15 Ways HR Can Use AI Today
Today's HR teams are already using AI in a variety of ways. From onboarding to recruiting, hiring, and even performance management, AI can help HR with repetitive, manual tasks, saving valuable time and resources.
However, not all AI options are made to work off the shelf. For more complex use cases, sophisticated solutions need to be built.
To help you identify specific ways AI can boost HR efficiency at your company, we've outlined three categories of AI software:
- General AI software
- Specialized AI software
- Custom AI solutions
Each category is labeled as a mode of transportation—bike, car, and airplane—based on the level of sophistication and effort required to start using that option.
Find out how each category is defined and how HR can implement each into their work to make the most impact.
Key takeaways
- HR can immediately boost efficiency using low-effort General AI software to draft initial content, such as job descriptions, policies, and internal communications.
- For deeper impact, invest in Specialized AI software to analyze employee feedback, accelerate people analytics, and synthesize performance review data.
- The most tech-savvy organizations build custom AI solutions with in-house teams to tackle complex, unique business goals like predicting candidate success.
General AI software
General AI software offers the most accessible way to begin using AI. Just like a bike, you can hop on and get started with these options. Most are available through services like ChatGPT, Office document copilots, visual generators, or AI-enabled browsers to help research and author HR content.
Low effort—HR can get started today.
- Write job descriptions: Use AI to write an initial draft of job descriptions, and then assign an HR team member to review the content.
- Generate questions for interviews: Use AI to write an initial set of interview questions, and then assign an HR team member to review the content.
- Help with policy writing: Use AI to write the first draft of a policy or standard operating procedure (SOP), and then assign an HR team member to review the draft. With human oversight, HR can modify the draft to be more specific to the business's needs.
- Draft other communication and messages: Use AI to draft other communication or messages from HR. Examples include: correspondence, announcements, and news updates. Assign an HR team member to review the content before sending it to employees.
- Transform HR data within spreadsheets: Use AI to work with data in a spreadsheet, such as using it to help you craft Excel formulas and manage the spreadsheet more efficiently.
- Create images for a message or deck: Use AI to create images for presentations. With AI's help, you can describe the image you need, and it can quickly and easily build a visual aid for your deck.
Specialized AI software for HR
For more specialized situations, HR teams will need to invest in more sophisticated AI software. Just like needing a driver's license to operate a car, these options might require a little more knowledge and investment, along with careful evaluation and selection of AI-powered vendor tools. They add even more efficiency to traditional HR tasks, helping HR team members spend more time on critical business needs.
Medium effort—HR will need to research which option is best for their team and for their employees.
- Improve employee feedback analysis: Use specialized AI software for HR to analyze feedback survey results that gauge employee sentiment. AI can gather insights, summarize information, and suggest actionable steps.
- Answer employee HR questions: Use specialized AI software for HR to directly answer common questions employees bring to HR personnel. You can also use AI to suggest a response you'll approve before sending it to the employee.
- Match skills to job descriptions: Use specialized AI software for HR to assist with repetitive tasks and workflows (e.g., scanning resumes). AI can help match key skills from job descriptions to potential candidates with a database of applications. While this has been happening for years with machine learning, new AI vendors are evolving their tech to improve results.
- Synthesize performance reviews: Use specialized AI software for HR to gather and summarize feedback from multiple employees or to help draft SMART goals for HR and managers to approve.
- Accelerate people analytics: Use specialized AI software for HR to help your team analyze HR data. AI can look for trends, patterns, and correlations between multiple datasets to help HR present solutions to leadership for retention, employee satisfaction, productivity, and more.
- Customize employee training: Use specialized AI software for HR to craft new ways to present information for employee training. AI can also help outline employee training events, suggest topics to cover, and more.
- Onboard new hires faster: Use specialized AI software for HR to quickly bring new hires up to speed. With the right software, you can help employees get access to information they might have traditionally gone to someone in HR for in the past. This can help HR team members spend less time fielding questions and more time on business-critical tasks.
Custom AI solutions
To tackle the most complex tasks, HR teams will need to build a custom solution. Just like the time, commitment, investment, and complexity of flying an airplane, these options require even more effort and specialization.
Often deployed by larger, tech-savvy organizations, these solutions are typically built by in-house teams of AI and machine learning (ML) engineers and data scientists to meet the business's unique goals.
High effort—HR will need to partner with an in-house team or hire out the work to build a custom solution.
- Predict candidate success in specific roles: Build a custom AI solution to track and analyze conversion rates for potential candidates. With AI’s help, you could build predictive scoring to assess the probability of a candidate’s success in a new role.
- Personalize branded candidate outreach: Build a custom AI solution to find and engage with potential candidates. Use AI to generate customized messages and communications for each candidate. While some of this can be done with off-the-shelf tools today, a custom solution offers more control.