The HRC’s AI in HR Positioning Statement

The Human Resource Consortium believes that:

1. With few exceptions, HR functions must maintain a primary focus on strengthening people-centric organizational capacity including HR policies, practices, frameworks and communications to adeptly develop and manage their organization’s strongest and most enduring competitive edge… its culture.
2. Performance and innovation are created by ‘engaged’ employees… those who align with and thrive in what an organization defines as its employee experience. Yet, in the US, most organizations are experiencing and reporting:
   • • Abysmally Low (29-31% average) Employee Engagement levels;
     • Indications of Continued, Significant Resistance to, and Fatigue from, Change
       • Lyra 2025 Mental Health Survey Report: 500+ HR leader respondents reported:
         • Elevated claims for substance use and suicidality over prior year for 49%;
         • Stress level increases from prior year: 39% financial, 34% work related, 24% managerial, 22% incivility, and 22% workplace policy (return to office);
         • Mental Health America reports (2024) staggering level (23%) of mental health needs in all U.S. adults with only 54% of this group receiving treatment

3. Prudent use of digital and AI applications in HR provide opportunities to enhance efficiency, conduct best practice and competitive market research, and support HR tool design, freeing up HR to reallocate time to enhance culture development and management.
4. While typically more transactional in nature, digital and AI applications need to be utilized, developed, and communicated with a careful eye to employee experience while aligned with each organization’s culture, values, processes, and strategic outcomes. The more relationship or empathetic-based a process or practice is, human interaction provides a far better user experience.

Our Perspective

The transformative potential of AI and digital technology presents both opportunities and challenges for human resources (HR). Building agile, data-driven, and strategy (goals) aligned processes to ensure business compliance, cost-effectiveness, and scalability has become a fundamental prerequisite for successful HR performance in our evolving landscape.

The allure of AI in HR as a data-leveraging tool is strong, with ability to compile and analyze data, conduct research, identify patterns, automate initial and basic responses, and streamline key processes. Many organizations are integrating technology and AI tools to centralize routine HR tasks and automate responses. Frequently, organizations are mirroring trends in call center operations, where ‘bots’ increasingly handle basic queries and drive self-service solutions.

AI undoubtedly offers solutions for enhancing the efficiency in the ‘what’ of HR processes. However, it is crucial for HR professionals to focus on the ‘why’ behind HR’s decisions on its policies, frameworks, processes, and practices to ensure they align with the organization’s strategy, values, culture, and needs of employees and desired talent.

Our Concerns

Haven’t we all, as customers, experienced the frustrating loop of mandated, automated responses and machine-generated answers? Dissatisfaction with these impersonal and ultimately, time-consuming interactions for customers can cause us to want to seek alternative provider options. Should HR follow this trend, are we not risking the same frustration for those we are here to support? Stripping social interaction from these processes could unravel the culture we’re striving to strengthen. As HR teams navigate the complexities of the HR Tech landscape, there is potential danger of over-reliance on automation.

• The “Why” of HR is to enhance an organization’s competitive edge through the manifestation of its culture and performance through its human capital.
• The “How” of HR is encapsulated in its various frameworks, policies, processes, practices, and tools, inclusive of those utilized in strategic workforce planning, talent sourcing, selection, onboarding, training and development, career pathing, mentorships, coaching, and effective communications.

Consider your current HR tools. Where and how do they engage active listening skills and empathy to elicit and assess human responses, to build trust and engagement with leaders and employees, as well as to create meaningful ‘connection’ with an applicant or candidate?

Applicant Screening: We retain serious concern with ATS and ‘bots’ which currently, do not have the ability to grasp emotional competence. Numerous reports have cited where AI was discovered to be screening ‘out’ applicants who may not have fully met the desired skill-based competencies yet were strong fits for the organizational culture. Additionally, reports cited AI screening ‘in’ applicants who had requisite skills and work histories yet didn’t fit the organizational culture. Additional concerns arise when job descriptions lack best practice standards and/or have not been updated when organizations engage AI support in candidate screening.

In the pursuit of efficient talent acquisition, are we inadvertently sacrificing crucial elements of best practice, people-centric techniques to identify exceptional talent that ideally fits our culture to effect positive team dynamics and goal outcomes? Acclaimed business thinkers including Jim Collins (Good to Great) , Mark Murphy (Hire for Attitude), Matt Sowcik, PhD. (H-Factor: The Intersection Between Humility and Great Leadership), and Lou Adler (Hire with Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams) continue to advise that the far better investment is to hire individuals with the right culture fit who require some skill development (training/education) than an investment in an individual with solid skills who requires changes in mindset, values, and/or behaviors (coaching, impact on co-workers, lower performance outcomes, replacement cost, lost productivity, etc.).

While AI is able to provide predictive sourcing based in market conditions, skills, and industry experience, it lacks the intuition and judgment elicited from an experienced talent acquisition/HR professional. What boundaries does HR need to set in place to assure efficacy in talent sourcing to ensure culture integrity? We’ll be happy to guide you.

Total Rewards: Confidential, internal compensation and benefits data should not be analyzed in, or provided to, AI unless it is a proprietary AI for that particular organization. HR has a strict duty to safeguard employees’ confidential information.

Training: Programs which are intended to change behaviors and communications are best delivered in an in-person modality where desired behavioral enhancement can be tested, observed, and coached. That said, to support time-sensitivity, one or more digital, pre-work modules may be utilized conveniently to introduce key learning concepts.

Coaching: At a time when individuals are seeking greater ‘connection,’ collaboration, and recognition in their work environment, when employee engagement is concerningly low, and levels of workforce stress is rising, it is imperative that HR examine if and when AI implementation could lead to a depersonalized experience for leaders, employees, candidates and/or applicants. Consider… when mandated by HR for leaders to initially review or complete AI/digital resources before receiving counsel by HR, leaders may become disenfranchised in seeking strategic guidance from HR when emotionally sensitive and interactive coaching may be warranted.

Where can HR utilize AI without compromising organizational culture and confidentiality?

• Call or Inquiry Routing
• Research: e.g. competitive-market (industry/geographic/demographics) averages and best practices in key HR metrics (e.g. TA statistics, turnover, engagement, etc. against your firm’s data)
• Job Descriptions: development support
• Employment Application Form: design
• Applicant Screening: best practice questionnaire design
• Employment Orientation: best practice research
• Total Rewards: competitive market data analysis (external data only) and best practice research
• Performance Management: best practice framework and tool design research
• Compliance and Behavioral Training Pre-Work Module(s)

How might HR be seen differently as a result of effective AI support?

• Possessing elevated strategic, executive, and business acumen that delivers more meaningful outcomes to executive teams, Boards of Directors, leaders, managers, and employees;
• Ensuring a reliably well-staffed organization with clear career pathing, succession planning, and limited employee relations issues.
• More positively impacting organizational performance and value as an active value creator (vs. cost-center);
• Savvy change management leader who reliably elevates change management success to best practice, 80% levels;
• Elevating HR team mindsets, skills, EQ, humility, and confidence to result in:
  • Leaders’ increasing reliance on HR for business savvy, sensitive conversations, and coaching;
  • Consistently strong results on the few, meaningful metrics; and
  • Aligned, success-building HR frameworks that create clear lines of sight from each role to strategic goals and rewards, and shaped by well-defined and modeled values and behaviors.

by Bruce Nichols and Regan Traub
with contributions by Gregg Barratt, Betsy Larson, Kawel LauBach, and Chris Rose