HR pros & AI products: A Q&A with Parul Mishra
"We don’t believe that AI will replace managers, but managers who don’t use AI will be replaced by those that do," says Parul Mishra.
AI has taken the world by storm and it brings up many questions. How soon does a company need to adopt AI? Do companies need to adopt AI? Will AI take over jobs and replace employees?
Parul Mishra, the vice president, product management, digital labor at IBM believes that AI will not replace employees, but instead will enhance employees’ work and make administrative tasks less time consuming.
How comfortable are HR Practitioners and employees/employers using AI products?
It’s important to remember that with any new technology, a period of understanding and adoption will need to take place.
As AI technology continues to improve and is further implemented into the day-to-day workflows of HR practitioners, their comfort levels should rise. This, however, requires transparency and education around what AI is actually going to replace and a point of view on which parts of HR practitioners’ jobs will be able to be automated.
Having the right skilling and training programs on AI, in place, is essential to this education process. So, while HR practitioners won’t have to become an expert in every aspect of AI and automation, they should begin to understand how it will impact their domain and have a foundational understanding of the technology.
And at the enterprise level, organizations should provide current employees with the training required to work creatively and responsibly with AI. The goal of these skills building exercises should be focused on not only possessing the ability to accomplish goals faster than ever before, but also to think systemically about how to move people who have been freed from routine work by AI into roles that are more fulfilling and impactful to the business.
For managers, especially, the goal should be to learn this technology and continue to work with, and test, AI’s capabilities to maximize its benefits. We don’t believe that AI will replace managers, but managers who don’t use AI will be replaced by those that do.
What do HR Practitioners want when it comes to AI Products?
Not only HR practitioners, but all employees desire the time needed to focus on higher-value tasks and projects that require critical thinking.
But when it comes to HR, a significant area of need for automation and AI is related to prioritizing the employee experience. Tasks that span across hiring, promoting, and retaining talent require HR practitioners to pull large amounts of data and documentation together. These processes are not only time consuming but are the drudgery of work.
For example, traditionally the building of job descriptions, posting of job openings to different candidate portals, and scheduling interviews with candidates has been a manual and tedious process that takes time away from focusing on the effectiveness of the candidate.
But with AI, HR practitioners can automate these processes while still being the decision maker in the process. They can create automations and “skills” that intelligently learn these administrative tasks. Thus, allowing for more time to focus on providing talent-related services, such as career guidance and candidate curation, which requires thought and creativity, rather than doing routine paperwork.
And with AI automating many traditional tasks, middle managers can do more leading and less administrating. In fact, according to IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV) Augmented work for an automated, AI-driven world survey, Global CEOs already see the value in this approach. IBM IBV research found that 65% are investing to improve people manager skills and 72% plan to increase their investment by 2025.
How do you see AI expanding in the HR world in 2024?
2023 was an acceleration point for AI’s implementation into the HR function, for both HR practitioners and enterprise business leaders, I believe 2024 will be a year focused on learning and evolving with the technology. That means monitoring AI carefully and ethically, as well as listening to colleagues who may make their discoveries when applying the technology in different capacities.
One area we’ll be excited to see flourish in 2024 is the collaborative work that both EY and IBM announced via the launch of EY.ai Workforce. Both our organizations acknowledged that there is a desire from clients to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into key HR business processes and help automate some of the mundane aspects of being an HR practitioner.
So, as we look ahead, AI in the HR domain will only be successful if we understand its impact and acknowledge that 100% of jobs are going to change. We understand that the focus needs to shift from AI implementation, to helping people in their existing jobs upskill or reskill so that they are ready for the portions that are changing.
As we move forward into 2024, there is a lot of unknowns about AI. But by preparing, learning, and continually testing this technology, HR practitioners can continue to expand their knowledge of how AI will best support them do their jobs.
Related:
The truth about AI’s impact on the global workforce
Do the benefits of AI-based technologies outweigh the risk for employers?