Is AI Addressing HR Headaches or Wasting Time?
You’ve probably heard this before. AI is everywhere, and it’s changing everything. The possibilities are endless and the leaders of tomorrow are the people who are embracing it today. Right?
Now, talk to HR leaders and you get a slightly different view. One where AI isn’t everywhere, but it’s definitely in some of the wrong places, changing things no one wanted to change. They’d love to embrace it, if it actually automated something useful for them.
The AI Promise
The promise of artificial intelligence in HR was the same as in most other professions: free up HR professionals from mundane tasks so they could focus on strategic initiatives.
But in a classic case of "be careful what you wish for," HR leaders are finding themselves drowning in AI solutions that might be solving the wrong problems—or creating new ones altogether.
"It's a lot of fancy bells and whistles," says Jessica Smith, founder of Savant Recruitment. "AI is a tool, it's not the be all and end all game changer people think it is."
Smith isn't alone in her skepticism. As AI vendors rush to capitalize on the hype, they're churning out solutions that often miss the mark on what HR professionals actually need.
The irony isn't lost on industry veterans. While AI was supposed to handle the grunt work—letting HR focus on strategic thinking and relationship building—many new tools are trying to automate exactly those higher-level functions. Meanwhile, basic processes remain clunky and time-consuming.
"They're making an AI powered solution when what a lot of people need is an easier process to follow," notes Brian Elliot, CEO at Work Forward.
He shares an example of a company abandoning their goal-setting tool not because it lacked AI capabilities, but because "the process of sharing out goals is too bulky. It has nothing to do with AI, they just need the platform to do the basics better."
The Disconnect
The disconnect between vendor offerings and actual needs seems to be widening. Joanna Kmiec, Global People & Culture Executive at Elastic Path, puts it bluntly: "I think HR tech companies are scrambling, but they haven't caught up with the true nuance of what HR leaders need. They're giving me things I don't need instead of analysis that will help me strategically improve the business."
A particular pain point? Data integration—or rather, the lack thereof. Many HR platforms are sitting on goldmines of information but haven't figured out how to make it truly accessible.
"Some of these solutions have all kinds of data, all living in the same platform but you have to go into different modules to collect it," Kmiec explains.
This leads to a peculiar situation where HR professionals must manually compile data before they can leverage AI tools—defeating the purpose of automation.
Elliot highlights the absurdity: "If you've got 20 different apps you're running as part of your tech stack, what you don't need is 20 different chat bots to manage. You need one chat bot sitting over all of them pulling from all of it together."
The current state of AI in HR feels a bit like having a Swiss Army knife where each tool requires its own manual—and none of them quite cuts straight.
While vendors are racing to add AI capabilities, they might be better served by focusing on fundamentals: streamlined processes, better data integration, and tools that solve real problems rather than creating flashy solutions in search of problems.
As the AI powered HR software industry moves past the peak of inflated expectations in the hype cycle, the winners in the HR tech space will likely be those who remember to deliver on AI’s initial promise of making HR professionals' lives easier and their work more impactful.
Until then, HR leaders might need to be more discerning about which AI solutions they adopt, focusing on those that truly eliminate headaches rather than creating new ones.
What's Next?
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