Chat bots are the new HR managers
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-03-2018-0024 |
| Date | 11 June 2018 |
| Pages | 162-163 |
| Published date | 11 June 2018 |
| Author | Beerud Sheth |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Employee behaviour |
e-HR
Chat bots are the new HR managers
Beerud Sheth
Chat bots will continue to
transform virtually every
business function from
marketing to sales to customer
support. One o f the other areas that
we’ll see a major transformation in is
HR.
HR teams have a very challenging job
with seemingly conflicting objectives:
keeping employees focused and
working hard while also keeping them
happy and satisfied. HR teams are
often held accountable for employee
retention and churn without the ability
to manage them directly. HR is
expected to have a finger on the pulse
of a very large employee base while
operating with a very small team. HR
teams find that their responsibilities are
vast and the goals are high –there’s
rarely enough time or resources to do
justicetoitall.Alotoftheirtimeis
invested in managing routine
processes, which impacts the focus on
higher priority activities. Teams have
limited time left over to offer employees
the individual attention they need when
handling sensitive personal issues.
Even more reduced is the ability to
proactively engage with employees, to
guide and mentor them through their
career paths.
Chat bots can help the HR
professionals by dramatically
amplifying their capabilities.Chat
bots can help HR teams stay on top of
the substantial responsibilitiesand
achieve the impossible goals they
have.
Chat bots can automate routine
processes that take a lot of their time.
Recruiting activities such as
screening candidates, scheduling
interviews and managing the
recruiting life cycle forcandidates
and hiring managers can be
substantially automated.In fact, a
startup called RoboRecruiter,built on
the Gupshup platform, has developed
a chat bot for automating the end-to-
end recruitment process, with
amazing results and improvementsin
productivity. Employee onboarding
and orientation is another areathat’s
ripe for automation. New employees
account for a high number of HR
queries that can be easily automated.
Even regular processes, such as
attendance tracking, goal tracking,
performance reviews, employee
surveys, leave balances, etc. can be
substantially automated.A company
called QuickWork has built chat bots
that are automating HR and related
business processes for many
enterprises. To be clear, even though
most companies use an HR system to
automate many tasks, chat bots make
existing systems much more user-
friendly than before, dramatically
increasing the usage and
compliance.
Chat bots help HR become much
more accessible to employees. They
can provide instant, accurate
responses to common queries.The
more complex queries can be
automatically escalatedfor human
review and response. Automating the
frequently asked queries frees up HR
teams to personally handle the more
complex queries. This enablesthem
to respond and intervene quicklyin
PAGE 162 jSTRATEGIC HR REVIEW jVOL. 17 NO. 3 2018, pp. 162-163, ©Emerald Publishing Limite d, ISSN 1475-4398 DOI 10.1108/SHR-03-2018-0024
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