Will People Analytics Leverage AI and Replace HR?
A Conversation with People Analytics Thought Leader Cole Napper
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People analytics professionals, especially now that they can leverage generative artificial intelligence (AI), are poised to take over HR and change the workplace forever, says Cole Napper, well-known people analytics thought leader and co-host of the Directionally Correct podcast. Hot off the heels of a guest appearance on JP Elliott's Future of HR podcast, Napper's research was featured in David Green's monthly list of best articles.
Napper, who is an HR Exchange Network contributer, recently sat down with HR Exchange Network to discuss the coming revolution. He believes AI will propel people analytics into the role of the decision maker. Then, the question becomes, "What does that mean for HR?" Discover his thoughts:
HREN: What do you think is going to happen with people analytics in the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI)? Do you still think it will be replacing Human Resources? And how much more power do you think the people with that data are going to have moving forward?
CN: Let's take a step back for a second and break this down logically. A new technology was introduced, AI, into an existing function, which is HR. You could have a few reactions. Nothing's going to change, everything's gonna stay the same, or this is a phase shift technology that's going to truly disrupt what HR does. I’m in this last camp. Then, the last is the idea that HR just goes away. I don't subscribe to that notion at all. I think about the functions in HR that are equipped to deal with this disruptive transition. People analytics is the one that is best equipped to not only deal with this transition, but to lead through this transition. And there's a reason why. It is because people analytics was already a quasi-disrupter in the past by bringing data to the HR function for the first time.
But people analytics professionals didn't just bring data. And I think this is what a lot of HR professionals fail to realize. They brought two other things: One was a completely new way of thinking about HR and the other was a whole new slew of technology to enable that transition to occur in the first place. We must be a profit center, not a cost center. People analytics has always treated itself as the ability of using an organization's human capital to turn HR from a cost center into a profit center. That line of thinking in the age of AI is going to become much more prevalent.
People analysts are well-equipped to deal with this because they're already used to using the data. Well, guess what? These models need to be trained on data, right? Who is used to training models on data? The answer is people analytics professionals.
There are going to be two different types of technology. One is AI being embedded into the technology that HR already uses, and the other is brand new technology that has not existed before. Some are being created today, and some will be created in the future. Because of this shift brought about by technology, people analytics is the version of HR that I see in the future.
So, what role does power play? Historically, people analytics has held a decision information function. Other people made decisions based on the information that people analytics provided. However, who is going to be the best equipped to make decisions based on this new world in AI, where decisions might be more complicated or require more data or more nuance or more complexity? The people who are used to using this data and technology on a regular basis.
WATCH: The HR Curator Explains How People Analytics Is the New HR
Next, people analytics professionals will make the transition from decision information to decision maker. When that transition occurs, there may not be a need for other decision makers to necessarily be at the table. There will still be things that HR does, things that make sense for human beings to do, such as employee relations and that type of stuff. But I think that although they will continue to exist, the level of importance that HR has today will actually decrease over time. After all, AI technologies are going to come in and help enable some of those tasks to be automated, or at least augmented, and made easier. That's going to happen to everyone's job.
HREN: People are saying AI will make humans become more human. What are your thoughts?
CN: I'm actually really excited about this. I want to be very clear. I don't think the human skills decrease in importance. I actually think that they increase in importance. Think about it. The inverse of humans skills is technical skills. I think a lot of the technical skills is what AI is going to be really good at. What's left is the human skills and that makes them that much more important. In our last discussion, we talked about HR digital transformation. For HR that meant taking paper that used to be in filing cabinets and then that became part of an HCM. With digital transformation 2.0, HR took a whole HR process like learning management and put it on a learning management system (LMS). Now, in digital transformation 3.0, AI is doing almost all of the technical aspects that human beings have been doing.
Let's bring it back to people analytics. I would say the onus is on people analytics to become better at consultation, influence, decision making, and taking action. All those are people-related skills. Historically, people analytics is not the best at those things. So, it's going to have to up its game. Like you and I have both said, all roles are going to be disrupted by this, augmented by it, and in short, fundamentally changed by its introduction.
HREN: What do you think will be some of the hiccups?
CN: With any disruption, there are always hiccups. Pushback is usually the biggest hiccup. If somebody doesn't want to adopt things, I can find an infinite number of ways of trying to make the lives of the people who are trying to implement it more difficult.
I think AI has to go a little bit further. And what I mean by that is that it's not good enough yet. It must make the barriers to entry as low as possible. Even the least technically sophisticated person can use it effectively, and really augment what they're doing. AI has gotten way better. It's gotten fantastic. It's going to have to continue to get better and better to decrease the barriers to entry to truly get broad adoption.
That's possible. Let's take the concept of coding to be a computer scientist. There was a point in time in the past when people thought everyone in society was going to be coding computers all the time. Did that ever come to pass? No, it did not. And one of the reasons why is because there's very large barriers to entry for doing coding effectively. The onus is on AI and AI companies to decrease those barriers of entry, so that everyone can use it, not just a select group of people.
HREN: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
CN: Well, let me build on something I was saying earlier about why I'm excited. In every job I've had, there's been a non-insignificant portion that was just menial. And I did not enjoy doing it. But it was just a necessary evil. One of the things that excites me the most about AI is the ability to automate or takeover lots of the menial things that I had to do in my career. And I feel that way for everyone that's out there. I think this will actually have more of an impact at a societal level, rather than an individual level.
Productivity gains are great for society. When the pie is growing, everybody's slice gets bigger. If we can be a more productive society as a consequence of adopting these types of technologies, we will create a better world. Going back to what I was saying before, I think AI actually makes humans more human. For people analytics, in particular, influence comes through what you say, which is storytelling, but it also comes with accountability. We have to be accountable for the recommendations we make, the changes that we make, the procedures we put in place. I think that's going to be a learning experience for us. Fundamentally, I think AI is going to make HR better, which will make the employee experience at companies better.
