Agile People Fika Cast - AI in HR

welcome to the adal people F cost we talk about how to navigate with agility in our [Music] organizations hi everybody and welcome to Agile people fee yeah we are meeting once a week where we U talk about um interesting topics and we are inviting anybody who would like to join uh but today we have some agile people here and we will today talk about agility in HR how can HR use um AI I should have said AI in HR and now somebody's joining us it's David great welcome David we say hi there David welcome to the agile people F and anybody can join this is just an informal discussion so today's topic will be AI for HR what does it mean for HR that we now can use AI for all sorts of HR related stuff and what will be the consequences what are the risks um things like that is something that we would like to discuss today so maybe U some of my teammates here would like to kick off um with um a question or um thought maybe Martin would you like to start sure I can try um AI is everywhere right at the moment feels like I use AI a lot myself uh I talk and interact with shut GTP a lot to get some inspiration and thoughts um so I'm sure any most things that we in our type of work do re needs and could make use of AI in different ways um so yeah we we can start with Recruitment and talent acquisition Maybe that could be a HR perspective uh that could use AI maybe help to streamline recruitment processes and yeah even finding people maybe I was thinking there there are some risks um associated with using AI for recruitment what are risks that you can see so one thing I remember seeing it's so if you few years ago of course but Amazon I think it was they made a an AI recruitment bot uh that was there to analyze and understand CVS of course they fed the AI with data it needs to learn based on some information and the data that fed it with was all the data that they had used to uh recruit people and when they did that they also as we do all humans we have our biases and our behaviors in how we view different people so that was also of course added to the AI and the way that AI behaves is that it sort of amplifies things so what they got out from the result from that research at least was an AI that was super biased uh not very good at seeing anyone except for white male individuals as a good candidate to any type of recruitment which is of course wrong uh but if you amplify something that is what you get and I think that is a a thing that we need to be aware of with AI in general I know that the work has progressed of course since then to so that you can reduce the risk of that but it's something that the AI Engineers uh constantly have to work with in order to mitigate those type of biases and behaviors in the AI systems yeah and also that going through CVS is one thing and and I mean there is some human interaction part of that as well to listen into to behaviors that could be subtle but still important when you when you hire people so so um of course anag maybe can learn that as well but I'm just saying that there are things that are not factual but more emotional that could be important as well yeah I I I don't it will take some time but I saw that Tesla had a sales AI where which calls people who have been on the web page put their um phone number there and then it just calls that person and make the first call they know that that person is probably interested in buying a Tesla yeah and then it talks to them asking them to come to to to a a station where they can take a look at the car and you can find it on the Internet it's very it's not super fast you can see that there's a pause between when they it's actually thinking about what it needs to say and but it's super slick super real actually yeah is there an expectation then and maybe just a wrongly expectation that we think that AI is or we expect AI to be clever than it actually is you know in that example you gave there is you're asking people to look at CVS and you're asking them to say well you don't you don't exactly take every box of every role that we're looking for but let me be a bit clever about this and say well you know what I can see this job role and of course that's going to have those elements in it so you've you you're asking it to exceed that capability um if I think about um some of my career history then with implementing technology you always get that expectation that is greater than it is so for instance if we have a move to the cloud in terms of Technology then I I've had clients say oh well it's just a whole load of robots just running around you know processing these transactions end to end and I don't really need to do it all I need to do is just you know over see it align it um you know and um the the end results producing I didn't really have to do do much around that so there was an expectation that only jump in if something goes wrong but hey the robots will take care of it because they're clever enough to do it but there I really think H sh plays an important role because if you only leave this to the engineers uh you will not get the same because you need to involve people who have uh understanding and knowledge about the human behavior and and one thing I can see because today in some recruitment processes you use like personality test or IQ test or these kind of tests so if you don't say yes or if you don't qualify on this you go to the goodbye box uh and um I would say many of these candidates could still be a candidate for the position I think it's how you um design the the the selection phase uh because in AI with AI you can use so many more parameters which you don't have in your head today and and and you can also if you do the right design you can also uh eliminate some biases we have for example I think age discrimination ethnicity could be one religious could be another one uh which you will take more away because people might have some wear some things on their head which can be discriminating in some aspects for some one uh while you don't see this with AI I I yeah I think that's that's a good good thinking I was thinking my my continuation of that thought was that recruitment does not need to be that reductionistic I mean we use IQ tests and other tests in order to it's it's a reductionistic way to um make the recruitment process more efficient but when you make things efficient you also risk of missing things that's important yeah and AI could inter you people people potentially yeah yeah as a first input and gather the data and make it easier for the human to make informed decisions instead of just using IQ tests yeah but but also another thing is what you say but also today we we do a lot of