Research has shown that AI helps organisations make better decisions and increase profits, especially with human capital – the highest profit margin in any organisation, which accounts for 70% of its total budget.
However, organisations using AI to improve human capital processes are still a minority. One of the most common arguments for this avoidance lies in the belief that AI may overshadow human capital. Even if some professions are replaced in the future by robots, this claim is light years away from the truth.
Below are five reasons why the use of AI remodels organisations:
1. AI frees us from repetitive tasks. While recruitment managers spend precious time on thousands of résumés and hundreds of interviews, AI can pinpoint the candidates with the best chance of assimilation. This advantage allows recruiters the time for meaningful in-depth interviews with the selected candidates and to make precise and tailored placements for the organisation's requirements.
2. AI allows salespeople to sell more. Salespeople waste time courting potential customers, sending emails and updating their customer management system instead of going out into the field and cultivating customer relationships. The information that AI offers saves on high overheads in the sales process, enables you to learn from higher-performance peers and focus on essential tasks such as listening, asking questions, and finding creative solutions to problems. Greater emphasis can be given to strategic thought, customer care and streamlining processes. All of which increases productivity and generates a higher return on investment.
3. AI enables employees to focus on being sensitive and creative. AI can read, analyse, and make vital information available in a matter of seconds. But it does not know how to look a person in the eye, identify their mood and say the right words. Emotional intelligence is the exclusive domain of human beings; it is a unique added value that AI can never achieve. In its cold and technical way AI gives human capital information and provides precious time to apply critical thinking and respond to complex and uncertain situations in sensitive and creative ways.
4. AI creates new industries and new sources of employment. Just as the digital revolution has created a wide range of new and necessary professions, AI will increase productivity and cause industrial prosperity beyond imagination. Its great advantage lies in its ability to continue to develop in light of market demands and the spirit of the times. The same applies to industry and employment. Even if today this might be inconceivable, new technologies will create new industries and professions.
5. AI reinforces the fortitude of human capital. The introduction of AI in a supporting role in organisations has created an increasing need to teach workers and robots to work together. Managers in general, and HR managers in particular, have an important role to play in ensuring a smooth and efficient transition to the future world of employment. Even when robots run the initial screening and recruitment processes, it is crucial that managers program in such a way that they ask the right questions and respond in a way that does not provoke antagonism in the candidate. For AI to deliver, sales people must dictate to it the desirable characteristics that make a good salesperson into a great one.
Not only will AI not replace people, it is dependent on them to produce desirable results. The supremacy of human capital will remain intact, while AI will spare humanity from hard labour and allow the freedom to invest in becoming the best version of themselves.
Ravit Oren is an organisational leadership expert, an academic lecturer and researcher, a corporate HR executive, a public representative of the Israeli Labor Court and a board member in public and governmental companies