Should Your HR Team Really Be Using AI?

Hello everyone and welcome to the Econoak Leadership Series. My name is Virginie Glaenzer, founder of Econoak and a fractional chief marketing officer, but for today, your host. And for those who are not yet familiar with Econoak, we are a small community of fractional executive women who present an incredible opportunity, especially to founders and CEOs, to tap into executive leadership expertise at a fraction of the traditional cost. But it's not just that. Companies with gender diversity on their executive teams are 25% more likely to have above-average profitability. That's the research from McKinsey. So if you don't know that, now you do. Our community includes fractional executive advisors and coaches in virtually all areas of expertise. So if you want to know more, if you're curious, you just go to acornoak.net and you can discover a whole new world. With that being said, today we're going to try to answer one important question. Should your HR team really be using AI? Now you might think it's an easy answer, but there's a lot to consider as you'll hear in that conversation. So before we begin, let me introduce briefly each of our speakers. Lisa Schenk is a fractional chief people officer. She has 20 years of experience collaborating closely with private equity firms, boards, and CEOs, providing invaluable insights and expertise to accelerate success. From strategic planning to executive coaching, and from culture change to M&A discovery, Lisa's diverse skill set ensures that her clients achieve remarkable outcomes. Welcome, Lisa, to the discussion. Thank you, Virginie Glaenzer. Laura Woolford is a fractional chief people officer with an impressive HR leadership journey spanning GoDaddy, Tesla, and GE. Laura specializes in leadership development, coaching, and organizational effectiveness. Her strategic finesse translates business visions into tangible people strategies fostering diverse and skilled teams. Welcome, Laura. I'm happy that you were able to be with us.

Thank you, Virginie. Happy to be here.

And finally, Carol Fraser, a fractional chief human resource officer with 30 years of experience. She optimizes workforce planning, performance management, and total rewards, driving business success while offering expert-level HR services and coaching. Empowering professionals to elevate their careers. Carol, thank you for making the time and welcome.

Thank you, Virginie. I'm happy to be here.

So welcome again to a fascinating conversation on AI and HR, which will be led with one question: should your HR team really be using AI? Now to get us started, I thought we would begin with a very broad question, and we're always going to take, you know, different turns to answer. So maybe we'll start with Lisa. But here's the first question to all of you. How will AI transform the traditional roles and responsibilities of HR teams? Maybe Lisa, if you want to start. Oh, and you're muted.

That is, that is a big question. I just bought myself a moment to think about it. You know, I, I would say that right now, there's not a whole lot we need to do except be smarter. You know, I don't think AI has outsmarted us yet. And I think we need to be learning how to use it to increase efficiency and effectiveness. And I think we could make a lot of lofty claims about where this is going. But right now, I'm not seeing big changes in roles. I'm seeing small changes in efficiencies and effectiveness. And also increased need for AI knowledge, experience, and understanding of how to use the technology without creating bigger problems. That's the short term anyway. Long term, I think that the question still remains to be answered.

What do you think, Laura?

Yeah, no, I 100% agree with you, Lisa. And I think as we were chatting about this before, AI is something that everyone's talking about now, but it has been around for a while. We've been using chatbots inside many of our companies, whether it's for general questions, whether it's IT or HR or benefits or even I log into my Fidelity account and there's a chatbot that wants to try to solve all my problems for me. So I think we're really just starting to learn and we need to lean into that learning. Where I have seen some impact more recently has been what I would call enabling the existing toolkits of HR folks. So whether it's helping them with starting points, more creativity, maybe revamping some existing processes, you know, automating some standard things, but it's not taking over the entire function. And I think we're a little ways away from that happening, if ever.

Interesting. What about— what do you think, Carol?

Yeah, I would agree. I would say there are opportunities that we could leverage AI for today that will make our jobs easier in human resources. And let's face it, we are always a hamster on a wheel, a lot of the HR departments of one. And anything that can help to create efficiencies and you can leverage some component of technology so that you can more focus on the human side of human resources. I think that's where AI we should be leaning into to see what are the problems that we're experiencing and is AI one of a potential solution towards the problems that we're seeing.

