Can AI Really Make HR More Strategic? (Oops, Did I Think That Out Loud #53)

Having a seat at the table and being a strategic business partner is the utopia that most HR professionals strive for in their careers. For a variety of reasons that I don’t have the space (and you probably don’t have the attention span) to get into today, it has been a moving goalpost for at least the last decade.

Starting in early 2023, there has been more talk about how AI can be the pixie dust that HR didn’t think it needed to make it more strategic in less time and with less effort than ever before. After all, all you had to do was sign on the dotted line of a 3-year SaaS licensing commitment, and the tech would take care of everything else, right?

Well, not really.

What makes excellent branding language doesn’t always make the most practical sense.

Here’s why:

Technology Goes After the Symptoms, Not the Root Causes

While technology may help your team find information faster, your managers write performance feedback quicker and have your HR team spend less time scripting leaders for performance review; it doesn’t address the core challenges. For example, creating a knowledge management practice so your publically available content is essential, not duplicated, and up-to-date when your employees look them up. It doesn’t give you a framework or guidelines for building your performance management process and policy. It also doesn’t provide the culture shift and change management activities needed to drive behavioral change in your management population.

Don’t get me wrong, AI-enabled tech can provide great solutions to existing challenges. However, HR practitioners need to be rational and cannot expect tech to solve everything in the end-to-end process.

You Need ‘Operating Systems’ Before Tools

Speaking of end-to-end processes, one thing we don’t often talk about is that while some technology comes with its own frameworks and out-of-the-box processes, there is yet to be a tech solution designed with the whole HR operating model and procedures in mind. While your solution can suggest things such as a performance management workflow and use AI to assist your managers with the process, your HR team still needs to figure out how performance management fits into the broader organizational calendar and who is responsible for each process step. Some may call it the human-in-the-loop in a very loose sense, but putting it more bluntly, you still need a thinking person to traffic control and direct where the technology will get its inputs and what it needs to do with the outputs. And that is still work on someone’s plate.

So, yes, buy the tech if you like it and think it’ll help. But do some due diligence before that, and make sure your organization and teams have the framework and infrastructure needed to make the tech work.

It Takes Time to Implement and Maintain the Tools

Ever notice how marketing language and sales pitches focus on the “end state” (read: when everything is implemented and stabilized), and no one talks about the “during state”? That’s because the stage in between (and often where most organizations find themselves stuck during a system implementation) is messy. Most of the time, HR teams need to put in more resources during implementation to make the tech work before realizing the savings. Also, we rarely account for the level of effort and work needed to maintain the technology (read: system updates, data updates, integrations monitoring, etc.) even during the stabilized state.

Just as having the right gear helps when you’re trying to run a half marathon, it’s not the be-all and end-all. When you’re trying to create a more strategic HR function, technology also helps, but it’s more about the systems, practices, and relationships that are in pace with the tech stack that gets put in place.