Consider Artificial Intelligence In Developing Your HR Tech Stack
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
A couple of years ago, I published an article about how an “organization’s technology strategy needs to include building the perfect tech stack”. It’s still true today. A quick refresher: a tech stack is a grouping of technology services that are “stacked” together to create the best, most effective, and efficient process possible. For example, a traditional talent acquisition tech stack might look like this:
What’s different in today’s world of tech stacks is artificial intelligence (AI). At this year’s HR Technology Online conference, I heard a panel of experts from Visier talk about the dynamics that organizations need to consider when introducing artificial intelligence into the existing tech stacks.
PREPARE for the integration. One of the first questions that organizations need to ask themselves is how can AI integrate successfully with the existing systems? This isn’t just about the technology compatibility. Organizations need to consider their entire tech strategy including legalities and ethics. They also need to think about the level of AI expertise they have access too – in-house as well as from external sources.
START the integration. As organizations bring AI into their tech stack, there are lots of factors to consider. Three factors that were mentioned in the presentation were data, training, and cost.
Let’s start with data. What’s the quality of the organization’s existing data? Does the organization have enough data storage?
Organizations should also consider training – both training for users as well as training for AI (also referred to an LLM). The presenters strongly reminded us that organizations need to review the terms of service for any AI integration to understand if how the company’s data will be used to train AI. Organizations need to be fully aware of how their data is being used.
Another factor to consider is cost. While there are free AI tools on the internet, if you’re serious about using AI … you’re going to pay for it. How much the organization will pay depends on how they will use it. Companies need to understand the pricing structure for what they are getting.
USE the integration to achieve higher performance. While the presentation covered this at the end, I could see this discussion being something to consider at the beginning as well. If the organization is bringing AI into their technology, they should have some rationale for doing so. And the answer isn’t “because everyone is doing it”. For example, is AI going to streamline a process? Or maybe improve decision making? These are specific things that can be measured, which means the organization can regularly evaluate the effectiveness of their AI integration.
I understand that artificial intelligence is fun to play around with. And we all want the latest technology. But it needs to work … and work well. I’m not telling anyone to rethink their AI integration. But remember the first HR Technology Online session I wrote about? It was titled “HR Tech Success Starts with Asking the Right Questions”. Well, I think this panel discussion totally reinforces that. Artificial Intelligence is going to transform business. Organizations need to ask the right questions so they can integrate it with existing technologies in the best way possible.
Image captured by Sharlyn Lauby after speaking at the HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas, NV
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