AI and people analytics are powerful tools that are changing the world of talent management and HR in general. Talent management – which encompasses areas like talent acquisition, performance management, employee development, and workforce planning – is all about predicting what talent wants and needs, and providing it to employees to help them develop and grow.
Given the right data, AI can uncover trends and patterns that might otherwise be missed. This allows for more informed decision-making based on objective data, allowing organizations to think ahead about strategic talent management needs and proactively prepare for the future.
Here’s how AI and people analytics are impacting talent management.
1. Recruitment
Recruitment is one of the main areas of talent management, and also one area that is being revolutionized by AI HR tools.
From automation to content generation, AI is transforming several parts of the recruitment process, including:
Automating resume screenings
Providing candidate chatbots to answer basic questions
Centralizing documentation needed throughout the recruiting process
Improving the overall candidate experience through streamlined processes
As GPT-powered tools evolve, AI will continue to play a hands-on role in the talent management and recruitment process. With recent advancements to AI models, including GPT4o, AI will be able to analyze candidates more closely, including interpreting body language and conversation in interviews, conducting automated screenings, and leading one-way interviews to help save time for recruiters.
To ensure you maximize the value of AI in recruitment, consider the following steps:
Audit your current process: Take stock of your current recruitment process to identify areas that may need to be streamlined or shifted to fit larger organizational needs. This can help you decide what types of AI HR tools to incorporate that will add the most value to your recruitment process.
Focus on the candidate: Ensure your process is candidate-friendly and put yourself in the candidate’s shoes. Assess which parts of the process may turn a candidate off or cause them to disengage, and focus on improving those areas.
Use high-quality data: Especially for recruitment, which can leave a lot of room for unintentional bias during the hiring process, training AI models on high-quality data is essential to getting high-quality outputs and ensuring that you are making accurate and informed hiring decisions.
2. Employee Development
When it comes to talent management and employee satisfaction in general, employee development is non-negotiable. Especially with recent economic turbulence and an uncertain job market, organizations have put a renewed focus on closing skills gaps through upskilling and reskilling to keep hiring costs low, embrace internal mobility, and improve organizational resilience.
When it comes to learning and development (L&D), AI can help make learning pathways more tailored to individual employee needs, which can boost employee productivity and contribute to the overall success of the organization.
AI is improving several areas of L&D, including:
Personalized learning paths guided by individual employee needs, goals, and current skill set
Skill gap analysis to find target areas for employee development based on organizational goals
Performance feedback and tracking to help employees and managers visualize goals and set tailored strategic objectives
AI is already revolutionizing the world of L&D, and in the future, AI-powered performance assessments and tracking tools will become the norm. These AI-powered development tools and technology can help improve accuracy and fairness in performance evaluations. They can also help set tailored goals that are better targeted toward employee needs and organizational goals.
Here are some actions to take to ensure you maximize the value of AI in development:
Utilize AI-powered feedback: AI can assess and provide feedback to employees based on their development progress, goals, and more, helping to make the development process as effective as possible.
Change development as needed: During major shifts in organizational structure, strategy, or any other changes within the workforce, re-assess and re-evaluate employee development needs to accommodate for organizational changes.
Get employee feedback: Employees are the ones utilizing the development program, so it’s important to make sure that they are seeing progress within their own development. Getting feedback from the people who are utilizing the program is the best way to tell if the program is effective.
3. Strategic Workforce Planning
Workforce planning is a key element of talent management because it helps the organization map out future plans and the roles that employees can play in them.
Workforce planning requires the leaders of an organization to consider the future of the organization, its strategy, and its people. For many, this can feel overwhelming. However, AI is helping streamline essential processes within strategic workforce planning.
AI can enhance strategic workforce planning efforts by:
Assisting in data-driven decision-making
Interpreting talent analytics to provide predictive insights that can guide resource allocation
Centralizing and monitoring essential employee metrics and information for leadership pipeline development
Strategic workforce planning is something that will always be a top priority for HR so that the organization can continue to grow, thrive, and meet its strategic goals. With the help of AI, effective workforce planning will help organizations make more informed and accurate decisions that will help future-proof the organization.
When implementing strategic workforce planning, consider the following actions to maximize value in AI:
Look in the future: Workforce planning is all about future-proofing the organization, so it’s important to think about larger organizational goals for the future and how your current workforce strategy aligns with those goals.
Find tools that align: Not all AI tools are created equal, and which tools will assist in strategic workforce planning depends on specific goals and objectives, so it’s important to evaluate and compare different tools, as well as how they may assist you now and into the future.
Map skills and competencies: Finding gaps in your current workforce will help inform your AI and larger workforce strategy, and help identify gaps in skills. During this process, it’s important to focus on future-forward skills that will help improve organizational resilience during times of change.
4. Administrative Processes
Talent management can come with a lot of tracking and documentation, along with other tedious administrative processes that can take valuable time away from HR pros, blocking them from more strategic functions. With the help of AI, these repetitive tasks and workflows can be automated to save time.
Additionally, AI can:
Enhance reporting and analytics capabilities
Monitor processes and functions to ensure compliance with regulations, such as non-discriminatory practices
Provide centralized document management to keep track of employee information
Many HR pros are already utilizing AI to decrease the amount of time spent on administrative duties. But it’s not just within talent management; AI has the capability to revolutionize all functions of HR. By reducing the administrative burden of an HR department, HR professionals are free to focus on the people of the organization, which can lead to improved employee satisfaction and better organization-wide outcomes.
When utilizing AI for administrative work, consider the following tips:
Pick your battles: Although it can be tempting to automate all tedious processes, some may not be feasible to automate completely or may stretch your budget. Pick and choose which processes are the most time-consuming or tedious, and focus on implementing AI workflows one at a time based on priority.