recruitment based on what you have been doing in your former positions it should be a little bit this is the position we have what would you like to do if you got the job and you could start describing how you could see the organization how you could see the job how you could see whatever that is important depending on the job yeah yeah yeah instead of only basing it on past experience or yeah you good addition what would you like to do for the future you know and how would you like to contribute to our vision our purpose our goals and what do you what can you bring to the table here I guess it it comes comes down to how we want to use Ai and which decisions we leave to ourselves and what what the support is we're asking for yeah I mean I still see AI very much in its infancy and in that respect that it's not in it's not trying to take over your job and its entirety it's taking over the the I guess the the heavy heavy load or the you know the the standardized type processing and so leaves that skill to the human being who actually operates it whether it's in the design phase or whether it's in the out output that comes it's still ultimately going to be your decision you're not asking AI to to be a deci for you it's merely a enabler and and I think it's a good good thing that um you know at this stage you know you're not really going to have that abuses or or or real um requirement for regulation because you know you're still in control of it it's not the technolog is driving you it's the other way around you're still in control of of what you needed to do now there's there's a conference actually happening today um I don't know where it is and they're talking about that very thing listen I know we're all talking about AI I know we see it as a threat to you know terrorist threat or or or you know um other other abuses that could come but it's it's it's about coming down you know we're still very much in control of it and we use it for what we need to use it for yeah yeah we'll get it wrong sometimes but hey that's experimentation you know we just keep working with it is it's there as an enabler yeah there used to be a um a role called computer that was a person that was yes absolutely we don't have that anymore but people are still operating and using computers to do their work so and I use a calculator sometimes I don't do all my math in my head uh it's very good to have a calculator actually even though it's in my fault nowadays yeah but then then you know how to use it but what I fear a little bit with the HR systems that will come is that you use your tradition way and you take a workday or success factor process and you build it into IE instead of starting with from scratch and think how can we do this differently absolutely and I saw that recently as well Eng I was at a work human conference back earlier in the year and they did exactly that their AI to was on performance reviews they they started off with a blank sheet of paper for everyone and it was literally can I get AI to write me a bog standard um performance review you know make it professional make it funny make it serious make it whatever and then it generates the text and for you as the human then going in and then you personalize it so it's basically just taking that that blank sheet of paper generative text to say oh well I like that that's that's pretty good but let me just reshape it in terms of the role that we're actually looking at and the way that that person performs in the role and so you're you're still using that human skill of personalization because you know sometimes when you try to write um a performance review and we've all done it whereas you having to write from scratch and you're you know you're ripping up the paper and throwing it away and scribbling more and all that sort of stuff you know generative text is is just doing exactly that and then your manipulation there afterwards is is intended I guess to be fairly minimal yeah I I use chat GTP as a sounding board I just bombard it with my thoughts lot of different things different perspectives and I ask it to okay can you write something about this and then I get a very nice and tidy it doesn't I don't always agree with what I see but yeah it makes some sort of order of the things that I have in my head which very Convent way too and much faster if I need to write it down myself I could have done it but it's much faster doing it together with chat GTP yeah yeah okay so so we move to a topic outside of recruitment for HR I I have a list of things that I would like to show and see if there is some topics that you would like to discuss more in in detail there are some examples on on this picture that I'm showing now uh how you could use AI for HR so is there any specific box that you would like to uh to comment on or deep dive more in of these specific thoughts because when you ask um chat GPT about in what areas will um will AI change HR then it will just mention all areas but this is a little bit more specific it's not the performance management or or Learning and Development or talent management or Employee Engagement but it's more you could do this specific thing and and I like that a bit better um could could I ask then um P because I'm looking at a number of these and they're all kind of data driven of a fashion because the data exist and then you could easily pair and what you need to do to drive that out if I was looking at the one that one that drump out with me immedately was nurturing the company's culture just because I don't believe that that would be databased and and and therefore easy to determine yeah it's probably based on on data that we are feeding it with what are the values that we would like people to do more of and so on and then it will send out little uh nuggets or messages maybe or I don't know how it works but you could imagine uh that we are feeding it the culture that we want and then we ask it to what are your suggestions for how we could work with that for example uh and increase those values I'm thinking that many of these let's say they analyzing the the state of Employee Engagement for instance as well it's it's and I see it in others as well it's it's a possibility I guess to to get AI to supervise or to measure the health of the system we're working in so what is the flow of the company what are the behaviors and map that to culture maybe at the end so if if someone is keeping track of how all the delivery teams for instance um if you're in it setup so how are they performing how are people acting in the system how much weight time do we have for decisions you could get a good overview of How It's functioning I guess and then if you could connect