Interesting. OK, so let's, let's be a little bit more granular because there's nothing like examples. So I'm curious if you could all take a turn and share perhaps some successful examples or case studies of AI-driven workforce planning that you've seen or even that you've implemented.

Yeah, I'm happy to jump in on that, Virginie Glaenzer. You know, some of the things that I myself have been using AI with my clients, you know, first thing that comes into mind is revamping some policy language. And so I was actually going in and, you know, ChatGPT, I think, has become very common with a lot of HR folks when they're trying to write something. And so going in there asking for ideas or starting points or things to consider is a great way to use that specific tool. What is very interesting though, and I would encourage anyone to go out and try this, type into ChatGPT and ask it to write a specific policy for you. It won't do it. It will come back with the things for you to consider. But again, it comes down to the culture of the company that you're in, where you're located within the US or outside of the US, and local laws that you have. And so those things need to be taken into consideration. But it is a great starting point. The other thing that I've used some of the different AI tools for were, you know, stale job descriptions and trying to get more granular on what's really needed. So if you've done good workforce planning, you understand the skill gaps that you need to really supplement or fill, then you can use some of the AI tools to help you with revamping those postings, those things that you want to get out there to try to attract that new and different talent. That's how I've been using it.

I've had a similar experience. Yeah, it takes away the blank page paralysis. So I think when some of the— myself and my clients, we use it to create newsletters or training or to take last year's performance review presentation and kind of revamp it with some language that is more aligned with the behaviors associated to the values. So we've been using it more as well towards the how do we create something that is more engaging through our words. So I think that that is one example that we could provide. And the thinking about anything with new tech is you do have to think about How is this going to enable us? And if, if this is going to help me better communicate what it is that we're ultimately looking as the output, then you've got a partner right there.

Wow. And I, and I can build on that. I think I, I've had experience with both of the things that you're talking about. And I think something like 54% of HR teams are now using AI for as part of their, like, talent acquisition process, right? But I've had this sort of a different set of experiences. Part of the work I do is strategic planning. And so in that context, I'm interviewing lots of external parties on what sort of what matters most, right? Even a simple like SWOT analysis, right? Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And I've been playing with AI as a tool for organizing that data. Because I'll have, you know, 30 pages of data. And, you know, the beauty is you can put it in the system and ask the system to organize it for you. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's still very generic and it doesn't take into account the things that Laura and Carol are mentioning. And those are the things that really make your work exceptional. So I think, I think AI is going to be a great tool for starting things for people who don't have expertise to try to learn and be able to communicate better. But those of us that have deep knowledge are not going to become less valuable. In fact, I think more valuable. I've used it also for 360 feedback, which I think is really interesting because lots of organizations do some version of 360. The version I do is highly qualitative and extremely expensive. And, you know, if I'm an HR person and I can either interview people, literally AI can capture your interview notes and then organize 10 interviews into a pretty reasonable set of things a person could work on. Like, the efficiency in that is extraordinary, but it really does take an expert lens to make it really meaningful for the organization. And then I, you know, I have another client who's building out a company that I think we're gonna see more of this. I maybe, maybe within the year, really, where you could have an HR person available in video, full video as a virtual Q&A. What do they call it? Conversational video. So we take avatars out of the equation, and you can literally have interviewed me for 6 hours. And now any employee that has any question that anybody could have thought of can literally talk to me and get the answer by just asking, asking their question. I think we're going to start to see more of that and it's going to start to get, it's going to start to get interesting.

That sounds incredibly appealing, at least to me. So I'm hearing that AI right now is a good, a good aid, but we want to see something more practical. So I love your example. So I know it's important to evaluate both sides. What would you say are the risk or even concern about implementing AI in HR practices? And also, do you think that that can compromise the personal touch in employee management?

