How AI helps HR people build better organizations

There’s no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how human resource (HR) professionals work.

Whether it is sourcing, recruiting, or onboarding talent, AI is making life easier for HR people. However, the technology has a wider, more holistic role to play — one that helps prepare for tomorrow and build a better organization that is equipped to compete in the digital age.

HR professionals are discovering that AI can be used to create interesting solutions to benchmark talent, assess skills needed to perform a particular job, and deliver appropriate training modules that help employees transition from one role to another.

Solutions that are created using AI provide companies with unique insights into key skills that competitors thrive on, help identify deficiencies, and ensure customized training can be provided to upskill staff in the shortest possible time.

Coursera, for example, is now using the technology to help companies benchmark their talent against their peers, determine where employees fall short, and develop a strategic workforce transformation agenda. Then, the platform generates a learning plan to help quickly cover up the differences.

Say you’re running a data science team, using AI-powered skills benchmarking solutions, you’ll be able to spot the fact (in the chart above) that while you’re more than competitive or cutting-edge in all aspects of data science, you lag behind when it comes to machine learning. As a result, you’ll know what area or skill needs focus and investments.

IBM, too, has developed a similar solution — in fact, it can estimate future employee performance with 96 percent accuracy.

Truth be told, even when training is provided, it’s not easy to gauge how much employees have learned or what skills they’ve mastered. AI can help here too, by creating personalized evaluation programmes that assess the candidate’s ability to perform the task they’ve been trained for.

The fact is, the workplace is changing so quickly that employers need to take steps to prepare for the future — including training their workforce, their human capital, for the digital world.

A survey of more than 2,000 organizations by Willis Towers Watson revealed that over 40 percent of respondents are planning on or considering changing the focus of performance management to include future potential and possession of skills.

AI can help companies get future ready — in the most efficient way and in the shortest possible time.