Artificial Intelligence and HR: The Secret to Revolutionizing Your Operations with Workday

 

05.25.2023 | Technical Articles

 

HR, by its nature, is a people function. The role depends on organized and resourceful folks to do the behind-the-scenes work of keeping your workforce fully staffed, happy, legally compliant, and informed. To meet those goals, people in HR undertake a multitude of tasks and responsibilities, doing their best to keep companies efficient. 

Yet even the most skilled HR-task-jugglers will eventually hit a ceiling for their output (they’re only human, after all). Though digital technologies essentially turned those conventional limits into a vaulted ceiling, artificial intelligence and HR have the potential to tear the roof completely off their limitations.

As Workday continues to proactively integrate AI into their core suite of SaaS platforms, there’s a new world of possibilities for HR professionals to access. Here’s what your organization can do if you implement HCM’s AI-powered features.

Predict Workforce Trends & Future Needs

The ability to forecast labor market and in-house employee trends is not a new capability for forward-thinking organizations. What is new is the synthesis of HR data into a cohesive, AI-powered tool that can trigger direct action informed by vast intel.

Workday’s approach to artificial intelligence builds upon a solid and scalable data architecture, one that unifies diverse sources into a single analytics hub. As a result, their Workforce Management system can take the buffet of data available in Workday and nail down trustworthy predictions for hiring and staffing needs.

For example, the time of year, seasonal events or behaviors, weather, economic factors, and other data points are synthesized to forecast advanced workforce demand. The core concept has been a fairly common analytics capability, but Workday’s AI features take the process a step further by automatically creating corresponding schedules and even hiring portals for increased need. Your recruiters only need to focus on building relationships and getting to know candidates – and even the more routine elements can be offloaded.

Engage with Applicants and New Hires

In some ways, the hiring process is an unofficial diplomatic mission. Your organization sets out to find and engage the right talent but ends up having to tread carefully around a variety of people to protect your reputation and foster goodwill amongst a sea of applicants. If there’s a bad taste left in a candidate’s mouth because of the application process, that can tarnish your brand’s reputation. Now multiply that by hundreds of people. Only about 7% of candidates receive any sort of notification if they are not chosen for a role, meaning plenty of people are likely to feel spurned or ignored, sentiments that don’t engender anyone to your business. The AI potential in Workday can curtail this risk.

For example, let’s say your organization posted a recent job, gathering and receiving a combined total of 1,520 resumes. New AI features within Workday Recruitment allow your organization to screen resumes automatically based upon pre-determined categories and requirements. For the top contenders, Workday can schedule interviews via SMS or email communication without direct oversight. They can even access the interviewers’ calendars to propose availabilities and accelerate hiring timelines.

What about those people who don’t get the offer? The AI feature will automatically send out emails thanking them for their interest but letting them down softly. These types of communication show your appreciation without eating up an entire afternoon’s worth of copy-and-pasted thank-you letters. 

Enhance the Employee Experience

Happy employees are employees who stay, contribute, and grow on your team. When they’re satisfied, you don’t need to constantly keep your head on a swivel to spot impending departures or plan upcoming backfills. However, true employee engagement takes a burgeoning amount of effort because of increased ESG expectations and elevated demand for talent. With both time and budgetary constraints, HR professionals could use a helping hand to maximize the employee experience.

Artificial intelligence and HR are an ideal match in this situation. The AI-powered aspects of Workday Peakon allow organizations to conduct automated morale checks and send personalized messages to employees with precise timing.

For example, if an employee response to a survey is primarily neutral or negative, the smart algorithms within Peakon will trigger follow-up surveys. These will pull from research-backed libraries to gain deeper or ongoing insight into the specific problems or pain points.

The natural language processing (NLP) capabilities within the tool can detect signs or causes of attrition to notify leaders of possible attrition. Moreover, managers will be provided with clear-cut and proactive recommendations in real-time, allowing companies to deescalate issues before they balloon into avoidable problems.

Another great feature for engagement is the Workday Skills Cloud. When your team feels they can continue to expand their skillsets and knowledge base in your organization, they’re more inclined to stay. The evolving AI features of Skills Cloud can automatically notify employees, depending on their function and seniority, of new trainings available to them. The automatic aspect of this platform makes learning almost instinctive. The perfect training programs will reach them right before they’re needed.

Provide a Personal Workplace Assistant

Life is smoother when the information you need is at your fingertips. Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri have grown in popularity on the consumer market, so it makes sense people want quick answers on the job, when delays in information or basic tasks can cause added frustration. On the human resources side, the answer is Workday Assistant. 

Within the Workday platform, a small blue icon will appear, prompting users to ask questions or type short phrases in a chat bar. The range of options is growing, but here’s a snapshot of what Workday Assistant can help employees with right now:

• Benefits – Reviewing current dependents and insurance policies.
• Human Resources – Finding coworkers, their contacts, and general information.
• Pay Questions – Viewing direct deposit, pay information, and tax forms.
• Profile Updates – Changing contact or updated employee information.
• Recruiting – Creating job requisitions and referrals or viewing a candidate’s status.
• Team Management – Viewing employee anniversaries, milestones, time off, and other team info.
• Time Off – Requesting time off and view remaining accrued PTO.
• Time Tracking – Approving timesheets for your team.

Since Workday offers a scalable and ever-evolving platform, those features will grow and expand as their AI-powered tools grow in sophistication. 

Maintain Ethics in the Process

Though AI has massive potential, how do you make sure you’re protecting and respecting the sensitive information of your people? You don’t want to use your employees as guinea pigs for precedent-breaking technology that could put you in legal jeopardy down the road. Workday absolutely agrees on this front.

Their leadership has been adamant about navigating the ethical issues of artificial intelligence. They’ve collaborated closely with regulators and other industry leaders to ensure their own features remain compliant with legislation while also staying leading edge. The result are features that find the perfect balance between people and automated processes, keeping employees and candidates happy along the way.

Want to unlock the power of artificial intelligence and HR? Reach out to Agilysis to automate, personalize, and transform your human capital management.

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