AI has been on everyone’s mind since OpenAI launched ChatGPT at the end of 2022. It’s dominating headlines and shaking up every industry and job function.
Human resources is no exception. AI in HR has tremendous potential. It can assist HR in many daily tasks and empower every employee to be more effective and efficient. From analyzing data to crafting thoughtful employee feedback, AI gives organizations the ability to scale employee success faster than ever.
AI has infiltrated the daily administrative tasks of HR professionals. More and more practitioners are finding ways to use it.
HR can use open-source, generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Bing’s Copilot to help write emails and other internal communication, and brainstorm solutions for a variety of problems. But more and more AI is being integrated into more strategic tools HR teams use for critical business functions.
The Academy to Innovate HR, RedThread Co-founder and Principal Analyst Stacia Sherman Garr, and SHRM reported AI in HR use cases include:
There are many discussions and articles discussing the power of AI and how human jobs will soon be eliminated and replaced by AI. But the future of AI in HR will still need a human in the loop.
Gartner predicts that AI can take on many tasks, but that it won’t be a substitute for employees. AI will instead empower them to be more effective and efficient.
Lighthouse Research Chief Research Officer Ben Eubanks, author of Artificial Intelligence for HR, estimates that AI will save HR 44 hours of work this year alone. That is time HR can gain to do more human-oriented work.
The future of employee success is enabling HR—and all employees--to do their best work because they’re supported with AI.
For the past couple of years, Quantum Workplace experts have evaluated how best to integrate AI, natural language processing, and machine learning into tools HR needs and uses to make them more effective and efficient. We believe that AI in HR should solve real challenges and problems. You shouldn’t add AI just to say you implemented the fancy, new technology. AI should help HR be more impactful and more human.
And the future of AI in HR is now. Quantum Workplace already has AI tools built into its platform and many more under development.
AI tools for HR can amplify employee experience and performance management efforts. Quantum Workplace AI-powered features fit seamlessly into employee workflows, are simple to use, and are securely stored.
What challenges can Quantum Workplace AI tools solve today?
Only 14% of HR leaders say they would not use AI to support managers, according to research by Lighthouse Research & Advisory. These leaders know the potential AI has to make their managers more effective and efficient.
Imagine if you could replicate your managers who write the best feedback. Now you can! Writing Assistant helps teams share feedback quickly and make it impactful. Team members can give and request actionable feedback frequently. In-tool coaching on tone and wording helps every employee carefully craft impactful responses.
Since Quantum Workplace launched Writing Assistant, we’ve seen those using the product are 12% more likely to complete feedback than those who don’t. And those who use it are 40% more likely to submit feedback again in the future than those who don’t.
Employees are 3.2X more likely to be engaged when their performance goals are aligned with organizational goals.
But often, employees and managers spend significant time and effort to get the wording and alignment right when setting goals. They also struggle with knowing how to write effective goals. Goal Assistant helps everyone set goals that increase performance. The tool simplifies the process by making quality suggestions connected with each employee’s team and role.
This alignment gives business leaders and individuals a solid starting point and keeps them focused on what metrics are the most important. Every employee can set and track their goals. And then connect them with the performance conversations they’re having with their managers. Quantum Workplace finds that employees who use Goal Assistant are 24% more likely to update their goals than those who do not.
HR teams often wade through thousands of employee survey comments to get the qualitative review to the quantitative survey. This can take days if not weeks spent entrenched in open-ended employee comments.
With Summary Assistant, HR can save all that time analyzing survey comments to truly understand results and use it for action planning. With this 2023 Brandon Hall Group award-winning tool, survey comments can be summarized in real time so HR can get critical context into employee opinions.
"Quantum Workplace’s new AI-powered comment summarization tool is truly outstanding! It has made our comment review process much more efficient and helped us identify key themes effortlessly."
Shannon Carson
Senior VP, Compensation, Benefits, HRIS at Heritage Bank
After the engagement survey is done, team leaders use the valuable insights and take effective post-survey action to improve employee perceptions. As part of that process, managers need to facilitate conversations with their teams. But managers don’t always know how to have meaningful and targeted conversations with their teams.
Discussion Assistant makes this process easier with AI-powered discussion starters. It analyzes survey data and provides managers with questions based on the high-impact drivers of engagement and an expert-informed library of questions. Managers can take those discussion notes to easily create realistic and personalized action plans.
"Our managers are really impressed with how easy the AI-Powered Action Planning tools are to use and how much faster they've made this process. The first time they tried them out, they said 'oh, that's SO easy!' The feedback on the AI Action Planning tool has been overwhelmingly positive."
Claire Fetchero
Senior HR Business Partner, Grange Insurance
Managers understand the work their team does. But they don’t always understand how to act on their team’s responses to employee surveys.
You’ve probably heard these comments from managers about action planning:
Managers are your catalysts for post-survey action planning. Action Assistant helps them overcome "blank page syndrome” with AI-powered ideas based on expert-informed suggestions, team context, and discussion notes.
