HR and artificial intelligence: What’s next?

Artificial intelligence has already proved its ability to support HR decision-making, whether it be to win, retain or develop talent. But what more can we expect moving forward? We ask the expert: Cyril Le Mat, Director of Data Science at Cornerstone OnDemand.

First, let’s clarify what we mean by “artificial intelligence.” Contrary to popular belief, it is not about making and programming machines that mimic human intelligence. Artificial intelligence refers to the intelligence of machines, as opposed to that of humans. Specifically, it relates to their ability to analyze their environment and to react and adapt to it as machines. The aim is not to replace humans but to support them by executing tasks that machines can perform better and faster.

AI research in the HR space focuses on analyzing and cross-referencing three types of information: profiles, positions and training content. “One of the big challenges with HR is that the data to be analyzed is mostly unstructured text containing terms that are often very subjective,” explains Cyril Le Mat. “Legal texts are objective and leave little room for interpretation. This is not the case in HR. A CV is difficult to analyze because the concepts behind the words vary greatly depending on the individual. Given that HR data is intrinsically complex, most systems have avoided using this information in the past.”

AI research in HR has primarily focused on identifying personal competencies, the nature of the connections cross-linking the various skills, the definition of job profiles, and the cross-referencing of all this data.

AI tools already support — at the very least — the following basic functionality:

In what kind of HR context are these technologies used? There are three main ones:

All three of these applications are already available on the market, albeit at different development and performance levels.

AI is a dynamic technology on a rapid trajectory toward market maturity and widespread standardization. By its very nature, artificial intelligence is in a constant state of flux. As machines get better at learning, we can — over the coming years — expect them to get better at doing what they already do today. AI applications for HR have already shown efficacy and are set to become even more powerful. “Everyone has their idiosyncrasies, their ways of describing things,” continues Cyril Le Mat. “AI will better understand how each individual expresses themself so they can assess that person’s skills more accurately.” The result will be increasingly tailored responses and services. “This will be a core market trend for the next ten years.”

According to Cyril Le Mat, however, AI’s contribution to HR will not stop there. “The organization-wide visualization of skills will make it possible to support HR decision-making and strategic workplace planning. The idea is to use this “skills” data provided by employees to produce visual maps that will help inform decisions by company management. The aim is to evolve HR beyond a reactive function (we have a vacancy we need to fill) to a strategic role capable of performing a skills gap analysis and thus identifying future training. Recruitment needs to achieve the company’s goals, as well as be able to identify development opportunities from pockets of skills, and so on. These visualizations allow HRMs to go to the decision-makers and business leaders with an HR vision for the skills and opportunities available to the company.”

Simple in theory, using AI to support strategic decision-making still requires fine-tuning and preparation for mass roll-out. The technologies are already well advanced, however. “We have around 50,000 defined skills. You could find 5,000 or so in any given company. The challenge is to represent all these skills by mapping them. The 1,000 most important skills will be pooled together according to similarity. The visualization allows you to zoom in and view each skill in its context beside other similar skills, but also to ask questions and compare two entities. We will see many more products of this type being developed to aid global strategic decision-making within organizations.”

There is enormous potential for developing artificial intelligence in qualitative and quantitative terms, whether in HR or other applications. At the same time, technology has its limits. “No AI system could claim a detection rate of 99.99% with this type of data,” says Cyril Le Mat. “The challenge is to improve gradually from 95% to 96%, 97%, and so on.” There are at least two things that AI will not be able to do in an HR context, though:

AI’s contribution to HR lies above all in this complementary relationship with humans. “We can say with relative certainty that AI will never replace human decision-making, but it frees up the time spent looking for information and analyzing arguments to open up employment opportunities. I was surprised by the extent of the positive feedback from employees and HR managers alike. Tools that incorporate AI are changing the relationship between employees and HR. For example, employees no longer reach out to their HR department for information, but rather to say ‘I’ve seen this opportunity, can we talk about it?’”

Contrary to initial fears, artificial intelligence does not dehumanize workplace relationships. Instead, it benefits everyone involved by giving them more autonomy and greater initiative capacity.