Investing in AI for Your Recruitment Team

Originally published on HR.com, the foremost, trusted industry resource for education, career development, networking, and compliance.

Tools that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) have come a long way with regard to workforce analytics. When integrated, combining AI with workforce analytics allows businesses to integrate disparate data systems and use predictive data to make business decisions based on their greatest asset: their people.

Many HR Departments are managing numerous disparate talent-related systems that require separate logins, data management processes, and reporting tools. Gathering this information for executive management to make strategic business decisions is nearly impossible and prone to human error. More than 70% of companies now say they consider people analytics to be a high priority.

Given the costs of sourcing, hiring, onboarding, managing, and replacing employees, executives need accurate analytics often. The key to solving this data issue or lack thereof is by using workforce analytics software powered by artificial intelligence. These combined, give businesses a data-driven approach to people analytics allowing them to make important financial decisions.

Let’s dive into a few additional ways AI can help power workforce analytics and how it benefits organizations.

AI Powers Workforce Analytics

Sourcing, hiring, onboarding, managing, and replacing employees is challenging and costly. Given the steep costs in each scenario, the executive suite is in desperate need of one system that automatically finds the important data that truly matters and allows them to make impacting decisions that benefit the business. As data-driven HR practices are becoming common among business leaders, it’s important to understand the impact these tools can truly have.

Using a workforce analytics tool which leverages AI gives the ability to:

  1. Address workforce productivity changes with workforce analytics.
  2. Aid proactive HR strategy and organization.
  3. Understand the performance, demographics, retention rates, payroll gaps, etc. of your current employees allowing you to make more informed business decisions.
  4. Source areas where efficiency can be improved with automation. While workers are an asset to a company, sometimes the tasks they do can provide minimal returns.
  5. Improve employee’s engagement by understanding their needs and satisfaction. The tool will pull data from every interaction with employees from the time they started to present day and will help create a better picture for retaining them.
  6. Create better criteria for HR and hiring managers to provide a better hiring process overall.

People Analytics Powered by AI Allows Business to Lower Turnover Rates

Human Resources is uniquely positioned in the organization to ensure the workforce is aligned with the needs of the business and at an optimal cost. Now, more than ever, business leaders need strategic insight and the ability to model how turnover trends impact revenue and profits. And, they need this information to be accurate and in real-time.

Traditional HR analytics examine employee data across different dimensions such as department and demographics to identify similar patterns within metrics like turnover and retention. Conclusions are then used to formulate decisions that affect the business.

Predictive workforce analytics does this by going a step further with artificial intelligence and using the evidence from traditional analytics as inputs for advanced techniques like machine learning. This data provides forward-looking measures such as a “flight risk,” which quantifies the likelihood of an employee’s leaving an organization within a certain period of time and the potential causes.

Predictive workforce analytics also identifies hidden connections between key factors contributing to employee turnover. The main variables the systems look into include pay, promotions, performance reviews, hours of work, commute distance, and relationship with a manager. Businesses also use external data such as labor market indicators, social media, and current economic scenarios as data variables while formulating a hypothesis and building models for retention. HR teams and managers use these findings from the report to ensure actions are taken to help retain employees.

Automatically Identify Internal Candidates Based on Workforce Analytics

Predictive workforce analytics powered by AI allows businesses to indicate the top talent to fill the open positions, making sure the HR department has the data they need to promote the right talent. Not only are you filling those vacancies faster, but you’re doing so effectively and at a lower cost. Breaking it down further, these tools aren’t helping the HR department performs “talent rediscovery” searches on previously known candidates – it’s compiling data from internal candidates to rank them based on their aptitude, experience, and other indicators which help predict if they would make a good fit in the open position or not.

AI ensures this process is accurate and compiled faster by integrating with every system and showing you the data that really matters to ensure you’re making the most informed people decisions. Who’s performing the best, what’s their performance been like the last three years, how many raises have they received, and ensuring this data is used to make better hiring decisions are just a few features on how this can be applied to internal hiring.

Analytics is not a thing of the future – they are adapting, changing, growing, developing, and strengthening companies across industries. And while some companies may not be applying them yet, those companies that want to make an impact on retention and maximizing talent management will implement workforce analytics into their company structure to gain a competitive advantage within their industry sooner rather than later.

Your Fast Track to Replacing HR Systems

HR organizations are facing competitive challenges on several fronts attracting top talent, developing a workforce for the future, and providing strategic insight to the business. These challenges are intensified by the demands of digital transformation efforts happening across the enterprise. To support the success of these transformation efforts and to become a strategic partner to the business, HR needs to quickly modernize processes and acquire new capabilities to infuse efficiency and effectiveness.

In recent years, HR organizations have embarked on a digital transformation journey, starting with the replacement of core systems. Core HR technology systems – also known as HRIS (human resources information system), HRMS (human resource management system) or HCM (human capital management) – store necessary information about an organization’s employees to be used for payroll, benefits, training, time tracking, worker eligibility requirements and commonly integrates with systems for applicant tracking/talent management, workforce planning, and learning management. Since the core system is the centralized database for employee information and data from other systems, the data must be treated carefully in the system replacement process.

