With Digital Transformation Are We in Danger of Over-automating HR?
UPDATED: September 2022
At a time when people are starved for human interaction, technologies like automated phone trees, self-service HR and chat bots are risky for companies because they remove HR from its core mission — to support candidates and employees.
Tech industry analysts and observers are saying the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace of “digital transformation” in companies by five to seven years. That’s huge. And they are saying many of these changes — including those brought about by the shift to remote work — are here to stay. According to McKinsey in their recent report, How Covid-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping-point — and transformed business forever,
· “Respondents are three times likelier now than before the crisis to say that at least 80 percent of their customer interactions are digital in nature,” and
· “Of the 93 percent of businesses who experience an increase in remote working and/or collaboration, 54 percent feel that those changes will stick vs. 23 who feel they won’t.”
While much of the fuss has been focused on the positive aspects of digital transformation for things like e-commerce and customer service, particularly with AI-fueled chat bots that replace customer service agents, the rush to automate everything for expediency and profitability has now turned to HR.
For those of us who are just trying to keep our heads above water with staffing challenges and dwindling resources, it’s easy to get excited about having technology take things off our plates. But as we move toward more automation of the HR function it is critical that we remember one thing: the most important aspect of our work as human resources is human connection.
Think about the number of times you’ve interacted with a chat bot that has no clue what you’re asking about. You’re then forced to send an email (and wait for an asynchronous response), or it forces you to spend your valuable time looking things up yourself. It’s pretty annoying, isn’t it?
In HR, our customers are our organization’s employees and job candidates, and our job depends on our ability to facilitate positive candidate and employee experiences — the kind that help our company attract and keep the best talent in a tough hiring market. The chat bot/voicemail/email/self-service runaround is not how we deliver on that promise for three reasons:
1. Candidates and employees need real human connection — now more than ever before. If your lack of bandwidth leaves them feeling inadequately supported, they will jump ship for another company.
2. Communication is two-way, and actually being heard in a timely manner is crucial.
3. The needs of candidates and employees are far more complex than a retail product catalogue, and they require the level of compassion, understanding, agility and problem-solving expertise that only a human being can provide.
So back to being overwhelmed. What happens when the demand for HR is greater than the number of hours in your day or the people on your team?
In this accelerated digital era, we propose a radical return to the tried-and-true: making HR a person-to-person function. Certainly, some task-oriented functions can be handled through self-service and automation. But when it comes to the things that matter — the candidate and employee experience — you need the human touch from real HR people who know their job and how to make employees feel welcomed and supported.
In my 20+ years in corporate HR, I’ve spent most of my career developing people practices. And as an HR consultant, I’ve seen too many companies struggle, even prior to the pandemic, trying to figure out how to mind the candidate and employee experience gap. We saw them respond with technology and then struggle with the high cost of implementing and training AI chatbots that only ended up delivering sub-par experiences. And we learned from employees — who soon became candidates for other companies — how damaging it can be to employee retention when people do not feel heard and appreciated.
Now the stakes are higher than ever. And if your team is understaffed, or you’re overworked to the point where you can’t be strategic about your job and handle all those things that are important vs. urgent, now is the time to consider outsourcing.
Outsourcing some of your HR functions to real, trained HR pros who know the ropes and can work on an as-needed basis may be the stop-gap you need to get you through rough periods. It can ensure your recruiting, onboarding and employee experiences are always top-notch and fueled by human touch. And, when used strategically, outsourcing can free you up to focus on the most important things in your job, leaving the busy-work to someone else.
Perhaps you feel like it’s difficult to justify outsourcing HR to management because the perception is that it costs more. I’m proposing to you a radical idea: outsourcing some of your HR functions can be more cost-effective than hiring a new, experienced HR person (provided you can get one in this competitive job market) whom you may need to let go at the next economic downturn.
Also, outsourcing tasks and projects as a cost of doing business can preserve coveted headcount for more critical roles. I know for a fact that outsourcing is far more economical than purchasing, implementing, training and supporting AI chat bot technology that feels impersonal, loses employee loyalty and ends up putting even more recruiting and hiring tasks on your plate.
I’m willing to bet your IT department already has too much on their plates too. And demonstrating that you are thinking strategically about corporate IT expenses as well as HR will only raise your profile with your C-suite.
Outsourced HR consulting — at every level of HR — is what we do, so of course, we’d love to hear from you if your HR team could use some extra support. But the most important message we’re passionate about getting out into the world today, in this era of digital transformation, is that human connection matters. And nowhere is that more important than in HR.
Self-service portals, voicemail and email have their place. And if you have the in-house resources to provide live, human-to-human support when your people need it, GO FOR IT. There is simply no substitute for that human connection.
But if you and your HR team are feeling stretched too thin and there’s pressure to automate, we invite you to start with the question: “Is this going to improve our candidate and employee experience?” And if not, there is another way to go.
Brenan German is President at Bright Talent, Inc., a boutique HR Consulting firm & Bright Experience, live HR Help Desk services. Reach Brenan at 714–838–0995 or hello@brightexperience.com.
