Most of us some or the other way are now encountering chatbot. Be it call centers, banking experience, retail shops, online shopping, customer service etc…
Chatbots has made information easily available. HR is no exception. Chatbots has changed the way we imagine HR where individual has to wait for HR representation to answer HR related queries.
Most of the organizations are embracing chatbots to reduce the workload and administrative task. This article talks on the history of chatbots and its journey till here. It explores the possibilities of bots in the HR spaces and Organizational readiness for the same.
Some Recent Developments of Bots in News :
“Ramco Systems creates 34 bots related to HR-functions and aviation industry.”The Economics Times (June 2016)
“How Chatbots could replace your HR department” BBC News (Feb 2018)
“We talked to Slack and Workday about why they believe the future of work is fewer open tabs” Business Insider (Mar 2018)
The advent of bot – data insights
It is evident that chatbots have a long account since 1950 when Alan Turing imagined computers talking like humans. Alan had the foresight to develop Turing test to differentiate human from machine. The first migration away from text chatbots occurred in 1988 when Rollo Carpenter started the Jabberwacky project – a voice operated entertainment AI chatbot. Next on the timeline are the series of the most popular bots like Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), Cortana (Microsoft), Watson (IBM) and Messenger (Facebook). Chatbots continue to evolve and mature over time. Investments in chatbots will reach $3,172 million (would read $3.1 billion) by 2021, according to MarketsandMarkets report. In the near future, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to allow businesses to layer more emotional intelligence into their bots, with cognitive computing features that can analyze a consumer’s tone through machine learning algorithms.
Applicability of bot in present and future HR scenarios
Chatbots and AI have become household names and enterprises are taking notice. According to a recent Forrester survey, roughly “85% of customer interactions within an enterprise will be with software robots in five years’ time” and “87% of CEOs are looking to expand their AI workforce” using AI bots.
In an effort to drive increased labor efficiencies, reduce costs, and deliver better customer/employee experiences enterprises are quickly introducing AI, machine learning, and natural language understanding as core elements of their digital transformation strategy in 2018. Human resources (HR) is one area ripe for intelligent automation within an enterprise. AI-powered bots for HR are able to streamline and personalize the HR process across seasonal, temporary, part-time, and full-time employees. Chatbots have wide range of applicability. HR need to analyze its requirement and create a detail requirement list in order to analyze the effectiveness of the Bots if applied to drive increased labor efficiencies, reduce costs, and deliver better customer/employee experiences.
Areas in HR where bots are increasingly used in recent times are as follows.
Policy’s related FAQ’s – Having dedicated HR support centers to help seasonal employees access relevant HR information should be a thing of past. Chatbots can serve as a mobile HR assistant that helps employees get answers to FAQs.
Recruitment – Hiring in thousands brings scale issues for HR. A chatbot can help in the screening process by not only getting prospective employees information but also performing quick background checks
On-Boarding – Chatbots make on-boarding truly a self-serve process as they have the ability to talk to employees onsite and interact with workforce management software’s like Peoplesoft, Kronos, and Workday.
Employee Training – HR training using chatbots is very effective since it involves more interactive participation by employees rather than sitting through a standard training video or watching a PowerPoint presentation.
Organization related – Employees spend many hours each month searching for basic company-related information. HR bots would quickly get employees the answers they are looking for, making them more productive and ultimately more satisfied.
Benefits and Annual enrollment – Benefits enrollment is one of the most confusing and frustrating pieces of the HR process. Employees spend vast amounts of time trying to understand the process and complete the required information.
Performance Assessment – More than 58% of HR leaders say that the traditional review process is outdated and ineffective. Chatbots allow for the instant exchange of feedback and performance insights that allow employees to constantly be the best at what they do.
Bots are disrupting HR market. Following are examples of Indian bots which are present in the market.
Engazify – Engazify is an employee recognition bot that works in Slack messenger and tracks all conversations happening on Slack. It allows teams to tally the number of times a team mate has been appreciated and build a leaderboard based on the stats. It also shows a week-over-week growth in the happiness score in a weekly summary.
JLT Bot – Launched in June 2016 by Ramco Systems, India based software products and services company, JLT bot claims to handle over 22 HR functions. JLT bot has integrations with popular messenger apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype and Messenger. It takes care of time off, pay, expenses etc. right through these messenger interfaces.
Amber – “Predictive People Analytics” is completely automated from the first day of an employee’s joining to their last. Amber asks questions when they complete different milestones in their lifecycle at the company and on the basis of people’s responses, a fortnightly culture report is generated. One of the many reports highlights people who need attention and are at a risk of leaving. This effectively helps HRs reduce attrition in their company.
Jinie – HR Solutions company PeopleStrong built Jinie for their Alt messenger which acts as a 24×7 personal worklife assistant for all employees. Jinie takes care of all the queries and provides instant access to data and transactions an employee needs in their day-to-day.
