Virtual Assistants for automating repetitive organisational processes
Your company may not plan to grow the HR department just yet, but you also don’t want to overload your existing HR employees with additional tasks. If your HR team frequently has to answer the same questions (e.g. “Where can I find the employee handbook?”), that’s a sure sign you can automate that part of employee communications. Especially if you plan to have your team implement complex strategic initiatives, you’d benefit from freeing up their time.
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How it works?
Your HR chatbot will be integrated with your information databases in order to pull the right answer when needed. This means the information should be updated, organized and easy to access. Spend some time with your team and the IT department to ensure all written policies or data are accurate and intact. Then, you can upload files from your internal Wiki to the chatbot.
Conversation with a robot may sometimes feel, well, robotic. If your chatbot’s greetings or answers are too dry, it might inadvertently annoy employees. So, use the software provided to strike an authentic and positive tone based on the principles of conversational design.
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Results
According to Gartner, virtual assistants in Human Capital Management are in the early stages of adoption, expecting to reach maturity within 5 to 10 years. However, based on the same report, 35 percent of organizations will be using conversational user experience and natural language processing interactions in their talent acquisition process by 2022.
HR chatbots being somewhat behind compared to other technologies, they’re still expected to become the norm in a few years. And that, at least for now, is an opportunity: implementing a chatbot can translate into a competitive advantage in the next decade.
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Best Practices
Be mindful of confidentiality and data protection
HR handles a lot of sensitive information. The HR chatbot will inevitably have access to some, so protections need to be in place. When choosing chatbot software, make sure to ask about the privacy laws it complies with and how it keeps data secure. Work with the IT department to set the chatbot’s permissions, too.
