When you are going through your journey of AI discovery, make sure your HR department is part of that team.

In today’s business world, companies are scrambling to harness the potential of Generative AI. But amidst the excitement, many find themselves unsure of how to maximize the impact of this new technology. If this is resonating, your HR department might just be the unsung hero you’ve been overlooking.

Forget the notion that AI implementation is solely the domain of tech gurus. While your CTO and CIO are crucial players, the data you need to make the highest impact often sits with another executive: your Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO).

Here’s why your CHRO could be the secret weapon as you go through the AI discovery process:

• Who better understands your workforce’s skills, challenges, and potential than HR? They’re the keepers of your company’s human capital knowledge, data that is necessary to analyze the impact of potential solutions.
• HR understands your hiring struggles, pinpointing exactly where your organization needs an augmented workforce.
• They know why people stay, and more importantly, why they leave. This insight is key when prioritizing & designing potential AI solutions.

Your CHRO is a critical bridge between your tech ambitions and your most powerful asset: your people. Through their data and insights, your organization can better understand where the current workforce most needs assistance, redefine job roles to better align with AI solutions, and ultimately knows where AI fits best.

Being the AI compass

When crafting your digital roadmap, your HR team needs to a part of the conversation. From hiring, talent and change management, and determining points ripe for automation, here are some key areas where your HR department can help you with your AI implementation.

• Identify where your company is struggling to hire. Your HR department can analyze job postings and hiring data, pinpointing bottlenecks in your recruitment process. Jobs that are difficult to hire for or retain are great places to start with AI.
• Ascertain skills that are needed in each department. Your HR team can determine the skill requirements of each department based on successful hires and current employees.
• Assess repeatable activities common across the organization. HR understands the details of each job role and can best identify common activities that would broadly benefit from AI augmentation.
• Evaluate which departments to automate first based on need. Using this framework and their knowledge of hiring issues, HR can suggest which departments would benefit from AI tools, and in what order these implementations should take place.

Determining implementation priorities

Imagine this scenario: Your marketing team wants a chatbot, accounting needs an AP/AR automation tool, and sales is really excited about automating the proposal and contracting process. You HR team has the data to objectively prioritize these three options. They know that accounting has the highest turnover due to tedious data reconciliation tasks. Armed with this insight, they can make a data-driven case for prioritizing the accounting department’s AI needs, potentially solving multiple problems with one strategic move.

Alternatively, all three departments are short staffed, and based on the open job postings, every department could benefit from some form of data entry as opposed to a specialized tool for each department. Your HR department can then recommend that automation of data entry would benefit all departments, making it the correct route through which to start your digital journey. Each walks away with a tangible benefit to their team, allowing them to focus on addressing these issues internally instead of spending resources on data entry.

While your CTO and CIO are the critical players in implementing successful AI solutions, prioritization is one arena where your HR team’s insights can result in the most positive change. From a tech standpoint, every team is going to have certain needs, and it might be harder for other roles to consider the employee’s opinion on where this can have the most impact. Your CHRO can be a key asset in deciding where to focus your efforts first.

Empowering the unsung hero of your organization

While balancing organizational goals with employee requests can be a tight rope to walk, having the internal knowledge of how departments are performing, as well as who could truly benefit most from an AI tool, makes HR a key decision maker in this process.

So, when you are going through your journey of AI discovery, make sure your HR department is part of that team. The insights they bring can greatly increase the speed and impact Generative AI can create at your organization.