HR folks, it's time we elevated the conversation about AI

I’m sitting here in the wonderful Breakfast Club in Soho preparing to speak on the “We need to talk about HR” podcast about all things AI in HR with Felix Mitchell.  As I tucked into my enormous breakfast (it was massive), I began letting my mind wander to what I might say and, in that moment, I had an attack of imposter syndrome. Who on earth am I to be podcasting to anyone about AI, I’m a “People” person! Gulp.

A little about my background. I’m not an engineer, developer or creative technologist. I’m currently People Director at “nudge” a global financial education platform for employees. We are on a mission to change the world of workplace financial wellbeing by using behavioural psychology and in the moment “nudges” to deliver scalable impartial tailored financial education to people globally.  There's my elevator pitch.  Done. No more. Let's talk about AI...

While I have worked in creative organisations that leverage technology for over a decade, I’m not “technically minded” per se beyond enjoying a gadget or two and having an A-Level in computer science, earned in the (very) early noughties when the likes of Sugababes, Holly Valance and Ronan Keeting were routinely topping the charts. So not current. Far from it.  The hot sweats began. This was a subject for technologists, engineers and CTOs, right?

Wrong. This is, I think, increasingly where many of us outside of “tech teams” are falling down and missing the opportunity that AI presents. The paradigm shift of AI is here, like it or not, and it is not something which will be the preserve of a select few who understand the intricacies of the technology. Like the smart phone it will crash upon us all like a tidal wave and we will be swept away with the possibilities it creates. We all use smartphones, but few of us would claim to know or care how the tech works and nor should we. It is a tool.

The dilemma, in my view, is twofold. We HR and People practitioners start our careers as risk managers by training. The need for creativity and innovation comes later. This can mean our default position by habit is to see the risk, rather than opportunity, first. This can often stifle the creativity that exists within us all. Now, clearly, uninhibited sharing of our organisations’ data with an external AI tool is something to give us sleepless nights. I get it. But that does not mean we can ignore the potential or sidestep the conversation.

Secondly, the starting point for many (and I mean everyone, not just HR and People practitioners) is the view that AI is still something which should be driven by their CTO or the “tech” team. Now, of course, the CTO is our trusted partner in experimenting with the technology but they cannot be responsible for all AI experimentation for every function in the organisation. The adoption of AI is something that must be led by the people closest to the opportunities it unlocks in partnership with their tech experts. I have spoken to several weary tech CTOs of late who share this view.

So, what about HR then? I am going to steer clear of the tired cliche uses of AI for now which don’t really need repeating. These cliches centre on AI as a tool to speed up our processes, sifting through candidate applications faster and worries about inherent bias. That’s not to say these aren't important streams of thought, they are. Undoubtedly when AI is applied well it has the potential to supercharge those processes but I think that misses the point and is cart before horse to only focus on those things.  

As HR and People practitioners we need to elevate our thinking outside of the function to the organisational level. The business does not exist to have supercharged HR processes. We should now be driving the conversation throughout the organisation, whatever your role, about AI adoption and working to understand how our organisations might be transformed by the adoption of technology, including AI.

One example is truly understanding the impact of AI through a lens of strategic workforce planning. If our organisation's operations stand to be transformed by AI, let’s say through the obvious example of task automation, what does that mean for the way work gets done at all levels? Let's take the likely scenario of the entry level work handed out to those in their early career, usually as a learning opportunity, being automated by AI. How does automation of that work impact our ability to onboard and train our talent pipeline? How can we differently educate and train people when there is less learning opportunity? What does this mean for the combination of skills we need to build or buy? How do we tackle knowledge and skill drain when traditional learning opportunities are lost? What does AI mean for our clients and their operations and how might that impact our business? And how can AI help to answer the questions it asks of us?

I wish I had answers for you. Our role as HR and People practitioners should be to help the organisation solve these problems first and then make sure we consciously and deliberately design the interventions that might result from that. As wonderful as a more automated talent acquisition process might be, if AI reduces our overall hiring volume and changes the nature of the hires we are making, while a project automating our hiring process might make a small dent on a teams OpEx it might not be the best use of usually finite and expensive internal resource for innovation and experimentation.

This is a convenient example and one I am really only using to make a point. Yes, for HR and People folks AI undoubtedly has the potential to transform what we do but we are not alone in that. Let’s agree to start as we always should - facing the organisation first and tackling the big commercial or operational dilemmas. Let's drive the conversation at the right levels and make sure that the right planning around AI is taking place and that its influence on the people landscape is intentional and well thought through. Once that thinking is done, we can build our AI-people strategy in service of that new direction to really make a difference.

My call to action. Let's start planning how we as HR and People practitioners can elevate the conversation about AI, make sure the right people are involved in the right discussions, work side by side with our tech colleagues on that journey and from there let's design meaningful deliberate initiatives. Easier said than done, I know, but we’ve got this.