I'll start that one. So I think AI isn't going to be a catalyst to business success. I think that will always be your greatest asset, which is your employees and your leadership. And until such time that I am fully replaced by a robot, people are complex. It is ever-changing. The species changes every day with every interaction that we have. And it's also really important that diversity will be even more important if we lean too far into AI. So we have to ensure that the output is as unbiased as possible. And what Lisa was saying is even though we get all that qualitative data, we need a discerning view, a discerning person who can look at it and ensure that it is going in the direction that we're hoping to go. And if a business is shifting strategy based on socioeconomic demands, the customer's wants and needs are going to change. And so does the skills and knowledge and expertise of the employees. And even if we were to automate some training and development, the measurement of success of those programs will still be somewhat subjective. And that's going to require the HR professionals supporting the business.

You know, I think there are two things I'd love to talk about on this subject because I'm getting kind of riled up. One of them is sort of a nice— I think one of them is a positive, right? Which is I think that younger professionals are becoming more and more valuable because of their digital native lived experience. And so some of us that have lots and lots of experience are valuable because we have deep knowledge. But I think younger people coming into HR that can help the rest of us really understand the power of not just AI, but all of the technological platforms available to us. I think that's going to be really interesting to see how that workforce engages. But more broadly, I think I have a concern or an interest in how is this going to impact not just HR professionals and their teams, but the work we do because I do think AI is going to replace many jobs. There are many jobs that really AI can either replace or make so much more efficient that, you know, one person can do the work of three. And I think HR professionals are going to be in the middle of a massive workforce shift that we're going to have to be prepared to manage in a way that is humane and aligned with our organizational strategy and culture. And I think it's an opportunity for HR professionals to lead the way into this future where I don't think people are going to have to work as hard as they did before. And yet we're going to have to find ways for people to contribute meaningfully in our society. So I like the big questions on this one.

Well, and I'll just kind of piggyback on that, Lisa. And then I also want to comment on something Carol brought up as well. You know, I think, I think you're right. I think especially more administrative, repetitive type of jobs or work, those types of things are probably very ripe for, you know, incorporating AI and AI tools to automate that because you're absolutely right there. Then it comes down to, so how do we reskill the workforce? How do we invest and train and develop these folks so that they don't see it? I mean, it, it's not so different, frankly, as automating manufacturing lines., right? As you bring in robots, as you start to automate. So then how do you reskill your workforce and create new opportunities for them? And Carol touched on something that I 100% agree with. Like, we are dealing with people. The most unpredictable variable— I've always told my teams this— just when you think you know what they're going to say, they do, or react, they're going to do something totally different. And so it frees us up as HR professionals to try to work with that, help them develop them, spend more time frankly on the human side of human resources versus the administrative side of it. And so I think there's so much opportunity there. But we do have a great, I think, obligation to lean into this and help our organizations and our employees understand OK, how are we going to navigate these changes? Because they are going to come. Some are faster probably than others.

You know, and I just want to touch on both of you. This is a great opportunity. If we are going to see certain roles being replaced by AI, it requires a greater engagement of those higher skilled talent in your organization. And so that engagement and that support of the employee base that is now what we have going forward is a great opportunity for organizations to recognize that the HR departments of one or the small departments, even though the headcount itself may go down slightly, we need more people to support now even a more valuable asset because now there's not as many people. And if you lose that one person that's been upskilled, it's going to be a greater impact to your business. And the best The best way to avoid that is to lean into your human behavior specialists, which is human resources.

Love that. So some of you have already touched on that topic, which was another question around— when I hear what you are saying, it seems to me that to the original question that we started with, should your HR team really be using AI, the answer is yes. You've talked about a few different ways to use it. In as an HR professional. But now, how should leaders prepare their HR team to embrace and adapt to AI technology? I know, Lisa, you mentioned a few things, but I'd love for you to expand on it.

Well, and I can expand on those here, especially just listening to Carol and Laura bring their perspective. I really do think, and this is, we know HR professionals have a challenge when it comes to holding gaining and holding their seat at the table. And I think this is one of those moments where there's a tectonic shift coming that is going to affect the humans at work in significant, meaningful ways to both the people and to the companies. And I think this is a place where HR executives can get really knowledgeable and be ahead of the curve on this and really help the rest of the organization recognize that we actually have to start getting ready for this. Now. And if you know, if you expect or can even imagine that you might lose 10% of your workforce in the next 3 years, that's going to be a very different organization. And so I think HR leaders can increase their own kind of impact on the organization by taking a very early, very strategic view on this. 100%.

