More than 78% of companies are using AI at work. Much of its use has centered on hiring and recruiting. But AI’s influence is quickly seeping into other parts of doing business.
For HR teams that are strapped for resources and with burgeoning demands on their time, AI is significantly reducing the burden of administrative work: More than 90% are already using AI to screen résumés, using the tech to communicate with or evaluate applicants.
But now employers are experimenting with plenty of other use cases for AI tools.
Fast Company reached out to a number of tech companies to find out how they are deploying AI beyond hiring and recruiting. As one human resources leader put it, many of them have started to view AI as a “copilot for HR operations.”
In this Premium story, readers will learn:
- How AI is becoming the new HR portal
- Why AI can enhance the much-dreaded performance review process
- Practical, on-the-ground, achievable methods to integrate AI into your company’s workflow in a way workers actually want
Internal HR chatbots
At professional services firm Genpact, an AI assistant known as HRpedia serves as the “first port of call” for all HR-related questions. Nearly 40,000 employees have used it—more than half of whom have done so more than once.
HRpedia offers advice specific to each person, based on their role and where they are located, and helps field inquiries about a range of employee concerns.
“It makes employees’ lives easier by running transactions like checking for leave balances, verifying employment details, or raising a help desk ticket seamlessly,” as well as providing coaching for real-life situations, says Piyush Mehta, the company’s chief human resources officer (CHRO). Genpact has also devised a tool that compiles metrics on attrition, demographics, and compensation, enabling managers to quickly pull relevant data as needed.
Other companies have developed similar chatbots that provide quick responses to common—and recurring—questions about paid time off and other benefits.
“Open enrollment is a large stressor for many employees,” says Heidi Barnett, who oversees talent acquisition at Isolved, a workforce software management firm. “Our research found that 72% of employees say it’s overwhelming, and over half would consider leaving after a poor experience.”
Now that the company has introduced an AI-powered recommendation engine, Isolved employees can get personalized guidance based on their health needs and financial status.
At data solutions company Safe Software, workers now have access to a custom benefits GPT, which has been trained on internal documents that outline benefits and company policies. “Not only has this tool minimized the time our team used to spend answering questions, but it [has] enabled our staff to develop a greater understanding of our benefits,” says CHRO Bonnie Alexander.
Data suggests that more people do want to use generative AI, like LLM chatbots, at work. According to McKinsey data from earlier this year, more than 40% of U.S. workers want greater access to generative AI tools.
Performance management and employee engagement
The performance management process can be a source of frustration for employees and managers alike. While HR leaders insist human judgment is critical to those discussions, they also believe AI can address some of the pitfalls of traditional reviews, which are often time-consuming and subjective—and may fail to capture the full picture of an employee’s performance.
Isolved, for example, is trying to bolster performance reviews with additional data that the company claims can help mitigate bias. “We’ve integrated AI into our performance management process, where it supplements traditional feedback with data-driven insights,” Barnett says. That could mean incorporating the results of employee engagement surveys or metrics that capture how individual teams are making progress on company-wide goals.
When data storage company Pure Storage conducts performance reviews, employees and managers can use the company’s internal AI tools to get a detailed view of all their work, rather than simply focusing on their most recent achievements. That takes the form of a written summary of their work over the course of the calendar year, along with supporting documentation collected by the AI-powered platform Glean. Pure Storage is also investing in an AI coaching service to help managers pinpoint goals and areas of improvement for their direct reports.
As employees feel increasingly detached from their work, many companies want to show they are invested in their well-being, which includes acting on feedback they receive through surveys and other mediums. A number of companies say AI has helped them effectively synthesize responses to employee engagement surveys.
“AI is becoming a critical tool to both consolidate thousands of different comments, while highlighting trends in ways that could not be done before,” says Sonja Wilkerson, chief people officer at climate tech company Bloom Energy. For AI analytics platform AI Squared, using artificial intelligence in this way has enabled the AI integration company to detect patterns and figure out how to act on employee feedback—for example, determining whether certain pain points or culture issues are more prevalent within a particular team.
Career development and upskilling
AI has already upended the education sector, for better and for worse. In the workplace, companies are leveraging it to expand learning and development opportunities for their employees.
The learning platform at Genpact, known as Genome, analyzes an employee’s portfolio of work and recommends skills like Python or supply chain demand planning, and, in turn, uses that information to surface learning and certification programs that might be a fit.
Genome suggested, for example, that a young analyst at Genpact take a learning module for Databricks, the popular data analytics platform that allows companies to keep their proprietary data secure while developing customized AI agents. “She took it, and within weeks, she was applying it on a client project,” Mehta says. That’s the kind of career acceleration AI can and is enabling.”
Genpact has also launched AI agents that draw on the expertise of its leaders to help employees navigate challenges that might arise in the course of their work—enabling them to, say, practice client conversations before an important meeting.
At Pure Storage, Glean has enabled the company to build new learning and development offerings for its employees by drawing on institutional knowledge. In less than two months, it used Glean’s technology to analyze the marketing of its product launches and create learning modules that cater to employees across the organization, from the sales department to the finance team.
The future of AI at work
Generative AI has empowered companies to automate routine tasks that require limited human intervention. But looking ahead, many of them are thinking about how they can get more creative with AI, or find new use cases across performance management and employee engagement.
Cybersecurity company Arctic Wolf is looking into how AI might be utilized for employee sentiment analysis. Tekion, a cloud-native auto retail platform, intends to use AI to surface new opportunities for its employees and support their career development. And Genpact wants to give managers more data on how their teams are performing, and how that tracks with employee engagement.
Mehta contends, “AI will become part of everyday workflows—not something you log into once in a while.”
