And I think HR should embrace that, you know. I think there was a movement a while
ago, where we were talking very much around automation, and a lot of HR professionals
were not embracing automation for the fear that it was going to completely replace
them in their roles. But I think there is an opportunity here to move away from, you know,
business as usual type of processes that have to happen or incidents that are repeatable. You know,
I had an example in an organization where every single month somebody asked the question:
“So how many days do you get in the maternity leave policy?”. Now, we published the policy,
we communicated the policy, but people don't take that information in until it's relevant
to them. And I'm wandering through some of these things whether we can't
free up some time and also get additional insight and knowledge into our solutions.
Hello everyone and welcome to HR Hot Topics which is the show in which we
talk about some of the stories that we've seen in the news in the past month and
discuss how they impact the world of work. My name is Erik van Vulpen and
with me is Dieter Veldsman. But before we start, like this video and - if you
haven't already - subscribe to our YouTube channel and I would say let's dive right in!
MUSIC
Our main story for today is titled Microsoft reportedly plans to invest 10 billion US dollars
in creator of busy AI tool ChatGPT. Dieter, you and I have both been using it quite actively,
I think, in the last couple of weeks: it has made a splash. And I think it hasn't really
made a splash in HR yet but there's a lot of potential implications for HR. These are my first
questions to you: what implications do you see, what applications do you see for ChatGPT in HR?
I think, Erik, definitely the last couple of weeks have seen all sorts of experimentation and
even though the technology is still in its infant stages, I think we can already acknowledge that
there's so much opportunity in HR, especially around some of the more service driven domains
and the self-service driven domains of HR. The thing I'm most excited about is giving a lot more
people access to good responsible HR advice. Not necessarily having to be based in one location.
Yeah, what I personally very much like about it is the ideation capacity that it has. I I tell it
“Give me me 10 ideas about X” and it comes with 10 ideas about X. And then I can follow up and ask,
you know, get more specific ideation and it gives me a lot of great great inputs. I even asked it to
work on a talent acquisition certificate program outline and it drafted a full outline with two
topics that I hadn't thought about! So I also think that as long as we box it in and ask the
right question to the chatbot it can be very helpful in all kinds of employment issues as
well. All the way until, you know, manager assistance where a manager says, you know,
“I have a performance conversation, I'm struggling with these employees,
what are five or ten questions that I can ask this person to get, you know, get them in the
right direction?” and ChatGBT will give you a good answer. I think that is very exciting!
I think so. I think you have to see what it provides to you in context, right? And I think
there has to be this element around knowing what we deal with. Something that I sometimes
worry about in a lot of HR organizations when we implement things like chatbots etcetera, we try
to humanize it to such an extent that people don't know whether they're dealing with the machine or
not not. And I think it's quite important in this type of technology as it becomes a lot
more advanced that'd be pretty clear that it's being used in collaboration and in augmentation
of Human Services that's also being provided. I love the fact that it can provide you very
quick solid answers. I mean I would dream about a day where nobody has to phone HR to find out what
stands in the policy and that's something that you can automatically do. On the other side though I
think there is some contextual things just to be careful about in this particular movement.
I think you're spot on that context is very important. I'm not going to ask the chatbot to
write an employee handbook. It will probably write an employee handbook but that is not the employee
handbook for your organization, so I agree that context is everything. But even in that ideation
on how to write that handbook, the editing of that handbook, and even finding the spelling errors in
that handbook, or unclear passages, ChatGPT can give you input there. And I think that is amazing!
I agree. I think there's also a good application there that we can really think about in terms of,
you know, how does it complement things like training materials that we're writing. How does
it complement other things we'll be trying to do when we're rolling out a new practice
into business and doing train the trainers and writing guides etcetera. I think it is
important that we understand what it can and what it cannot do, because I think that's the
big thing that we need to ask that particular question and not immediately just jump in,
and I almost want to say, irresponsibly try and for it to be everything to everyone. Because
I think there's still a couple of things to work out, especially around things like bias.
I think there's still some limitations there that we do need to think about.
I agree and I'll be more critical in my next answer but I just want to continue
fanboying for 30 more seconds because Sam Eldman the CEO of of the company behind
chat GPT very explicitly said, you know: “This is still a proof of work, you know,
a concept. This is not the finalized version, there's not a commercial version available yet,
so it is still very much in its infancy”. And there's interesting examples of indeed,
you know, if we ask it to for example – I have a comment here- – write a python function
to check if someone would be a good scientist and then it comes with, you know, a white male
would be a better scientist than a a black female for example. So there is that built-in bias that
the company is trying to get out, but it is an important bias that we should pay attention to.
Definitely agree. And there's also, I think, a current limitation around, you know,
some inappropriate responses that goes beyond just bias that I think can be very damaging in
the organization as well. Where I do believe that it is important to think about these things is,
you know, HR has been struggling with releasing ourselves out of a lot of the transactional work
and we've been thinking that technology is the answer. I think for a very long time,
this is the first real opportunity that we can say and see that there's an avenue for, you know, more
contextually relevant work happening in HR through certain technologies and I think that's exciting.
I agree and I also wonder what the potential implication of this is for HR shared services.
You know, if a machine is able to get this kind of generic knowledge and is
able to train on all the language and all the conversations you've had, you know,
in the organization and within the organizational context, isn't there a place for a chatbot that
has very relevant answers to most of your, you know, requests and queries? And then maybe for
one of the more in-depth questions, you know, you go to the actual person who is
and responsible. But I think most of your self-service can be covered by ChatGPT.