Oh, go ahead, Carol.

Oh, I was just going to say that it's, it's about what we've said kind of before, which is where is the efficiencies, right? Where can we eliminate some of the administration and focus more on the strategic and on the people. Because if we think about throughout history, we've always had new technologies. I mean, we can all age ourselves here and say, remember when the internet came and everybody thought the jobs were going to be gone and then it was a huge boom of a brand new industry that employed more people than ever before? This is not to be feared, but rather to be curious. We have to figure out where does this fit into my current role, my future role, my business today, my business tomorrow. And Lisa's right. We've got to just start to see what— and there's so much AI out there— what AI is going to work for my organization. I don't think there's a blanket AI that every company is going to use because, again, what's your culture?

Right. Yeah. And I would just add 100% agree both with Lisa and Carol. I would add too, and it kind of goes back to the responsibility and obligation of creating an environment of belonging and inclusion where possible. Get involved in the creation of whatever that AI is. If there's an opportunity to make sure multiple voices, because think about it, someone's programming these. And if it's a homogeneous group that's programming it, it's going to create a lack of inclusion and belonging. And so that's going to be completely counter to a lot of what us espouse and believe in from a human resources perspective. And so being curious, like Carol said, leaning into it and making sure that you're getting multiple voices engaged in the creation of whatever those tools are that you're going to be using is absolutely key.

And Laura, just to piggyback on that, you know, we have to remember if you're using generative AI and you're putting in information that might be specific to your organization, it's getting out there. And so having an HR person, like you said, on that team that's deciding or defining what AI looks like for your organization is gonna be pivotal because Lord knows the next thing you're gonna have to do is term someone because they put information in there. So Bring us in early. We can help you try to avoid that.

Well, I'm so glad you said that, Carol, because I was reading a— I think it's a SHRM report on HR and AI and the future of all of this. And one of the really striking things I saw was that something above like 50% of respondents did not have confidence that their HR team was ready to contribute to their AI strategy. So I don't think the people who are driving this think of HR professionals as partners in this. And so the earlier that we can help them understand that, no, in fact, there are lots of ways that an HR professional or an HR team can add important value, I think we have an opportunity to sort of help ensure that we take something that's incredible like this and don't turn it into a huge problem. Instead, actually leverage it so that we can all be more successful.

Yeah, less reactive, more proactive, because it will, as you've already said, Lisa, it'll shift the workforce.

Absolutely.

You don't want to be behind the 8-ball and deal with the ripple effect of your culture dying in the process. I love that.

Love that lovely curiosity invitation, because I think that's— it really changes the way you approach a new technology when you start from that angle. So I know we only have 30 minutes, and actually we have like more than 10 minutes, so we'll be able to open to Q&A if there's any. But to end this conversation in a more playful way and to shine a light on your own individual practice, I thought we could do rapid-fire questions with answers less than 10 seconds each. So I have 3 questions and we're just going to go in round. First question, using 1 to 3 words based on your experience or your client's feedback, what are the most significant impacts of AI on HR today?

I'm just going to say efficiency.

Creativity.

Laura, creativity.

Sorry.

And I'm going to say anxiety because I think that they're having to manage not only their own, but everybody else's anxiety in their organization.

Good.

I think we just hit the top 3.

Yeah, I think so.

That's awesome. Second question, we're going to change a tiny bit on really your fractional work. What do you like most in your fractional work?

I'll go first. I really love bringing the many years of experience and the people strategy to small businesses who are in growth mode and helping them build better foundations so that their leaders are, are more engaged and understand more on how to communicate with their employees, especially in our remote hybrid world. I live in that world and I love that world. And that's one of the things that I love bringing is my coaching acumen to be able to say, let's ask ourselves, how can we create the same environment that we used to have pre-COVID, but make it even better than it used to be?