In the last decade, the HR technology market has improved dramatically. HR technology has brought automation, AI, VR/AR, and innovative tools to HR functions such as recruiting, employee engagement, performance management, and learning and development. Organizations recognize the availability of these dynamic tools and are investing in the right technology to address complex business challenges. A major investment in the last few years has been HR core systems. Many HR organizations have already taken the step to replace core systems as part of the digital transformation journey.

While the majority of organizations embark on a system replacement effort to acquire new capabilities, many are missing the opportunity to unlock the full potential of these modern systems. Due to a lack of deep technology expertise, HR organizations tend to rush their replacement project. This is due to the sensitive nature of the data collected in the HR systems, and the pressure to quickly implement core systems since they affect many systems downstream. This bias toward speed often leads to shortcuts in the system implementation process. It also lends itself to a preference of working with vendor partners who are more focused on bringing HR systems to go-live as quickly as possible. The combination of a generic and fast implementation process with a partner incentivized by reaching the finish line has contributed to a growing number of HR organizations having to repeat core system replacement.

Since the capabilities provided by HR systems in the market are comparable to each other, what differentiates the level of functionality an implemented system provides over another depends on the implementation process. Also, the method of the implementation depends on the selected partner since this typically goes hand in hand. The two types of implementation partners that organizations usually work with are a software vendor partner and a client partner/outside consultant. Each partner will determine the depth and breadth of the implementation process, how quickly the system will go live, and determine if the system will meet the needs of the business.

Although selecting a system implementation partner may seem arbitrary, what a vendor partner offers can differ substantially from what a client partner provides. Organizations should choose a partner based on the level of industry expertise the partner offers, the breadth of knowledge the partner has in the required technology tools, and the diversity the partner brings in system replacement experience. The table below provides a view of the comparison between the two types of implementation partners.

Figure 1: Differences between vendor partner and client partner

FACTORS TO ACHIEVE A SUCCESSFUL SYSTEM REPLACEMENT

Replacing core systems is a significant endeavor within an organization and requires not only a monetary investment but also the commitment of time and resources. For this reason, it’s important to ensure the success of the system replacement project. Three crucial factors of success are workflow and process optimization, data cleansing and data quality, and implementation partner.

1. Workflow and process optimization

  • Don’t want to repave the cow path

  • Need to understand the processes that will go away and how the new system will handle other processes

  • Leverage automation

  • Configure the system with the new process workflow that will support future business

2. Data cleansing and data quality

  • Know the types of data that can be collected and where the data is coming from

  • Clean the data

  • Build integration points so data can be pulled into the system as necessary

  • Understand which data is required

  • Transfer cleansed data to a new system

3. Implementation partner

To truly leverage the innovation in modern systems, HR needs to configure the system chosen with a partner who understands the clients business and the needs of the organization going forward.

PUTTING SPEED OVER QUALITY IS DETRIMENTAL TO DATA

Organizations have been replacing or modernizing their HR systems in the last few years to gain new capabilities to address HR challenges to compete for talent and build a robust workforce for the future.

The trend has been to replace core HR systems, expecting the new platforms to provide the robust capabilities necessary to advance the functions of HR so they can provide strategic insight to the business to make critical decisions.

With little knowledge of technology and trust in the capabilities, functionality, and strength in the vendor market, HR systems replacements have mostly focused on the speed of implementation.

Organizations are relying heavily on the software vendor and the vendor’s partner to guide them after their HR system implementation, that it’s up and running correctly, and that they have all the promised capabilities at their fingertips.

In relying on the vendor, their implementation process, and when the implementation of the HR system goes live, there are several possibilities organizations are missing. They are missing opportunities to:

  •  Optimize their current processes,

  • Analyze, cleanse, and understand their data

  • Establish the proper change management procedures to ensure successful adoption

HR systems touch many other systems in your organization that contain very sensitive data. Organizations need to take the necessary time to complete a needs analysis, gather requirements, perform an RFP, and conduct research of outside consulting firms that can execute an implementation.

When implementation is done right, organizations are better equipped to execute their HR functions effectively and be the strategic partner that their business needs.

At PredictiveHR, our experts can help you optimize your core HR systems to help meet your talent needs while maximizing the productivity of your current workforce. Schedule a demo with us today.

Predictive HR to Speak at HRTech Tank Boston

To close out the month, PredictiveHR’s VP of Business Development, Scott Santoro, will speak at HRTech Tank, an event that brings together leaders in the Human Resource Management and Recruitment software space.

Being held November 30 in Boston’s Financial District, HRTech Tank is a global series of demo day events for HR executives, investors and startups. The idea is to facilitate intros between those groups where practical discussions about expectations that buyers have towards HR tech products, best sales channels and growth tactics, customer success and sales excellence are on the agenda.

A valuable opportunity to network and share ideas with experts in the HR industry, the top-of-mind panel sessions highlight the industry’s evolving market landscape and growing technical challenges.  Art Papas, CEO of Bullhorn will keynote the event and panel sessions include:

·         Home-Grown Solutions vs Market-Ready HR Tech

·         Avoiding Unconscious Bias in Developing/Implementing HR Tech

·         HR Tech Partnerships and Integrations

Scott will be speaking at 10:00 a.m. on the Home Grown Solutions vs Market-Ready HR Tech panel alongside executives from Wayfair and Nextwave.  Are you attending? Let us know and follow @TalentData for updates #HRTECHTANK