When you think about Alexa, Google Assistant or Apple’s Siri, there’s no surprise in the fact that these chatbots are capable of offering benefits to a business, either small or large. But what about helping out specific departments, like HR? Can AI chatbots answer your employees’ questions and help HR teams increase productivity while adding value to their capabilities?
The answer is: Yes, conversational AI chatbots bring several benefits to HR and a company’s employees.
Conversational AI combines natural language processing (NLP) with machine learning to continuously improve the AI algorithms. The technology has principle components that allow it to process, understand, and generate responses naturally.
Laurence Goasduff, PR Director EMEA and India at Gartner, shared that the benefits of AI for businesses are finally becoming a reality—especially since the pandemic, when AI came to the rescue of HR teams that were challenged to answer a flood of COVID-related questions.
This article explores the various benefits of conversational AI in your organization’s HR department.
Freeing up your time
In the era of digitization, your business needs a robust solution to support your HR team and empower your employees to focus on the most important tasks.
AI chatbots can help in freeing up HR time, making room for other essential activities. Moreover, it is the perfect solution when HR team members aren’t available. Through conversational experiences, AI delivers answers instantly, providing support to employees with various questions, thereby increasing employee engagement.
A chatbot can assist your team in driving more engagement and, ultimately, raising retention. This saves up not only time but also resources.
Driving scalability
The pandemic caused many employees to seek help from HR teams to better understand new work processes and schedules. This meant more challenges and an increased workload, which needed to be addressed either through hiring more staff or using new technology.
So, with the help of conversational AI chatbots—that can respond to numerous simple inquiries—HR services received a boost and were more prepared to answer employee questions and needs. One of the perks of having such a chatbot is that it is available 24/7, thus lowering costs and scaling services across all departments.
Improving service quality
With 24/7 service available, employees receive the answers to their questions anytime. Employee satisfaction levels increase significantly, as the quality of HR services is significantly improved.
Moreover, your HR delivery will be more efficient. AI chatbots also come with the potential to deliver personalized experiences to your employees, which is again a great benefit for employee engagement and an alternative to traditional chatbots.
Reducing workload volume
An AI chatbot’s capabilities are not limited to just taking in questions, requests, and inquiries, but also include a quick search through HR data sources, FAQs, policies and others, to provide your employees with the best answer.
Your HR advisors will be as well empowered by AI to deliver faster and more accurate information, reducing their workload volume and optimizing operational efficiency.
Onboarding & training employees
When new employees join your organization, their first few days or weeks can be exhaustive, packed with team sessions, orientation, setting up IT systems, and becoming familiar with policies and documentation.
But they must have the smoothest experience possible during onboarding and, if necessary, during training as well. AI chatbots will enhance this experience and free up the HR staff’s time to focus on other urgent issues.
Conversational AI can also take some stress off your hiring managers, helping them throughout the process by answering questions about pay, benefits, and more.
Creating Intelligence Augmentation (IA)
According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, “Augmented intelligence is a subsection of AI machine learning developed to enhance human intelligence rather than operate independently of or outright replace it.” This simply improves human decision-making. In HR, the advisor and the AI chatbot can work together to maximize strengths and provide the best services to employees. This partnership advances human capabilities more than ever before.
Conclusion
Voice assistants started achieving full potential in 2020—the unfortunate year that marked businesses across all industries, all over the world. Due to easy accessibility, new voice technology has grown in popularity, as employees needed the perks of accessing digital assistance anywhere and anytime.
The 2020 McKinsey global survey on artificial intelligence (AI) has revealed that “companies plan to invest even more in AI in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its acceleration of all things digital.” Moreover, 50% of the survey respondents shared that their organizations have already adopted AI in at least one business function.
When it comes to HR processes, integrating conversational AI will bring numerous benefits to an agile, modern, and competitive business.