Very cool.

Laura, you know, similar to Carol, I love the opportunity to leverage my expertise and experience to really help lots of different clients and companies. When you're in one company, you're impacting that little world. But when you're in the fractional space, you get the opportunity to touch so many different cultures and have the ability and opportunity, frankly, to make a difference in more places. And so I just really enjoy that.

Beautiful. I like all that stuff too, but maybe I'll flip it around a little bit and say that one of the things I've enjoyed the most about it is being able to take decades of experience and experience with hundreds of other companies and share it with people who've maybe worked for the same company for their entire career. A lot of these smaller companies have people that have been with them for a long time. And from the CEO down, they don't know what they don't know, and they don't know how other organizations operate. One of the most enjoyable things for me is being able to tell them they're not alone. Problem they're having with their culture is actually quite common. I see it all the time. And I think that it really does free people up to think, oh, God, it's not just us. And then, and then we're able to bring all this experience from other kinds of companies and just sort of a broader toolkit than anybody who's kind of raised within one or two companies can ever really achieve.

Yeah, that's great. Very well done. And then the last question: name one thing that most people don't know about fractional work.

I'll go. We don't get caught up in the politics. We're part of your team. We help your business succeed. We set you up for the future, and then we're out. We don't get caught up in the drama.

Drama.

Awesome.

Yeah, I, I'll add that, it's really our jobs to not be the hamster on the wheel and to always stay abreast of what is shifting and changing or new out there that can support your company and your people and your leaders. So that is one of the requirements of being an effective fractional is not to bring old age techniques, but rather how do we keep our skills strong and sharp to bring you the best for your organization?

No politics, cutting edge.

Amazing. Yeah, I've got two, so I don't know. I mean, but one, one is that, you know, we love, we love what we do or we kind of wouldn't be doing this. You know, we're at this stage of our careers, most of us that sign up for any kind of fractional work have had lots of experiences. We've been successful at lots of things. We enjoy this. So you're bringing in that kind of positive energy to the business. Um, and the other one is, I think, you know, it's different than a part-time person. You know, a fractional executive is bringing a strategic mindset and a sense of ownership that I think is really different than saying, oh, well, we just hired a part-time person because we really do. We don't go in unless we're going to have a seat at the right table to make real impact. So I think between loving it and actually being very targeted and impact-focused, I, you know, I think it's probably a better experience than people might realize.

That's amazing. Thank you so much for that. And so while I'm going to look at the LinkedIn page to see if there's any question, why don't we end if there's one of you or all of you who wants to say one last thing on the topic of AI and HR, any last thoughts that you feel was left unsaid, feel free to jump in.

Well, I know that we've recently, the three of us have kind of talked about what we've been reading about, right? We, there's, there's a recent article out about IBM pausing their talent acquisition while they assess what roles will be fulfilled by AI. And, you know, this group here has been talking about, well, what kind of impact did that have on the culture? And what exactly does that mean for the retention of your current people? So even though you've got a big name out there who's decided to try something first. In the human resources brain, in our lovely brains, we think, okay, understand from a business strategy, but from a people strategy, what did you just do? So I just want to kind of pull that in if you guys want to talk about that or a different article you read.

Yeah, no, I think that's a— that is very top of mind for me because it feels incredibly short-sighted. You know, as we all discussed, it's like, what is that longer-term impact Your existing employees are now going to be looking over their shoulder, maybe looking at LinkedIn job postings to see what else is out there because they're scared now. They don't know what that means. So I understand a lot of companies are probably doing similar types of exercises, right? Evaluating where there's opportunity to potentially have AI replace certain types of work. But to go public like that is kind of like, it's a little short-sighted because who knows what the final answer will be?

You talk about candidate engagement being lost. It's like nobody now wants— everybody's going to wait and not apply to IBM.

And that's all people are talking about, right? Versus great opportunity.

