Why Simply Adding AI Features to Your HR Tech Won’t Cut It
If you're like most HR tech and training company CEOs these days, you're likely exploring ways to incorporate AI into your platforms and offerings. The capabilities of AI to automate tasks, provide insights, and personalize experiences holds tremendous potential value. However, while AI tools are powerful, simply integrating them into existing applications and processes falls short of enabling the full performance lift these technologies promise.
Why is this? AI tools represent new ways of doing things that require new skills and updated workflows to leverage effectively. Without the proper training and reinforcement for your staff and clients on how to utilize AI features optimally, these tools get underutilized, misused, or even abandoned.
Think about the launch of any new application at your company. No matter how intuitive the software is designed to be, achieving adoption and proficiency requires some combination of training programs, quick reference guides, online tutorials, or coaching. AI-enhanced apps are no different in this regard. Your teams need instruction, support and repetition to form new habits that replace old ways of doing things manually.
For example, if your learning platform now has AI capabilities to recommend personalized content for each learner, are your content developers and learner coaches prepared to curate and consult on recommendations versus solely relying on their own expertise? Or if your talent acquisition suite can now auto-rank and screen candidates based on AI assessments, have your recruiters and hiring managers been trained on interpreting and leveraging automated insights during interviews?
The Maxim: New Tools Require New Schools
Simply put, dropping slick new AI tools into existing business or training processes is unlikely to unlock dramatically better experiences and outcomes. To realize the full performance lift AI promises, the people using your solutions – both internal team members and external end users – need education on how these technologies improve existing ways of doing things...and then mechanisms to reinforce these new habits over time until they stick.
This means you must invest not just in integrating AI capabilities, but also in training programs on how to use these features optimally, change management efforts to ensure adoption, and ongoing support structures to cement new patterns. Only then can AI tools transition from flashy add-ons to drivers of quantifiable performance improvement for your business and those of your customers.
So as you build your AI-powered roadmaps, make sure ample budget and planning is allocated beyond the tools themselves towards equipping the people who use them to tap into the full potential of these emerging technologies. The companies that take an ‘AI Plus’ approach - combining cutting edge capabilities with ongoing training on how to harness AI - will be the ones to reap outsized rewards in human and business performance. The tools are just the start, but competency development is critical to go the last mile.