Quantum Workplace isn’t only working to have AI tools in the future. They’re available right now, in-tool. And we have plans to create more that solve real HR problems.
AI can help you scale employee success initiatives. But like with any new technology, it won’t have impact unless it’s adopted throughout the organization.
So how can you set up the organization for future success and inspire AI adoption with every employee?
Knowledge can fuel the fire and help leaders and employees understand how AI can empower them to do better work. Attend webinars. Ask your vendors how they’re using AI and what they plan to implement in the next year. Get feedback from employees for how they’re using AI and what tools might help them be more effective leaders and inspire high performance.
Change can be scary. People often think that the reaction to change is bad. But that’s usually because it wasn’t communicated early, frequently, and clearly. Frequent change isn’t what disengages employees. The disengagement happens because of a lack of communication. As you navigate the changing workplace with AI, make sure you’re communicating before the change occurs and throughout the process. Be transparent and clarify why the change is important with employees.
In a world of increased efficiency, ask everyone to step up to the challenge. You don’t have to be a technology expert to use AI. Great AI should be simple and easy to use. Have leaders ask their teams to experiment with AI. Find what works and what doesn’t. Share learnings across the organization. Then find those change leaders who embrace the challenge of AI.
Your champions will help communicate how AI can make your teams and employees more effective and efficient. They’re enthusiastic about the potential and can guide others in using it. This is especially important with AI in HR. Find a manager who can speak to using AI for feedback, goal setting, or action planning. Have them share their success with other managers. Then watch adoption increase.
You’ve probably heard of the horror stories of managers using open-sourced, unsecure AI software to write incoherent performance reviews. The problem is, many managers don’t understand how to use AI. Coach managers on how to use AI in your HR tools. Set expectations for privacy and security. Show them how AI can reduce the time it takes to help employees set individual goals, craft impactful feedback, and action plan for their teams.
Just like with surveys, you want to analyze progress, identify opportunities to improve, and recognize success. This will help you motivate others and give leaders the tools they need to continue to make changes to make the process better.
With any new technology, you could see some questionable uses. Your organization should be thinking about how it will use AI and what policies it will outline for vendors. Ask your vendors about their approach to AI.
At Quantum Workplace, we want to be employee-centric with our AI in HR tools. As we create AI, we want to build technology and predictive analytics that will assist humans and make work better. We think of ourselves as AI-assisted. Not AI-led. These principles guide our AI:
Every product we create is guided by best practices—informed by our research and Insights Analysts.
You and your people add input and make the decisions with embedded coaching and collaboration tools.
Everything end users experience is shaped by direct customer input and thorough quality testing.
Your data stays secure and isolated in your own instance of Quantum Workplace.
The latest technology, always backed by an unbiased and robust security infrastructure.
As you choose an AI in HR vendor, ask them about their AI principles. Ask them how they build safe and secure solutions that empower humans and solve real problems.
Only about 1 in 5 employees frequently uses AI at work. This will change quickly. More and more organizations adopt AI into their workflows. Early adoption will be key to success. Gartner research shows that 76% of HR leaders feel their organization’s success depends on if they’re able to adopt and implement generative AI within the next 1-2 years.
You want to be at the forefront of the AI transformation. That means leveraging smart and secure AI tools that help each employee be more effective and efficient with talent management processes.
AI isn’t going away, but it doesn’t have to be scary.
Managers say that technology helps them feel more effective at being managers. And nearly half of managers say they want more AI training, but only 1 in 5 are encouraged to use AI. AI can empower your teams with powerful technology to help them understand everything from their team’s engagement to providing actionable feedback.
The time saved with AI in HR can empower HR to get back to the parts of the job they love. Working with humans.
The most important part of employee surveys is action. To get there, HR often has to sift through thousands of open-ended comments that can take hours or days to analyze for themes. AI can complete an analysis of employee survey comments in seconds, helping HR move to the action planning step faster. AI-powered Action Planning helps managers create specialized action plans for their teams and holds them accountable for completing those plans so you can move the needle on engagement.
The future of work is AI-assisted. AI can save HR time and headache so that they can tackle other issues. AI can help you identify themes in a sea of employee survey comments within seconds and empower everyone on your team to be more effective with common employee success tasks.
The potential of AI is already being realized. Every leader, manager, and individual contributor can be more effective at creating aligned goals, crafting quality and impactful feedback, and keep managers accountable to building action plans that are key to engaging employees.
Quantum Workplace's AI-powered workplace tech is a game changer for HR teams and people managers. Save critical time and resources by leveraging secure, cutting-edge technology to help your teams efficiently and effectively complete talent management to-dos.
Published September 3, 2024 | Written By Jessica McBride
![[Webinar] Scaling employee success with AI](png/scaling%20employee%20success%20with%20ai.png)