It's this great example of, oh, there was a TED Talk I heard years ago before AI was even a thing about the fact— I think it was they were talking about autonomous vehicles, which maybe does imply some AI.. But the idea that all the trucks, you know, would be driven autonomously and all the truck drivers that would be out of a job. And, and, you know, we're like, just leave it to humans to take something like the, the, the, the new context where we don't need to toil and do the really hard kind of less kind of thoughtful, like, just, you know, hard work kinds of jobs and turn that into something negative. Like, we've got to really look at this as something that can be positive, not just inside the organization, but for, for society. Right? And by, and things like this are exactly what you get concerned about because it's feeding this narrative that this is going to be bad for all of us. And, you know, I don't think that's the narrative. I think, I think curiosity, to Carol's point, is a much better lens. And, you know, I think there's some excitement here. It's really about what we do with it. And I'm excited to see what we do with it.

That's a very good point. Thank you for that. So there was some questions, some of them we've answered, but there's one that we haven't answered, which is from Omar Brown. He's a certified Scrum Master and he's asking, do any of you have a wish list of AI features?

I'd love it. You're going to make it for us?

I mean, I could just throw one out that I don't know that this is the most important feature, but I do know that there's a limit on how much information I can put in to have AI sort of organize and pull themes out of. And I, I just upgraded my ChatGPT to 4 or whatever it is, and I still can't put in as much information as I would like. So that's an easy one. You know, the other one is I'm very interested in this conversational video. Concept. And I know there are companies like Concerta and StoryFile that are really driving this conversation. And I think that's going to do some really interesting things for us. So I'm interested in more features around conversational video for sure.

Well, I'll echo the data, the data analysis, the being able to put as much data in as you can.

Would be fantastic. All right, Carol, what do you wish for?

I mean, you guys have kind of said it. I mean, that is where— that's where I get my hangup as well, is you'll put a lot of information in. I also, you know, it's— maybe it would be nice for more tutorials on how to write better prompts so that it's easier to get to the answer and then I know that one of my colleagues kind of gave me almost like— I know there's lots of scripts out there, but again, every organization's kind of unique. Every individual is kind of unique. And so maybe just a look at this, an AI chatbot that's— are you trying to do this? Here's some chat prompts to try. I think that that would be very helpful. Help everything again, just move a whole lot faster and make me more efficient.

And Virginie, I don't know if this is the last comment, but I do think for this question, it's sort of appropriate. Can I share my little ChatGPT answer? Oh, yeah. Yes. Because I think looking at features, one of the challenges is how generic the information is. So I typed in, give me one thing to say to sound really smart on the topic of AI and HR. And here's what I got. AI in HR is not just about automating processes. It's about leveraging data-driven insights to foster a culture of continuous improvement, enhance employee experiences, and drive strategic decision-making that aligns with organizational goals and values. Which is A, lovely and must be true, but B, so generic as to not even really be all that helpful. So if you could fix that for us, that would be great.

Not so buzzwordy.

Yeah, very buzzwordy. And can you give me the 25 things? That's an action plan to that.

Yeah, that's next. Love it. Well, being mindful of your time, I really want to thank the panel of you for taking the time in your day to share your experiences and your vision. I think that was a very rich conversation and we'll probably do a blog post out of it with maybe some deep dive into the questions that I just asked and others. And then And as I contemplate this conversation, and my background is marketing, so HR is really from the user or employee standpoint. But I think that in a world where we have perfected the art of workplace productivity, and you mentioned a little bit about it, now that AI is taking over and you have to put some granularity of what does that even mean, I actually think that we should ask ourselves how we will adjust and evolve with curiosity. So I want to leave the audience and all HR experts out there with a question. If we no longer need to emphasize our attention on productivity, how do we approach hiring? How do we lead? And what remains? So with that, thank you so much again to Lisa, Carol, and Laura for your time. To engage with our community, you can visit econoc.net. That's where you'll find every member's story, and you can of course stay updated of what we're doing at Econoc on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. That's it. So any last word, anything you want to say?

No, just thank you Virginie for hosting and for doing such lovely job of pulling all of this together. Really value your time and energy.

Absolutely. Thank you so much.