that to cultural behaviors maybe you can draw conclusions about that and try to nudge the system in in another direction or highlight things bottlenecks for instance could be one thing yeah could also you can use like we said you I use it to procreate text you can create personalized uh information that's more attuned to specific people uh connected to the company's culture that is more appealing to them even though it's the same thing but it's more directly aimed to a specific audience that's something you can get help from from AI I think uh then know I don't know if it's super connected here but maybe you can even do leadership coaching or leadership trainings using AI I've seen uh different type of coaching tools that is using uh AI in order to train people to be better coaches for instance they are starting po pop pop up to pop up and that could also of course nurture the company's culture I actually asked CH J okay and they it can facilitate communication both Employee Engagement personaliz Learning and Development diversity enclosing employee wellbeing so it's a lot of these things uh fostering Innovation yeah I can see one of the things I can see is really the first one facilitating communication because there you can do a lot uh and personalize it a little bit to to me as an individual uh and also you know uh Company New processes new values best practices um and you can feed a lot of information and and and they um tailor the messages to to to an Department a whole company or individually so what what about our current HR platforms or HR it systems uh what do you think um what is the current situation for them do they keep up with the pace here or do they still need to to be more mature before we start thinking about buying new uh it platforms for HR I think you start to see some good examples of of where AI has been used in in some systems I think the larger ones try will try and adapt um not sure how they will succeed in they need to think a little bit new I think but but um it's a lot of knowledge also in these companies that you can use uh I presume but I think that in the future we will see new companies that are not there today or or not known at least they might have started there yeah maybe building AI into the platform from the beginning and then of course it's much easier to to make it work the way you want it to work um and I I think also you can use this because um not everyone wants to be employed some people want to be Freelancers so I think you can use this also to build in when to use freelance competence and when to use internal companies I think it will I think it will be more we will not have these standard roles in the future it will be more that we pull the competence or the skills when we need it so any HR System that I've seen is it's never really fit for purpose in terms of a wholly integrated solution for the many components of HR and so as much as they they try to do it what it sounds like is that either AI is going to help improve streamline that standardization within a one prod or it's still going to reside as a a best of breed applications and and so therefore with the fluidity or the the the unknowns of of an HR type role in the future um maybe that's the way to go and AI you know sits above that and and orchestrates you know the better ways of working yeah I think you already start to see that you have systems that are are good at performance or Recruitment and and that will probably accelerate more I think I think these large like work they successful I think they will struggle a little because of the pricing structure and they know need to do everything there would be more there so for many years there have been a consolidation in the HR System market and maybe it will now go the other way so to speak that we will see read Solutions powered by AI That's a probable outcome and because of AI I think that is also possible now because it can grasp several systems together which was a little bit harder before because then you needed to have a good data warehouse to make that the integration would probably be easier also dat between different platforms there's been a lot of talk about the fourth Industrial Revolution and AI has always been one of those items that that people talk about that is part of of the fourth Industrial Revolution so so I I I think we are only in the beginning yeah seeing that so there will be a lot of disruptive new Innovative tools and ideas connected to AI Al also in HR so we we I don't think we can foresee what will happen actually as usual yeah as usual yeah I guess we see it more as an opportunity than a A disruption yeah yeah but it it will be destructive compan making traditional HR tools and I'm thinking about the they will still Prevail probably most likely but it's I if compare with Airbnb for instance and the hotel business when Airbnb managed to get into the business it was quite destructive for the whole hotel business of course they are still there and they've uh adopted adapted I mean record but not all of them and made other things change and I think AI will do the same so summarizing the discussion we think we will get rid of boring routine tasks pretty quickly but for the more sophisticated AI use or Solutions we will probably need to wait some time and the IT platform for for HR the market there is somewhat immature still and uh but I would say whether we like it or not AI is here to stay and if you are in business you need to relate to it you need to adapt to it you need to understand how to use it and um you can then as always as we do in agility we run small safe to fail experiments and then we learn and then we improve and this is the way we need to handle AI as well is my take um and we need to follow the development of the new HR tools that are uh coming now because there will be moreful applications probably that are being born born they that are appearing a lot will happen in the market during the coming years but I think the most important thing is that we should have fun with it we should try different things have fun and play and and see uh how can we get rid of the boring tasks first with the help of AI in HR I agree to that good summary very good okay so when do we see each other next time Wednesday next week I W have a topic yet we were talking about the discussion team development so that might be a topic but we'll put it on the LinkedIn uh feed as normal okay yes so next week um same time Wednesday 3:30 C maybe another time where you are we will see you again and with that we thank you for today and thank you U all of us who have been here today and uh take care everybody take care bye bye bye bye thank you [Music] oh