HR: The key to enterprise GenAI

Artificial intelligence will completely transform how we work over the next decade. Specifically, Generative-AI technology that can create new content (like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Office Copilot) has immense potential to augment human capabilities and remake roles across every industry.

I’ve been lucky enough to run presentations and workshops on GenAI with the highest levels of leadership across several industries. While the entire enterprise needs to adopt this, the one department that sticks out as most important to me: Human Resources.

Why? Because this time, its not just about technology adoption; it's about people development. GenAI brings back the human element to technology. Recently, I wrote about how its a mindset shift from ‘computer talk’ to ‘natural human conversation’. And it favors the curious.

This Technology is a leveler

A recent Harvard study found AI improves higher-skilled workers' performance by 17% while boosting lower-skilled workers by 43%. What does this mean? It means this capability is the great equalizer, necessitating urgent reevaluation and planning around hiring, training, and redefining jobs. This is effectively preparing us for when ‘everyone’ becomes pretty good or even great.

HR can spearhead the AI workforce transformation

HR's holistic view of the end-to-end employee lifecycle makes them perfectly positioned to lead this charge. They have the perspective to connect this new technology to both a broad corporate vision and individual employee growth. They are the ones who can truly focus on augmenting staff capabilities and improving productivity versus replacing jobs - the concern on the minds of scores of employees.

So, how do companies keep pace with arguably one of the most important technologies of century? One word: Upskilling.

Because HR owns L&D (Learning and Development), they can quarterback enterprise AI activation. A recent IBM?study ?found 40% of executives believe implementing AI will require significant reskilling of staff over the next three years.

HR must lean in now to lead the transition

Because the potential is bigger than any one group, Human Resources can and should set the vision for change. They can spark curiosity. They can truly lead with empathy and inspiration and ensure the drive is on human amplification vs human replacement. How? By being proactive with upskilling - beginning with inspiration and sharing stories. They can articulate and plan for the workforce impact and truly embed learning throughout in order to ultimately hold the organization accountable.

HR can guide the workflow and job role transitions. They can have a voice in determining which tasks are augmented or replaced by AI and can then redesign impacted roles, workflows, performance metrics and career ladders accordingly.

Why HR cannot wait for IT and legal.

Enterprises often treat AI solely as a technical implementation responsibility and a legal risk. While IT and Legal play crucial roles, HR must take the lead in the people-centric aspects of AI adoption. It’s about balancing the technological aspects with the human element, ensuring an inclusive and empathic approach to adoption.

Dario Amodei CEO and Co-founder of Anthropic said "The single most important thing to understand about AI is how fast it is moving.” Most departments can generally move quicker than IT and Legal. Big decisions like greenlighting a technology (ie an LLM, Large Language Model) and gaining approval on specific use cases can take time. So while those groups are carving that path, HR can look at overall upskilling in parallel. This early involvement can then nicely align workforce training initiatives with eventual tech approvals. This avoids the pitfall of scrambling to play catch-up with competitors in order to stay relevant.

Generative-AI can streamline HR functions

The benefits this technology provides to HR teams in their roles specifically is huge. For Human Resource teams, GenAI can play a big role across many key tasks: e.g. job role content creation, it can autonomously produce draft job descriptions, detect and eliminate bias in language, and produce social media content for recruitment. In L&D, it can not only suggest and refines training content but can also create diverse learning materials and interactive learning courses.

GenAI could almost eliminate one-size-fits-all training courses. By easily personalizing content it can appeal directly to the individual and their role, seniority, tenure, language and recommend learning modules tailored to employees' goals and performance.

Additionally, it simplifies access to information via conversational interfaces. It can answer employee queries on HR topics and aid managers in tasks like job approvals and performance reviews.

Adjusting to new employee roles and outputs

GenAI will democratize information access for companies. When employees are generating content using these tools (to get ideas, create text, make images etc), they automatically become editors and curators. They now have their own thinking partner or personal assistant, which means employees are evolving to being supervisors vs creators. That is a big fundamental change. Expectations will need to keep pace with what's now possible using these tools.

The Time to Start Preparing is Now

There hasn’t been a technology that will transform what people do on a daily basis like this in some time. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said "“AI technology will be the biggest technological shift in our lifetimes and might even turn out to be bigger than the internet itself."

I've noticed the more senior a decision-makers is, the less likely it is they've tried ChatGPT or some other GenAI product. I experienced this same situation when social media exploded - "my kids use this", "why does my brand need this"? Get me in the boardroom with any senior leaders and I guarantee to have visceral gasps and jaws open. I've enjoyed that moment many times because I get to the implications as fast as possible, then move beyond ‘what this is’ to ‘think about problems you can now solve that you couldn’t before’.

Companies need to start planning now and HR needs to consider the impact to training, policies and procedures. Partnering with experienced folks who live and breathe these tools can help inspire and train teams to get them ready. Passionate, charismatic folks should be giving presentations, showcasing demos, bringing compelling data points, running workshops, helping zero in on use cases to explore.

Plan your 2024 upskilling program now

As the 2024 year edges closer, consider how you can mobilize your organization top-down and bottom-up to be as ready as possible. Have you:

• Brought in experts to give your leadership teams '101 overviews'
• Played with 'off-the-shelf' models?
• Considered ethics and responsible use of AI
• Organized brainstorms and workshops?
• Connected with IT and Legal on applications and policy?

Get past the point of "wow, this is going to be big" as soon as possible and lay down plans for adoption.

The potential incremental revenue gains are enormous.

AI has the potential to completely transform employee engagement across workforces. Take the Travel & Hospitality industry, Skift identified that the average revenue earned per travel worker per year is ~$260,000. Consider a global hotel group employing 450,000...

If AI can make every employee at that company just 1% better at their job, that could bring in $1.2B in incremental revenue.

This underscores the massive potential AI holds for enhancing employee engagement and organizational performance - further underscoring the strategic role HR needs to play in facilitating this transformation.

On my AI Readiness Index , I’ve found most organizations generally fall into one of four areas: Wait and see mode, slowly learning, experimenting and implementing. So while the media hype moves quick, slow and stead wins the race here to properly understand, plan for and integrate this newfound capability into your organization.

The question is, which level is your company at now?

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This article is intended for general guidance only. It does not replace the need for detailed research and professional judgment. I cannot accept responsibility for loss to any person relying on this article.