HR Technology: How AI can address skills shortages

Ian Hulme, IBM New Zealand Business Transformation Services Leader, shares insights into how technology is offering new ways to solve the problem of scarce talent.

The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and immigration changes in New Zealand has placed extraordinary pressure on HR departments to ensure they have the right talent to support their companies’ growth strategies.

In a recent IBM survey across nine countries, including New Zealand, more than one-in-four employees said they were looking to change jobs in 2021. In fact, more than 60 per cent of this subgroup had already switched companies in January. And when asked what employers should provide to engage staff, 51 per cent of respondents identified work–life balance and 43 per cent identified career advancement opportunities as their top priorities.

Fortunately, technology has made it possible to easily link employees to jobs based on knowledge of their skills and how those skills align with opportunities. One main innovation that promises to make finding people with the right skills easier for HR professionals is artificial intelligence (AI). But how can AI help when it comes to managing people?

Knowing your skills

AI offers HR departments a valuable tool for processing and understanding vast amounts of data that can help them streamline hiring processes and find the right talent faster. It can do this by enabling HR teams to know employees’ skills, match skills to roles and provide clear learning and career paths. It can also help organisations create a heat map showing the skills pool the company has.

One challenge in finding talent internally is the lack of true visibility of the skills your people have. While you may know an employee’s skills based on their current role, they might have other capabilities that can benefit your company.

Many organisations rely on employee self-assessments to know their people’s skills. But even with internal validation, managers may over-rate or under-rate employee skills because they often might not have time to audit the self-evaluations carefully. There’s also the fact that assessment processes can easily – and frequently – become outdated.

Encouraging employees to gain the right skills

It’s vital to be clear about which skills will bring value to your business. Without such visibility, it may be hard to know how you can better use your employees’ capabilities in different roles and nudge them to develop or use the skills that your company now needs.

To deal with this problem, IBM has been using an AI-based job architecture that shows roles across our organisation. It also shows the skills and capabilities that each of those roles requires. All the employees in the company have access to this, so if we want to move to another role, we know the skillset desired.

Linking learning to future opportunities

Once you have a clear understanding of your critical skills, how do you help your people in those areas? This is where visibility of learning and career paths become important.

Your employees can spend many hours learning and trying to acquire new skills, but if you don’t link their efforts to future mobility or recognition, what are they learning for? With AI’s capabilities, you can gain insights into what employees can do with company-supplied learning and how they can be recognised for it.

This is what we’ve done at IBM. Watson, a data analytics processor, is infused throughout the HR processes at IBM – with AI elements in recruitment processes, employee learning and development and remuneration. For example, within Watson, there is ‘Your Learning’, a digital platform where everyone can sign up for targeted learning channels and see the skills and badges needed to prepare them for the company’s most coveted roles. For employees looking for a new role within the company, there is ‘BlueMatch’, a service employees can sign up to to be served new jobs tailored to their backgrounds.

Career coaching is also available to staff members through Watson Career Coach, an AI assistant that interacts with employees who are considering future opportunities. It gets to know the employee by asking questions and integrating historical information. Employees can also upload their resumés or answer questions about skills so Watson Career Coach can suggest suitable roles for them. They can even plan and prepare for their desired roles, with the AI assistant suggesting ways to build required skills.

Proactively retaining staff

Times of skill shortages call for even more innovative ways to retain good people. One of the practical solutions we’ve found is using AI to analyse likely drivers that may cause an employee to leave in the next six months, for example, how long a person has been in a role or when their last promotion or pay raise was. Managers can then use data-driven insights to proactively engage their people before the thought of leaving enters their minds.

Making HR management more efficient

Finally, AI chatbots are designed to eliminate many of the manual tasks in HR, such as benefits administration and payroll, through process automation. And, given how complex some company HR policies are, chatbots can help guide employees to get the information they need for the basic HR enquiries, such as leave entitlements and payroll dates.

Driving strategic advantage

AI is creating many possibilities for HR. At IBM, it lets us help responsible managers address common talent issues, such as understanding skills, developing new ones, matching employees and external candidates with career opportunities, and creating an engaging platform to learn.

Ultimately, AI can enable your HR function to drive strategic advantage for your business, especially now. As the threat of talent shortage increases, AI applications can help you find effective ways to compete for the skills you need to grow and innovate.

IBM’s five steps to deploying AI

1. Start with a business case

Understand the business problem you are trying to solve with AI – choose one that you can address with improved insight, information and data. Identify your minimum viable product (MVP), the first and smallest deliverable that you can build.

2. Decide whether to buy or build

If you decide to build your own solution, it is wise to start by soliciting ideas from your employees.

3. Identify the skills you have and need

You will need skills for design, development and implementation.

4. Implement your MVP

The faster you deploy your MVP, the sooner you can deliver your next improved iteration. Ideally, all projects will be like this and show benefits within six to 12 months.

5. Roll out the MVP across your company

If you are successful in your MVP implementation, the next step is to scale to your enterprise.

Ian Hulme is Director of Business Transformation Services at IBM New Zealand. He works with clients to understand their business challenges and uses a human-centred, value-driven approach to deliver transformation that drives business outcomes.