In light of the above below, critically discuss the impact of technology on Any two (2) human resource functions (20)

How Chatbots and AI are Disrupting HR

Imagine you are applying for a job. You hit the “Apply” button. A chat pops up with a message, “Hi, I am Zeus, a virtual assistant. Please answer these questions to help me process your application further.” You answer questions and move ahead. After submission, it says, “You have cleared the screening. Please solve the assessment sent to your registered email address and submit it before ____.”

There is an assignment in your inbox. You solve that, submit, and wait. After a few minutes, you get a calendar invite for a video interview with the company. Throughout the process, you never interacted with a human. It was all a bot. That is the power of AI. Here is an overview of how chatbots and AI are disrupting the traditional HR functions.

Sourcing

Traditionally, sourcing relied on job postings and hoping to find the right candidate. HR managers would spend a lot of time screening a profile and even the candidate would spend a lot of time interviewing with the organisation. But the jobs market has now become globally competitive. Consequently, business owners need to advertise pen roles aggressively because the candidate who can be a great performer at your company can be a great performer at some other company as well. With this deflection in the hiring needs, you also need to take your hiring process a notch up. AI can help your business find the right talent at the right time. It can match the candidate profile against the job description to determine how well it aligns with your needs, interact with the job seeker through an AI-based chatbot to determine the opportunities they are looking for, analyse the past performance of the candidate to predict how they will perform in your team, and much more.

As a result, the HR department transitions from support to strategic function for your business by matching with better candidates, exponentially driving the efficiency of the process, and addressing the immediate business challenge with the right resource.

Managing human capital

Till the early 2015s, chatbots acted only as an extension to the website and a means to enhance the user experience. Then businesses started integrating chatbots as an interactive addition to the customer support and sales experience of the clients. At present, there is also an increased affliction for empathy in business and enhanced employee experience. Eventually, employees have begun expecting personalised communications.

Simultaneously, potential hires place emphasis on the kind of employee experience they will get and base their decision on that. Hence, effective management of human capital is a pressing matter for many business owners, and helping them is an interactive chatbot whose use impacts human resources. Adoption of an AI-backed chatbot enables the HR executives to push towards efficiency and transparency in interacting with employees. It is important to realise that chatbots are helping to recruit, onboard, and engage employees.

Chatbots directly influence and increase the productivity of the Human Capital function, and allow teams to focus and grow their human skills. Businesses are, further, using chatbots as an extension to their HR function to source, screen, select, onboard, collect employee data, send payslips, run surveys, do sentiment analysis, and engage employees in a seamless manner.

Career development

In the past, most employers did not care about upskilling their employees or their career growth. The trends show that if an employee could no longer cope with the increasing demands of the task, it becomes easy to replace them. But the recent studies challenge this approach. Now, a majority of employees are conscious of career development opportunities with an employer. But sadly, businesses have been too passive while addressing this challenge. As we enter the new era, we must realise that employees are more mindful of their skills and how their skills align with the business. Earlier, employees would start at entry-level roles and grow into leadership positions. But that is not possible now.

And businesses also look forward to having skilled leaders to scale growth instead of just running the shop. With AI-based skill assessment and competency mapping, business owners can move past this challenge. Imagine that you have landed a new project. AI will map the skills of your existing employees against the skills needed for the new project and suggest to you the number of employees of what skill set should you have. You can either hire new employees or use the AI system to decide which employees are best suited for upskilling themselves.

Employee compensation

Salary is an ever-challenging concern for the employees as well as employers. Employees always think they are being underpaid and businesses, most often, think that they are overpaying the employee for something that anyone can do for half the salary. However, studies show that it is the employees who are right in most cases. Businesses have, for long, enjoyed their upper hand. But now, people want to be paid for their skills and the value their skills hold for the employer. Further, a talented employee who recognises the value of their skill feels confident that they can get a better job elsewhere or deserve a pay raise with the current employer.

Hence, it becomes a challenge for business owners as well to determine the right compensation for their employees and avoid paying them too much or conversely, less than what they deserve. With AI, your HR executives can conduct a market analysis and stay updated with the trends in financial compensation for the major roles in an organisation. The AI can provide strategic insight into how the roles should be banded and analyse the salary data points corresponding to the local market and competitor data. Using AI, your HR function works strategically in meeting the employer’s expectations and get top talent. A wider range of data at your disposal, you can create a strategy that works for different expectations.

Conclusion

Human Resource function has been transforming from a support function to a strategic function. The future of HR is a hybrid. This is transforming the current HR landscape into a new avatar, one which requires businesses to adopt artificial intelligence while continuing to retain the human touch and emotional quotient (EQ). In 2021, it’s the combination of artificial and human intelligence that will transform the work and its workers.

For this scenario, Bobbi is an experienced project manager, who is comfortable working as a project manager for projects executed using the waterfall methodology as well as a scrum master for projects executed using the agile methodology.

Bobbi’s project team has finished gathering the requirements and developing the solution design. Her team is broken into two main groups:

• Group 1. Consists of the project manager, business analysts, and management and they are located in the United States.
• Group 2. Consists of the development, testing and QA teams and they are located in India.

The WBS was developed based on the estimates from the teams in India. The development team agree to provide daily updates to Bobbi about the progress against the WBS to make sure that the project’s milestones would be met.

However, by the time the development team got close to their first milestone, it became obvious that they were behind, even though their daily updates indicated that they were on track. In addition, the team adopted a different design approach than the one agreed upon at the beginning of the project.

The lack of meaningful updates from the development team along with a different design track has jeopardized the whole project by rendering the entire plan obsolete. Bobbi and her team are now at risk of not delivering the project.

1. What should Bobbi do? Your answer should include a minimum of 5 distinct steps or actions that will allow Bobbi and her team to move the project forward.
2. What impact will these recommendations likely have on the project’s cost, schedule and performance? Explain.