagnose errors and resolve a range of issues, such as payroll and paid time-off.  Its job is to research and resolve problems based on what’s already programmed into the payroll system, but it can learn to do more over time. The digital assistant might even escalate the problem and get a human employee involved if necessary, but it will start by trying to diagnose the issue and find a resolution on its own. If, for example, healthcare costs have increased by $200, the digital assistant will only need to see that once before applying that knowledge to payroll questions and processes.

Digital assistant would also be of help when problems crop up. If an employee suspects a duplicate charge, then the digital assistant will work hard to find the answer within existing documentation and earlier interactions. Meanwhile, the HR staff that was previously stretched thin now has room to explore new benefits to engage with staff who require higher level support.

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Creating life-long employees

Once the value of HR is fully understood, enterprises will be more eager to deploy digital assistants into that department, and even assign them tasks that require emotional engagement.  If, for example, employees need to know they are supported when they are sick, a digital assistant will understand the context and reply accordingly, starting with a few simple words: “I’m sorry to hear that.” Those words are extremely important to someone who isn’t feeling well, and it can enhance the construction of the employee-employer relationship. Right off the bat, a little empathy has gone a long way.

This differs from the interaction one expects of Alexa or a chatbot, where the context and intent would have been lost. For Alexa, the phrase “under the weather” would have triggered the week’s forecast. A chatbot wouldn’t have understood the phrase at all and would be unable to express sympathy. A digital assistant, in contrast, can understand intent and context in multiple languages, allowing it to communicate more effectively. Callers can switch topics, moving from paternity leave to 401K inquiries, and the digital assistant will respond accordingly, providing the full spectrum of what is needed from HR.

The ability to display empathy is vital to technology in an HR setting. While data analytics and employee management systems have great utility, conversational AI can actually perform a range of functions, rather than a slice of a task. That means that enterprises can substantially maximize the output of these small but mighty teams.

Consider how significant HR is when it comes to the lifecycle of an employee. The whole process of integrating new people from the start, managing and connecting them to the company culture and serving as their partners from candidacy to retirement is essential to the longevity of each employee. Organizations can very easily turn off their employees by botching any part of that process.  HR helps to reinforce the culture of the organization   help retain top talent. Digital assistants that are empathetic and scalable help that happen even faster.

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Building a foundation for the future

Given everything that the HR department does, it should be viewed as an essential service that is intimately involved with employee support and revenue generation. Remote working and the cost pressures of 2020 have made it difficult for HR to maintain that connection with employees and streamline policies in a changing landscape. The department not only deserves access to technologies like digital assistants that can help them, but the entire organization does, as well.