Can HR tech replace HR professionals?

Adop­tion of HR tech­nol­o­gy at speed and scale presents a tricky conun­drum for busi­ness lead­ers, with many left to answer a dif­fi­cult ques­tion: what role do humans have in human resources?

The func­tions of HR have always been built upon a senior depart­ment hav­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for employ­ee expe­ri­ence and wel­fare. But over the past decade, HR tech has grown to become inte­gral to the role. Indeed, esti­mates of its glob­al worth range from tens of bil­lions to hun­dreds of bil­lions, indi­cat­ing its major sig­nif­i­cance.

AI and machine-learning playing a bigger role

How­ev­er, as com­pa­nies have ploughed invest­ment into this side of the HR func­tion, many HR depart­ments have seen bud­gets and work­loads reduced for those tasks pre­vi­ous­ly under­tak­en by humans.

Such repet­i­tive and man­u­al input jobs have been auto­mat­ed through admin­is­tra­tion, track­ing and tal­ent man­age­ment soft­ware, while com­put­er mod­el­ling for peo­ple ana­lyt­ics has replaced a human expert’s keen eye for spot­ting what’s going wrong and what needs improve­ment.

Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) with machine-learn­ing has become a core focus. It is able to quick­ly analyse the del­uge of data now cap­tured on employ­ees, across per­for­mance man­age­ment, the work­ing envi­ron­ment, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, health and well­be­ing, and train­ing and devel­op­ment.

But despite these HR tech trends, many argue the roles and bud­gets of HR lead­ers should increase to cope with crit­i­cal organ­i­sa­tion­al and cul­tur­al chal­lenges, such as diver­si­ty, men­tal health and the chang­ing work­force.

Áine Hur­ley, head of the glob­al HR prac­tice at exec­u­tive search firm Odgers Berndt­son, is respon­si­ble for plac­ing such senior roles and believes these HR lead­ers are crit­i­cal to an organ­i­sa­tion’s val­ues, pur­pose and cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty.

HR must reimag­ine human engage­ment for revised notions of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, inclu­sion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and inno­va­tion

Hur­ley explains that chief exec­u­tives are shift­ing away from hir­ing HR recruits based on char­ac­ter­is­tics includ­ing “dig­i­tal acu­men, the abil­i­ty to oper­a­tionalise change and ana­lyt­i­cal skills”, focus­ing on soft­er, more human, skills instead.

Attributes of HR professionals evolving

“The attrib­ut­es now looked for in HR pro­fes­sion­als include dri­ve and deter­mi­na­tion, courage, resilience, curios­i­ty, and strate­gic and con­tex­tu­al think­ing, she says, going on to describe how chief exec­u­tives see these as inte­gral to build­ing pur­pose-led organ­i­sa­tions. “This is a deeply human aspect of the HR role and not some­thing that can be sub­sti­tut­ed by a piece of tech­nol­o­gy, she adds.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, expe­ri­enced HR lead­ers and HR depart­ments would spend years curat­ing vital knowl­edge about their peo­ple through face-to-face con­ver­sa­tions. Such a need for human con­nec­tion and team sup­port has been clear dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic as remote work­ing became a require­ment.

But a fear among HR lead­ers is com­pa­nies will devel­op too much reliance on tech­nol­o­gy for cru­cial deci­sions, includ­ing hir­ing and fir­ing, dimin­ish­ing the role of strate­gic and expe­ri­enced human-think­ing.

Covid-19 a catalyst for change

Dr There­sa Simp­kin, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty Busi­ness School, believes the pan­dem­ic offers the per­fect time for humans to respond to fun­da­men­tal changes in the nature of work.

“HR must sup­port and lever­age diverse human expe­ri­ence to gen­er­ate inno­v­a­tive respons­es to a new busi­ness as usu­al, she says. “This can only come about by divest­ing long-stand­ing bias­es and bar­ri­ers to inclu­sion. Fun­da­men­tal­ly, ampli­fy­ing the human in human resources is the key to lever­ag­ing resilience, out­side bureau­crat­ic cri­sis response, with diver­si­ty of thought, expe­ri­ence and capa­bil­i­ty.

“HR must reimag­ine human engage­ment for revised notions of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, inclu­sion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and inno­va­tion, says Simp­kin.

In most com­pa­nies, data-dri­ven evi­dence from AI and machine-learn­ing will sure­ly make sales and mar­ket­ing deci­sions eas­i­er. But fears that uncon­scious human bias is often unwit­ting­ly pro­grammed in are well report­ed, rais­ing con­cerns this could ham­per rep­re­sen­ta­tion across gen­der, dis­abil­i­ty, class or neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty.

Dr Nan­cy Doyle, an occu­pa­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist who found­ed Genius With­in, is fear­ful explain­ing that in HR visu­al recog­ni­tion soft­ware used to pre-screen can­di­dates via video link “has not been pro­grammed to allow for sight loss, facial tics, paral­y­sis or autism”.

She adds: “Our tech­nol­o­gy is only as good as the pro­gram­mers who wrote the code. There will be an ongo­ing need to cri­tique, review and update new ini­tia­tives. In HR our role is to take that crit­i­cal view and chal­lenge imple­men­ta­tion with­out con­sid­er­a­tion.

“We hold the exper­tise about the wider impact of tech­nol­o­gy on cul­ture, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and strat­e­gy.”

Of course, none of this means HR tech has no place at all in the HR func­tion. Indeed, research for Capter­ra showed 56 per cent of respon­dents thought AI could make a pos­i­tive impact on HR, although more than half (59 per cent) would pre­fer a human man­ag­er to make a deci­sion about a pro­mo­tion.

Tech tempered with emotion

This per­haps demon­strates a need for HR tech trends to be tem­pered by human emo­tions. Belin­da Par­mar, founder and chief exec­u­tive of The Empa­thy Busi­ness, agrees: “HR depart­ments have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead in embed­ding empa­thy into every­thing we do.

“See­ing lead­ers being authen­tic, empa­thet­ic and even vul­ner­a­ble man­i­fests itself through high­er empow­er­ment and employ­ee scores.”

For nat­ur­al food com­pa­ny Wes­sa­nen UK, a B corp and brand own­er of Clip­per Teas and Whole Earth, which bal­ances pur­pose and prof­it, this is already the norm. HR direc­tor Ann Cham­bers prizes con­nect­ing with employ­ees on a per­son­al lev­el to cre­ate a sol­id team unit. “Our intrin­sic care and lis­ten­ing capa­bil­i­ties are what allow us to exude our human prin­ci­ples through HR func­tion each day, she says.

Her view would sug­gest the dif­fi­cult ques­tions around a human’s role in HR do have a sim­ple answer: it is crit­i­cal to ensure HR tech­nol­o­gy works in the best inter­ests of both com­pa­nies and employ­ees.

As Lisa Pan­tel­li of sim­ply com­mu­ni­cate, a net­work for inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions and HR pro­fes­sion­als, points out: “HR tech­nol­o­gy’s ben­e­fits are undoubt­ed­ly plen­ti­ful, but there is no sub­sti­tute for human rela­tion­ships.

AI and machine-learning playing a bigger role

Attributes of HR professionals evolving

Covid-19 a catalyst for change