Unconscious Bias In HR Practices Can Be Avoided If AI Becomes Part Of HR Practices, Say Experts

The ‘Role of AI in HRD Allied Businesses’ has been a topic of discussion among HR professionals for a while now. If we look at this from India's perspective, there still seems to be a notion that our companies have a long way to go before we become part of such a conversation.
 
At the recently held 5th edition of BW Businessworld HR Excellence Summit & Awards, HR experts discussed whether technology and specifically AI has become an integral part of HR practices in India or we still need time to come to terms with it.
 
Sharing his thoughts about the topic, Vikas Baghel, DGM HCL said, “Any job where you used to pay 20k or less is already automated. As HR Professionals, we are leveraging technologies to automate jobs that are repeat in nature, mind numbing and soul crushing jobs. We believe that humans should have more valuable jobs which involve critical thinking and that is the shift and culture we have adopted.”
 
Manish Sharma, Associate Director, PWC, shared, “ AI in HR has now become a standard process, they are like the two wheels that have to work in tandem. And if one of them isn't ready, the other is not ready as well. As far as the practices of AI in HR are concerned, I think we are still evolving. Culturally we have to get ready, we have to educate people since HR has moved from support function to  a business enabling function.”
 
Stating that AI has a long way to go in order to become a fully functional part of HR landscape in the country,  Abbas Jalis Rizvi, Head of People Program, MOAI, Ericsson said, “I think AI still needs time to come, we may be using advanced chatbots etc, but there is a long way to go as far as total adoption of AI practices in HR are concerned. We may have adopted machine learning but the larger AI piece is yet to be fully integrated in HR practices. Moreover, we must also remember that people who have to deal with technology in HR should come from a functional background rather than a technology side.”
 
Rooting for a greater role of technology in HR practices, Rima Ghose Chowdhury, EVP & CHRO, Datamatics Global Services shared, “We have been using high end technology in our businesses and the questions was--can HR be far behind. We use a function for data capture and text capture where we use technology for sentiment analysis, we analyse emails and then different phrases are categorised to find out the pulse of the client about the organisation. Deep sense of unconscious bias in HR practices can be avoided if AI and technology become part of HR practices.”