Be mindful of data safety: Sensitive employee information may be present within the data you need for administrative work, so it’s important to be mindful of best practices for data collection and management within the context of AI.
5. Onboarding
Like recruiting, onboarding is one of the initial steps in the employee lifecycle and is essential to effective talent management. Making a good first impression on a new hire can be the difference between long-term retention and quick turnover.
The onboarding process will be different depending on what each new employee needs. For example, a high-level manager’s onboarding will be much different than an individual contributor. Even for employees on the same team and at the same level may need different outcomes from their onboarding, and that’s where AI can come in.
AI can offer a personalized touch to onboarding and help tailor onboarding plans to individual employees and larger organizational needs, including:
Personalized onboarding plans
Data-driven goals and objectives, such as 30-60-90 day plan
Development plans to help fill skill gaps and efficiently learn job-specific skills
Overall, AI will be able to create a more engaging and personalized onboarding AI will power the future of onboarding by creating a more tailored experience, improving the employee experience overall and improving employee retention.
To ensure you maximize the value of AI within the onboarding process, consider:
Request employee feedback: When the onboarding process is finished, provide room for employees to give feedback on how the onboarding process aligned with their expectations and prepared them for their new role, which can help inform how AI can be changed and redirected to optimize the onboarding process.
Make it interactive: To keep employees engaged, consider implementing AI tools that make the onboarding process fun and interactive, which can help make a good impression of the organization overall, as well as keep employees engaged throughout the process.
Use it to pre-board: In addition to onboarding, AI can be used in the pre-boarding process – before a new hire’s first day – to help welcome them to the organization, plan any necessary training, and start getting administrative tasks in order.
6. Diversity and Inclusion
One crucial part of talent management is ensuring that the organization is following diversity and inclusion standards, such as equal opportunity employment during the hiring process. Plus, creating diverse teams can lead to better overall outcomes.
AI can help create more diverse teams by:
Reducing bias in resume screenings and candidate selection
Providing analytics on DEI initiatives and employee sentiment
Creating more inclusive job descriptions to attract a more diverse range of candidates
As AI continues to become a bigger part of HR’s day-to-day processes, a focus will be maintained on AI’s ability to reduce bias and ensure fairness, especially in the hiring process. However, it is also important to mention that stricter regulations around when AI can be used in the hiring process are beginning to expand, so it’s important to stay compliant by limiting when and how you use AI for diversity efforts.
Here’s how to maximize value with AI when it comes to diversity in talent management:
Be mindful of bias: Although AI can help mitigate bias, it can also hold the same inherent biases that humans do, since AI is trained on the data it’s given. For that reason, it’s important to be mindful of potential bias and check over any decisions that AI makes.
Reassess often: When workforce demographics change, or major shifts happen, talent management goals may need to be shifted. It’s important to reassess, especially when it comes to a topic that’s constantly evolving such as DEI.
7. Talent Retention
Retention is an important metric for any organization. It can be a pulse check on the health of your organization, telling you if employees are happy, motivated, and committed to the goals of the organization.
Talent management and retention go hand-in-hand since poor management of talent can lead to turnover. However, figuring out what your specific workforce needs to stay in the organization long-term can be difficult.
Luckily, AI can improve and optimize talent retention, including:
Predicting retention and turnover trends based on employee data
Monitoring employee engagement and other metrics critical to retention
Providing data-driven suggestions to improve and maintain retention
AI will continue to be a tool for HR pros to improve essential HR areas like retention and satisfaction, helping to better analyze employee sentiment and other metrics that can inform an organization’s HR strategy.
When utilizing AI for retention, consider the following tips:
Focus on personalization: To improve retention, engaging employees is key. So, if you use AI to personalize your retention strategies and engagement initiatives, employees will be more invested and involved in the process, since it will be tailored to them.
Assess employee sentiment: Employee sentiment can be the key to getting a quick pulse-check on the organization and how employees are feeling overall, which can help predict retention trends.
What Now?
AI and people analytics are revolutionizing the world of talent management, ensuring that talent management processes are future-proof to adapt to the changing needs of employees.
Organizations that don’t adapt will lose their competitive advantage and have more trouble responding to and embracing future changes. Utilizing AI in the right areas – and knowing how to use it right – can build resiliency and ensure that your organization is prepared to thrive in times of change.
Join the Talent Management Summit 2024!
For more insights into the future of talent management, join Marcus Evans Summits for their Talent Management Summit 2024.
The Talent Management Summit, scheduled for 23 - 24 September at the prestigious Four Seasons Hotel in Westlake Village, CA, is an exclusive, invitation-only summit that will bring together leading talent management executives representing America's foremost companies and innovative solution providers from across North America. The Summit’s content is aligned with key industry challenges and interests, relevant market developments, and practical and progressive ideas and strategies adopted by successful pioneers.
Key topics of the Talent Management September Summit 2024 include:
Leadership And Change Management
Tech In Talent Management
Championing Diversity, Equity And Inclusion
Designing A Winning Employee Experience
Winning The Talent War
Future-Proofing Your Workforce
This year’s speaker lineup includes:
Rochelle Stewart, Senior HR Director, Comcast Cable
Alicia R. Faneuil, Senior Director, Global Talent & Development, ADP
Larry Baider, Vice President of Talent Management, Leadership & Learning, AmeriHealth Caritas
Jenna Eldridge Jeffcoat, Senior Director - Talent Management, Lowes
Scott Thorenson, Senior Vice President - Talent & Culture Program Director, US Bank
For inquiries, please contact Anna Iacovou at this link.
