Empowering HR With AI: Mitigating Risks And Enhancing Security

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How AI Is Empowering The HR Industry

To say that the AI industry is growing rapidly would be something of an understatement! According to Next Move Strategy Consulting, the global AI market is racing from a value of $95.60 billion in 2021 to a projected value of $1,847.58 billion by 2030—that’s a CAGR of 32.9% between 2022 and 2030. Of course, AI in HR is nothing new. While ChatGPT and its ilk have taken the world by storm since late 2022, recruiters have been using AI to overcome inefficiencies and delays in the talent acquisition process for years.

Oracle’s 2019 AI in Human Resources guide [1] reported that 50% of workers were already currently using some form of AI at work—a jump from 32% the previous year. It’s nothing new, but AI is becoming more commonplace, more widely understood, and more useful as a result of its increasing variety of applications.

The Benefits Of AI In HR: Risk Mitigation And Security

AI in modern HR solutions can deliver a wide range of efficiencies and enhancements. It can deal with time-consuming, repetitive tasks—from answering staff queries about leave entitlements or training programs to speeding up payroll operations. There are also risk mitigation and security benefits when it comes to using AI in HR. Fraud can come at an organization from any angle these days—as the fraud monitoring guide makes clear—and this reflects the need for real-time operational surveillance to detect and prevent fraud events.

HR systems, with their extensive access to employees’ personally identifiable information (ranging from social security numbers to bank account details), are hugely attractive to fraudsters. As such, they require a robust layer of defense in any business. AI can help with this. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) advises that AI-enabled anomaly detection can reveal even small deviations from what “normal” looks like for an HR system. This can indicate an emerging threat at an early stage and prompt the team to investigate and take the appropriate action.

This can be particularly helpful when HR teams are under pressure from elsewhere in the business. There will always be periods when an organization is particularly vulnerable to fraud creeping in unnoticed. One example is when an HR team is supporting a business to navigate change and may be distracted by the demands of doing so. With AI analyzing thousands of metrics in the background, no matter how distracting day-to-day operations become, the team has a reliable system in place to flag any potential problems and instances of fraud.

Additional Benefits To Integrating AI-Powered Tools In HR Processes

The integration of AI in HR empowers professionals to analyze vast amounts of data efficiently, automate routine tasks, and detect anomalies or potential security threats. It does this by leveraging advanced analytics, automation, and enhanced security protocols. The latter means that only those who should be able to access HR system data can do so, owing to rigorous authorization and authentication standards put in place to ensure this.

The impact of these efficiencies and enhanced securities can be significant. Managing people can be a costly business. According to Scout Logic’s report, the costs of hiring [2] can be an average of around $4,000, and that’s not allowing for the cost of onboarding and training. Clearly, any cost savings that AI can enable by introducing efficiencies into this process will be gratefully appreciated by HR teams who are hiring.

AI can then be of further benefit to existing staff teams, delivering operational support through chatbots for employee queries, checking salary details and payroll amounts, and tailoring personalized benefits packages around employees’ individual needs. Stack ranking is another use, with AI analyzing employees’ performance across the business and flagging the least effective performers for additional training or other management intervention.

AI can also aid in reducing organizational bias—though the AI software itself must be audited for bias (by law in some regions) in terms of its use in sifting CVs, recommending salary bandings/changes, and suggesting promotions. Under New York City Local Law 144, for example, from 5th July 2023, companies may only use automated tools to hire candidates and promote employees if those tools have been independently audited for bias. If they have not, companies are prohibited from using them. All of this comes in addition to the security and fraud-fighting advantages discussed above.

The Path To Organizational Success

By mitigating risks and enhancing security, AI-enabled HR systems support more informed decision-making. This can be a key contributor to organizational success. It’s not just HR teams who can benefit. AI is enabling businesses to innovate both within and across departmental divides, leading to an empowered, data-driven approach to operational decisions alongside a business-wide approach to security.

That said, it must be remembered that many security breaches come down to human error. This means that the use of AI in HR should always be accompanied by a robust staff training program covering everything from guarding against phishing to what account takeover fraud involves and how to spot it.

Attention also needs to be paid to how AI systems are trained. Machine Learning means that such systems have the potential to continually evolve, making them more useful to a business as time goes on. However, this also requires an upfront investment of time to ensure that the AI system learns what normal looks like within the unique context of an individual organization. The better the AI’s understanding of what “normal” is, the more accurately it can flag deviations from that normality, with the result that potential fraud events and other anomalies can be spotted as early as possible.

Conclusion

The use of AI in HR is still evolving, as is the use of AI in many industries. According to Market Research, generative AI has a big role to play in the future of the HR market. From a value of $413.1 million in 2022, it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.4% to 2032, meaning the generative AI in HR market size would reach a value of $1699.3 million [3].