The onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, sparked by AI, has sparked a lot of debate about whether AI will take over human jobs. However, as research progresses, it's becoming clear that AI is actually empowering humans in various industries, including HR.
HR is taking the lead in embracing this change, and as a result, the future of HR is evolving. Significant efficiencies have been introduced across HR processes and systems, resulting in reduced time-to-hire, improved candidate sourcing, goal setting, and the integration of conversational AI applications. Moreover, AI is facilitating better matching of skills for both internal and external talent, as well as recommending learning opportunities and skill enhancements tailored to individual needs.
Knowing SuccessFactors is leading the way in AI technology, this blog is more focused on SuccessFactors AI features and applications that support AI within HR.
I'm engaging in insightful discussions with CIOs and CHROs in large organisations to delve into their HR and IT challenges. Through these conversations, several recurring themes and questions have emerged:
- Is conversational AI diminishing the necessity for employees to engage with diverse HR applications?
- How do we gauge the effectiveness of Generative AI's application throughout the business?
- How can we leverage AI to tackle the intricate issue of skills management within our organisation?
Is conversational AI diminishing the necessity for employees to engage with diverse HR applications?
Lets look at two major conversational AI driven products for HR:
1.Joule by SuccessFactors – Conversation AI to enhance Employee and Manager Experience
Conversational AI isn't a revolutionary concept, but its importance is now being grasped by businesses. Imagine the frustration of employees and managers as they navigate through complex screens and buttons just to update a simple detail like their home address.
People Experience is greatly benefitted by conversational AI, which lets people converse in normal day to day language. Unlike chatbots which were more mundane in using questions, answers and inputs-based approach, conversational AI is able to have conversations with people as a human. – No more screens and trainings to remember a sequence of clicks
(Joule - Employees and managers can update/change/initiate HR tasks)
2. Olivia by Paradox – Conversational AI isn't just for employees and managers anymore—it's transforming the landscape of recruiting. By revolutionising candidate engagement, streamlining interview scheduling, and accelerating the hiring process, it presents limitless opportunities for efficiency improvement. If you're seeking to upgrade your hiring practices, Paradox is your gateway to simplified success.
(Olivia – Scheduling interviews)
Find more information about Paradox here - https://store.sap.com/dcp/en/product/display-2001006958_live_v1/text-recruiting-automation-and-conve...
Don’t forget your end goal - Key Considerations for Conversational AI (Joule, Paradox or any other):
- IT strategy across functions - Currently Joule is only launched for HR, the roadmap is evolving and soon the use cases will expand for other functions of the business, therefore keep an eye at the product roadmap for Joule.
- Adoption Strategy - Organisations need to prepare an appropriate adoption strategy aligned with Joule or any conversational AI, understanding its known/unknown limitations.
- Prompt engineering – You would have been surprised to see prompt engineering evolving with such a great pace, this is because the prompts make conversation more effective. Whilst google search never needed words of empathy such as: please, conversational AI responses does get better with some key prompts.
- Begin with an end in mind - Consider your primary goal and ask some key questions while designing conversational AI experience.
- What’s your organisations end goal and current pain points ?
- Do you have poor employee or manager experience within HR?
- Is your time to hire the reason you loose top candidates?
- Do you have myrid of applications and complex IT landscape, therefore no clarity of how one application talks to another ?
How do we gauge the effectiveness of Generative AI's application throughout the business?
To maximise the potential of Generative AI, collaborate with your team to identify areas where it can boost efficiency and save time. For instance, within the SuccessFactors recruiting module, Generative AI can suggest job descriptions to recruiters, cutting down on the time it takes to start from scratch. This integration streamlines the process, allowing recruiters to generate detailed job descriptions in seconds rather than laboring over them for hours.
(Recruitment – Job Descriptions generated from SuccessFactors)
https://www.sap.com/assetdetail/2023/10/a0c2e455-937e-0010-bca6-c68f7e60039b.html
How can we solve complex problems of skills within our organisation with AI?
Skills is the new currency of growth, which is being prioritised by all organisations accross the world. I have answered some of the key areas where SuccessFacactors has excelled in making an organisation skills first within Elevate your organisation's performance by putting skills at the heart of workforce management.
Other considerations:
Ethics & Bias - Organisation’s leadership plays a vital role in shaping the culture and setting up behaviours that are equally important when there is such a powerful tool in your hand. Culture of organisation should be built on the approach of “Doing the right thing” instead of only achieving the targets. Similarly, as AI is more result oriented, responsible teams and humans should always be monitoring for any kind of bias that AI can possess.
Initial and incurring cost: Consider all cost parameters to establish conversational AI and enhancing its usability. There are dependencies on product, usability and budget of an individual organisation and choices that you make which impacts the overall cost.
I have been part of some key discussions and seminars with SAP on these new and upcoming functionalities. Some parts of this blog are taken from below references:
- Talent Intelligence Hub Blog by SAP - https://community.sap.com/t5/human-capital-management-blogs-by-sap/everything-you-need-to-know-about...
- To understand first half release highlights https://community.sap.com/t5/human-capital-management-blogs-by-sap/first-half-2023-release-what-s-ne...
- To understand migration approach and implementation steps https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SUCCESSFACTORS_PLATFORM/e15477b0414b4b25b224a97ad52c12ec/ec345d8396d64...
Summary:
You may find various ways to implement Conversational AI and Generative AI in your business, as tailoring the technology to your specific needs is paramount. Stay tuned for my upcoming blog, where I'll shed some light into how an AI-driven approach can unlock process improvements.
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