In a sign of our times, a recent survey found CEOs so bullish on artificial intelligence that nearly half believe their jobs should be replaced by it. A similar share expected half the skills of their workforce to be irrelevant by 2025.
We'll see if that turns out to be true. But I'm confident that the core human skills we people professionals depend on to assess candidates—things like intuition, emotional intelligence, and judgment—will always be relevant to our work. I also believe that AI will not only not replace our teams, it will actually make them more productive, more engaged, and better at identifying strong job candidates.
AI is shaking up the status quo across all business functions, and people management is no exception. Our people team is exploring how it can improve our ability to attract, recruit, hire, and even retain employees. But leveraging AI is only half the challenge: combining it with a "people-first" culture will provide the ultimate boost, enabling people teams to contribute to more effective organizations.
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People-first is a natural fit for people teams
Human resources is all about human relationships, and a people-first approach makes a lot of sense for what we do. Our mission is to identify candidates who not only possess relevant skills for each job opening but who will also fit into the organization's culture. We need people who will help our businesses thrive, and help employees thrive themselves in the process. Technology can help us make wise choices, but even the smartest tech can't substitute for the human skills needed to identify great candidates.
People-first is a departure from centuries of shareholder-driven business strategy; it means prioritizing the interests of our teams above profitability and even customers. I believe it's the right way forward, especially after the recent collective experience which laid bare how precarious and vulnerable we all are.
Business leaders shouldn't think of employees as inputs to be expanded, contracted, or otherwise manipulated to achieve business objectives. Employees are not inputs. They're people with bills to pay and families to feed. If we treat them respectfully and as valued members of a larger team, they're more likely to be loyal, more attentive to customers, and more dedicated to the organization's success.
AI's unique contribution to employee retention
Our company is evaluating AI for its ability not only to enhance employee efficiency but also to make their work more engaging and more satisfying. We're using AI to streamline essential but repetitive tasks like drafting job descriptions, reviewing resumes, and summarizing employee-candidate interactions—manual tasks which typically absorb a lot of team members' time. AI performs these tasks faster and more efficiently than any human employee could; it also liberates our people team to focus on direct candidate interactions and apply their judgment and intuition to make better hiring decisions.
AI is particularly relevant to the core business of my company—which provides contact center automation solutions. People-first is a core value for us, and it's also a great fit for contact center operations. We're dedicated to helping our customers solve their biggest challenges, and agent attrition is by far the biggest. All businesses struggle with employee retention, of course. It's hard to reduce or prevent attrition when we can't see it coming until it's too late—which has always been the case.
Early indicators of burnout and attrition are hidden in the data generated by the systems contact center agent work with, but we've never had a way to identify, analyze, and aggregate those data fast enough to provide a useful warning. AI is changing that. Emerging new technology can parse internal systems' data and reveal individual agents' burnout risk weeks in advance, and even provide supervisors and team leaders with remedies to address problems and eliminate attrition before it happens.
Using AI to put people first is the future of HR
AI's unique ability to collate and analyze nearly infinite quantities of data in real time and draw useful conclusions from patterns revealed will help reduce chronic and costly contact center agent attrition. That same capability could be used to help HR teams improve employee retention in other types of business as well.
Effective people management has always relied on a blend of technology and human workers. Innovations in AI will continue to amplify efficiency and also improve human performance by enabling more proficient allocation of tasks between people and systems. AI is already helping companies streamline recruiting and evaluation processes, and soon it will also help solve the widespread problem of employee burnout and attrition, making it easier for people leaders to build strong, resilient teams and keep them together and in place.
In Kim Hiler's role as Intradiem's Chief People Officer, she leads the people strategy and execution for Intradiem.
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