Practical AI for CHROs

AI is rapidly transforming the work of the Human Resources (HR) function. By 2025, 92% of HR leaders plan to expand AI adoption across functions such as recruitment, performance management, and employee engagement. Early adopters are finding that AI can give them a competitive advantage as they see tangible improvements in key areas such as talent acquisition, workforce planning, and operational efficiency.

In addition, the HR function plays a pivotal role in driving the strategy and adoption of AI across the entire organization. Indeed, AI is a catalyst for HR to become even more central to companies’ strategic direction and decision-making. The CHRO, alongside key leaders in the corporation, can nurture a culture that embraces AI, supports a growth mindset, and promotes continuous learning at all levels of the organization, as well as protecting those parts of the culture that are key drivers of success. HR leaders should have the pulse of the workforce and understand how to balance messaging about a need for a modern workforce that combines the best of human and AI capabilities, in alignment with the organization’s strategic vision. Upskilling the workforce in support of effective AI use to drive productivity, effectiveness, and innovation across the organization is critical in a hypercompetitive world. 

Whether or not an organization realizes the full potential of its AI investments—of an organizational future that makes the most of the integration of human and artificial intelligence—relies heavily upon the CHRO and the HR function. Our Practical AI Guide for CEOs and business leaders provides a pragmatic framework for the considerations decision-makers should use in aligning strategy, selecting high-impact use cases, deploying these technologies effectively, and achieving tangible business results. 

AI adoption in HR is growing and maturing

The early adoption of AI in HR was primarily focused on recruitment and talent acquisition, and now it is being deployed across a broader range of HR functions. According to a recent survey  of 400 HR professionals conducted by Aon, the following areas are where they expect AI will have the largest impact in HR:

• People analytics: 51%
• Talent acquisition: 37%
• Learning and development: 35%
• Performance management: 17%
• Talent management: 16%
• Employee relations: 10%
• DEI: 9%

AI-Powered HR Use Cases

There are four broad categories of HR functions where we see high-impact AI use cases developing.

1. Talent acquisition and engagement

Recruiters often screen thousands of resumes, schedule interviews, and manage candidate interactions. These high-volume and repetitive processes can be automated by AI, significantly cutting hiring time.  Common deployments include:

• AI-driven resume screening and candidate matching: AI and machine learning (ML) tools can assess resumes against job descriptions, ranking candidates based on skills, experience, and cultural fit
• Chatbots for candidate engagement: AI-powered chatbots provide instant responses to candidate inquiries, schedule interviews, and send follow-up communications
• Predictive hiring analytics: AI predicts which candidates are most likely to stay long-term, using historical hiring data and performance metrics

Mastercard utilizes AI to enhance its recruitment process by automating candidate sourcing and screening, leading to more efficient hiring and better talent matches. Some of the actions and outcomes included:

• Automated scheduling of 5,000+ interviews, reducing scheduling time by more than 85% and improving the candidate experience
• Growth of the talent community from under 100K to over 1M profiles, boosting recruitment efforts
• Increased Influenced hires from less than 200 in 2021 to nearly 2,000 in 2023, demonstrating a major uptick in recruitment effectiveness
• Consolidation of 75+ local career sites into a single platform, improving website visitor retention (~60%) and loyalty (~27%)

2. Employee engagement and experience

HR professionals monitor workforce sentiment, predict attrition risks, and personalize employee experiences – functions that are perfectly suited to the transformative nature of AI. 

Common use cases include:

• AI-powered sentiment analysis helps companies detect disengagement and predict attrition before it happens
• Personalized employee experiences: AI can tailor learning recommendations, career growth plans, and benefits to individual employees, improving engagement
• HR workload reduction: Virtual HR assistants automate common HR inquiries, allowing HR teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) implemented AI-backed approaches to their talent identification processes, providing new opportunities to internal candidates leading to increased employee satisfaction and retention.  Specifically, J&J is using AI to match internal talent with roles that align with their skills, enhancing internal mobility. Additionally, AI-tailored learning and development recommendations help users identify courses meant to help them progress in their careers.

3. Workforce planning and analytics

AI helps HR leaders analyze strategic workforce trends, plan for successions, predict turnover, and optimize workforce planning strategies. AI is especially critical to this type of planning in large organizations where thousands of employees spread across many geographies make trend spotting difficult. Additionally, AI assists in tracking compliance issues, forecasting workforce risks, and making proactive adjustments to talent strategies.

Along with big-picture strategic workforce planning guidance, AI assists at the tactical level of workforce management related to tackling scheduling optimization.

Healthcare organizations have experienced benefits after using AI to optimize shift schedules, thereby helping to prevent burnout and shift shortages. AI can also predict patient demand, allowing hospitals and clinics to schedule staff accordingly. In an industry with complex licensing, credentialing, and regulatory requirements, AI can help to shoulder the compliance burden healthcare and life science companies face.

4. Payroll, benefits, and HR operations

There are a myriad of routine tasks and queries that can be automated with AI—again, providing a better experience for employees and allowing HR professionals to engage in more strategic projects. AI Chatbots are driving much of the HR operations improvement efforts. Common examples include streamlining onboarding processes, automated PTO tracking and approvals, and automated HR policy and benefit inquiries. Major benefits come in the form of a reduction in errors and improved compliance, time and cost savings from automation, and increased employee satisfaction through access to self-serve capabilities. Additionally, HR leaders can leverage AI solutions to benchmark their compensation and benefits packages against industry competitors or turn AI inward to study salaries across roles and departments to identify outliers in either direction.

• Communicorp UK’s embrace of AI to automate the payroll process meant that what once required one to two days of an HR professional’s time monthly decreased to an hour per month, freeing up time for more strategic work.  Similarly, the company found that using AI to streamline the hiring process and onboarding experience yielded highly positive feedback from new hires about their experience. The automation of two critical but time-consuming administrative tasks has allowed the HR team to focus on impactful “deep work,” such as employee development and performance management.
• IBM’s AskHR agent, powered by IBM’s watsonX Orchestrate solution, is automating many of the most routine requests sent to HR specialists. Acting as their own “customer zero,” IBM HR leaders were able to use AskHR to automate over 80 routine HR processes, leading to high satisfaction with the personalized responses employees received. IBM’s HR shared services leverage AI chatbots for 24/7 support, handling tasks like benefits enrollment and compensation planning. These bots assist employees with benefit choices and guide managers through salary and bonus planning, especially during peak times. IBM also offers year-round bots, such as a popular new-hire onboarding chatbot. These bots improve the employee experience by providing instant, consistent answers and continually learning to meet employee needs. IBM reports that chatbots have reduced the load on HR call centers while delivering fast, reliable responses.

All reward and no risk?

Deploying AI in the HR function can yield many lasting benefits with the careful selection of high-value use cases. On the other hand, as the function closest to the organization's pulse, CHROs, and HR leaders are right to ask questions about the risks and rewards of AI. Future of the workforce questions abound as employees fear being replaced by robots or software. In addition, HR is responsible for maintaining and protecting sensitive data and managing processes that are free from bias.

These concerns can be addressed through clear communication about the benefits that come from automation – both to individuals and to the future competitiveness of the company. Technology professionals working alongside their HR team can provide information on how AI tools are trained on diverse datasets and undergo bias audits.  

Adoption of AI isn’t a matter of if; it is a matter of when and for what uses. CHROs who want to ensure that their organization gets the most out of these powerful tools will succeed by focusing on the business outcomes that will drive their function and the organization as a whole forward.