All-things AI in HR with 2 Chief People Officers: David Hanrahan (Chief People Officer, Flare) & Q Hamirani (Chief People Officer, Paper)
Listen to our recent episode with Q Hamirani (Chief People Officer, Paper) and David Hanrahan (Chief People Officer, Flare).
We talked about HR’s role in driving your company’s AI strategy, the best use cases for AI in HR, and why you need a solid data strategy first.
Read the highlights below. ??
1. HR's role in driving your company's AI strategy ??
What’s HR’s role in driving your company’s AI strategy?
David believes that for organizations to truly adopt AI, HR leaders need to be actively involved. There will be a lot of change to work through:
?? People's work styles will change with AI implementation.
? Skills like synthesizing dense information, once seen as superpowers, will shift.
?? Middle management will need to focus less on processing and repeating information and more on asking insightful questions and guiding decisions when data is unclear.
He says this shift will be challenging, especially for those accustomed to certain work styles.
We’ll need to lean on HR leaders to overcome this resistance.
_____
Stephen Huerta agrees with David that HR leaders are likely to spearhead change on the AI front. He notes the transformative impact of generative AI on certain processes and departments, making the HR leader's role crucial.
“We often discuss the need for upskilling and reskilling the workforce to prepare for job redundancies,” he says. “This technology not only alters specific business aspects but also renders certain jobs obsolete.”
Looking for a practical approach to developing your AI strategy?
Stephen recommends leveraging existing data to evaluate organizational dynamics, such as employee engagement levels, financial metrics, and innovation capabilities. Selecting relatable problems, he suggests, can significantly influence cultural change.
This approach addresses immediate organizational needs while preparing for future challenges.
_____
Q offers a slightly different perspective.
He believes that, one way or another, this responsibility will ultimately fall on HR leaders, directly or indirectly.
Any productivity issues or misuse of technology inevitably falls under their purview.
“But my main point is this: in today's world, HR, IT, and finance are all tied at the hip,” he explains. “Regardless of their operational silos, if they remain isolated, things will become fragmented.”
Q thinks the HR-IT connection needs to be even stronger in this post-AI era. While HR leaders will spearhead these efforts, they can't do it alone due to the need to partner on issues like data privacy, data movement, and APIs to actually harness insights.
He feels that this dependency and partnership could either be seen as an opportunity or a pain point, but it will need to be strengthened between HR and IT.
Future HR leaders will need to be more tech-savvy or tech-enabled, he says.
They should immerse themselves in technology because that's where the future is headed.
领英推荐
Otherwise, they'll find themselves always observing from a distance, and it's challenging to lead from there.
2. Use cases for AI in HR ??
Curious about where AI could make the most impact in HR?
Here are some of the use cases that they discussed at last month's SXSW HR & AI Summit:
1 - Talent Development
David envisions a world where HR uses AI to better understand the skills and makeup of organizations. He suggests that if you can align this data with your business goals—merging two distinct datasets—you can develop a strategic plan.
“This involves understanding our people with one set of data and our business goals with another, using both to guide our workforce planning. It seems game-changing to me. So far, I've only come across a couple of companies that are focusing on this. While there's a lot of emphasis on recruiting and using AI to mine data on external talent, the internal application of these insights for skill development is particularly compelling.”
2 - Personalized Learning
Q is excited about the idea of personalized learning, which is connected to the skills flywheel. He says once you identify the necessary skills, you can tailor learning experiences to address the gaps.
3 - Persona-Based Employee Experiences
Stephen believes we’ll be able to use generative AI to enhance the experiences we create for different roles within the company, such as executives or individual contributors.
He finds this focus on personalization incredibly exciting, especially for the emerging younger workforce.
3. Before you can have an AI strategy, you need a Data Strategy ??
To leverage AI effectively in-house, organizations must develop a robust data strategy covering all types of data, not just people data.
Just as large language models process and organize external data to synthesize information, achieving similar capabilities internally depends on having well-organized data.
This was a significant revelation for David. He noted that, in contrast to public companies, many private companies have their data scattered.
Good news from A.Team: You're not alone on your AI journey ??
HR Leaders—no need to tackle AI alone.
A.Team offers access to highly skilled and carefully vetted AI professionals who can help you connect your AI and people strategy.
With A.Team , you gain:
Schedule a demo today to learn how they are empowering HR teams like yours to create custom AI solutions.
See you next week!
P.S. If you like MPL, help us grow the show by giving us a 5 star rating on Apple or Spotify ??????????.
Scaling SaaS Startups & SMBs | Unlocking the Power of People | Former COO at JP Morgan | Built & Scaled Teams From Zero to 10,000+ | 1:1 Coaching | Founding Partner & CEO at P5
6 个月Daniel, this is another great piece. Thanks for sharing. Maximizing the utility of generative AI requires an enhanced ability to ask really smart questions, often called prompt engineering. While this sounds very AI-specific, in reality, we could all learn so much more from each other if we asked better questions (and then listened), let alone from AI.