By Jens Löhmar
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a game-changing force with the potential to revolutionise productivity, efficiency, and innovation across your organisation. It extends beyond isolated business units, impacting every facet of your operations. What was once a boardroom topic is now an imperative throughout the C-suite: in a recent survey by Workday, 98% of CEOs recognised AI’s immediate benefits. This article delves into how Chief Information Officers (CIOs) can leverage AI within the human resources (HR) domain to enhance the full potential of their workforce and drive success.
AI as a catalyst for HR transformation
AI is a catalyst for transformation, particularly in the field of HR. A significant number of HR leaders – around one in three, according to our Global C-Suite AI Indicator Report – believe that AI can deliver immediate value in performance management, skills management, and employee recruitment and onboarding. No longer a futuristic concept, AI is already at work in HR, helping people across the globe to meet their full potential.
Nurturing the right skills
Enhancing human potential through AI begins with identifying and nurturing the correct skills within your organisation. AI becomes a valuable asset in recognising skills by evaluating existing proficiencies and identifying areas for improvement. AI-driven tools amalgamate data from various sources, such as CVs, sales records, and digital badges, to infer skills. This information can then be validated by employees and managers. Skill maps, based on this data, spotlight the skills your organisation possesses versus what it requires, enabling prompt actions to bridge skill gaps. This insight allows tailored training programmes, aligning employee skills with business goals.
Building engaging employee experiences
In today’s workplace, employees want something special and unique for them, not the same for everyone. They want things tailored to them at every step of their career journey. Delivering these tailored and intelligent employee journeys is made possible by AI and machine learning. These are unique experiences that provide support, help build connections and are a catalyst for new ideas. By using machine learning to automate processes and AI to inform decisions, your team works better and smarter – and employees get the personalised experience they’re looking for.
Revolutionizing HR Service Delivery
Employees expect quick and easy access to the information they need. AI- and ML-powered HR service delivery solutions deliver personalised responses that proactively reduce the burden on your HR team.
To improve HR service delivery, CIOs need to consider two strategies. First, it’s important to meet employees where they are in their workflow, providing easy access to the information they need without leaving their preferred workspace. Second, it is essential to create self-service options for employees. These will allow employees to easily find accurate answers to common questions, reducing both employee frustration and the workload for HR.
A robust mobile HR interface is essential to enable employees to access information wherever they are, and the tool you choose should also simplify access to knowledge articles, creating a seamless experience for employees. An integral part of this enhanced HR service delivery is the use of digital assistants in the employee workflow, creating an environment of ‘conversational HR’.
Make better workforce decisions, faster.
To thrive in today’s world, your workforce and business must be able to adapt quickly. The massive amount of people data requires AI to make sense of it and deliver timely insights that help teams make critical decisions about diversity and inclusion, hiring, retention, skills, talent, performance, and more, with confidence. With employee listening tools like Workday Peakon Employee Voice, AI also facilitates real-time engagement with employees, ensuring their voices are heard and acted upon.
Personalised learning and development
AI shines in human capital management through personalised learning and development. CIOs and CHROs can implement AI-powered platforms that deliver customised training content tailored to employees’ skill levels and career aspirations. AI tagging enhances resources within learning management systems, making content easier to find and more efficient to use. These modern platforms adapt with employees as they progress, ensuring a continuous learning experience that enhances individual potential while addressing skills gaps.
The Workday approach to AI
For nearly a decade, Workday has invested in AI to push the boundaries of human potential. We embed AI and ML throughout our products, but our approach doesn’t require IT to procure or manage a separate AI and ML stack or data integrations. Workday provides simplified and accurate data integration to train AI and ML models. This frees up IT resources to focus on other important business transformation initiatives.
Trust must be built into – and expected of – AI and ML. That’s why we’re committed to ensuring that AI is used in an ethical, transparent, and accountable way. Workday is the only major cloud HCM and financial management provider that offers a clear understanding of the details of each AI and ML model used to help mitigate the risks associated with AI and ML. With the goal of keeping humans in control, no decision is automated by Workday’s AI and ML technology: it’s all about augmenting human appraisal and judgement for better decisions.
In conclusion
The CIO holds a unique opportunity to collaborate with the CHRO in enhancing human potential through AI. By identifying the right skills, empowering employees, improving decision-making, and fostering innovation, organisations set the stage for greater success. If you’re interested in exploring AI and ML’s limitless potential to enhance human potential, please get in touch. We’re dedicated to partnering with you to implement cutting-edge technologies, driving success and innovation.
Jens Löhmar is CTO of continental Europe at Workday
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, helping customers adapt and thrive in a changing world. Workday applications for financial management, human resources, planning, spend management, and analytics are built with artificial intelligence and machine learning at the core to help organizations around the world embrace the future of work. Workday is used by more than 10,000 organizations around the world and across industries – from medium-sized businesses to more than 50% of the Fortune 500. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com.