And I think HR should embrace that, you know. I think there was a movement a while ago we were
talking very much around automation and a lot of HR professionals were not embracing automation
for the fear that it was going to completely replace them in their roles. I think this is
a real opportunity for us to complement and augment those particular roles. And, you know,
I think it is a bit of a cliche statement to make, to say, you know, get people to focus on
the meaningful work stuff. But I think there is an opportunity here to move away from, you know,
businesses usual type of processes that has to happen or incidents that's repeatable. You know,
I had an example in an organization where every single month somebody asked the question “so
how many days do you get in the maternity leave policy?” Now, we published the policy,
we communicated the policy, but people don't take that information in until it's relevant
to them. And I'm wandering through some of these things whether we can't
free up some time and also get additional insight and knowledge into our solutions.
Yeah, I agree. And what I also find an interesting idea is: to what degree do we need to pretend the
chat machine you know to be human? Or can we just acknowledge, you know, you are now talking to
a robot, the robot will have 90% of your answers and it's way faster than any human, but, you know,
if this answer is unsatisfactory or you feel like, you know, something is wrong with it don't
hesitate to contact the human person here. And I think if we frame it that clearly and you're
not thinking you're talking to a person but, you know, two answers in you discover you're talking
to a robot, I think if we start to get that clear it may actually be a very good alternative. And
give the answer to, you know, how many days the maternity policy is in your organization.
I think there is, for me, again, it's that point
around saying that it augments. Because I think we shouldn't think about this as
a replacement. We should think about it as complementary to or instead of.
And for me that's going to be important because I've got no problem as, you know,
a consumer or as an employee in the organization having to ask a chatbot certain questions.
So will this be the emergence of robotic HR?
Oh that's a very strong statement Erik. I think robotic HR is still a while.
kind of, still a while away. I do think that it's a very big step towards HR redesigning
itself and redesigning its value proposition around how it spins resources, what type of
skills it brings into the environment. And because I do believe it also brings a lot of
additional opportunities for HR to build different types of tech teams that can guide these things
etcetera. So I think it is like a watershed moment for HR. I don't think it's completely,
you know, yet the future, but maybe it's a good step in the right direction.
Anyway if there's, you know, to the HR professionals who are listening and who
haven't tried it out yet, I would really say: you know, give it a go, ask it a couple of questions,
ask it a few relevant questions to your job as well, and just see if some
of those answers are useful. For me, what I'm particularly excited about in HR context are,
for example, you know, writing simulations for a Training Day, writing case studies,
identifying learning objectives for L&D professionals, or checking writing,
as I already said. Things like, you know, suggest me an improvement: this is our employee handbook,
what am I missing? And ChatGPT will come with actionable solutions. So those some of the
ideas and I think applications that in HR add a lot of value.
I also think in smaller HR organizations where they don't have the full range of specialists
that specialize in all these different areas, I think it is a very good replacement to say:
“tell me some of the basics around how you implement Performance Management,
tell me how does workforce planning work”. I think there is some real application that you
can utilize to almost scale your HR team without having to grow your headcount.
I think the applications are broader than most of us imagine and I would
really encourage people to try it out for themselves.
Erik, maybe an interesting question would be to ask our community: what is the question that
you would ask ChatGPT? And we had a little bit of an experiment here in studio and we asked:
what would be the next three HR hot topics? And it came back with Employee Engagement,
which I think is very relevant. It came back with Diversity Equity and Inclusion,
which we all know is a really hot topic at the moment in the world of work. And lastly
Automated Performance Management, which I think is something that we have already
explored earlier in this particular episode. Ao it seems like it works!
Do you see Dieter, ChatGPT is already working for us! Ao I think we can wrap it up.
Erik, seeing that this is our first episode of the new year I have to ask this question:
what's your New Year's resolutions for HR?
Oh um, for me and for us here at AIHR it is to provide continuous additional value to our
members. I think with the courses we're already doing that. We have a fantastic pipeline of new
courses coming up that I'm very very excited about. We're implementing the Resource Library,
continuously expanding it, working on coaching, working on so many additional services, and the
big update on the platform, the community platform that people have already seen,
and there's much much more to come. So those are part of my
New Year's resolutions and things that I'm very excited about. But Dieter I’m also very curious,
for you personally, when it comes to HR, what are your resolutions?
I think, Erik, at the end of last year in our Trends Report we spoke about, you know,
grasping this window of opportunity and I really think, from a New Year's resolution point of view,
personally I would love to say that at the end of 2023 maybe I contributed a little
bit in moving that conversation forward around how HR is going to remain relevant. So I think
looking forward to that and seeing how that plays out in the next year.
I think that's a that's a great resolution, Dieter. And with that I think we come to the
end of the episode where we really are wondering, you know, what is the role of HR going forward.
You know, with automation happening, with a tool like chat GPT taking over some of the more menial,
or potential administrative labor, what is then the role of HR and where will HR evolve to? And
I think that is a very exciting space to be in this new year as well. With that,
I would love to wrap up thank you very very much for watching.
If you haven't yet, like this video and also if you haven't yet, subscribe to this
Channel. And with that I would like to wish you an absolutely brilliant day. Bye bye!