According to a Stanford University study, companies' AI investments will reach $252.3 billion in 2024, but if employees reject the technology, the spending won't pay off.
“If organizations don't set up their workforce to reliably use AI, they won't trust it and won't adopt it,” says Ted F. Chan, associate professor of strategic management at Singapore Management University.
This is the AI paradox facing businesses today. While corporate leaders are investing billions of dollars in AI, many frontline workers remain deeply skeptical for a variety of reasons.
A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this year found that nearly one-third believe it will lead to fewer job opportunities in the long term. Meanwhile, a University of Melbourne and KPMG survey of more than 48,000 people across 47 countries found that only 46% of respondents were willing to trust AI systems.
Closing this gap – getting employees to trust and adopt AI – has become one of HR’s most pressing challenges. Getting used to AI takes time and practice, but most organizations have little time for it, Tschang says.
Ted F. Chan, associate professor of strategic management at Singapore Management University, said: singapore management university
“That’s why HR leaders need to create space to safely learn and experiment with the uses and limitations of AI, starting with their own teams,” Tschang says.
To do that effectively, HR leaders need to develop AI fluency. This means you need to understand the technology well, identify where it can solve real problems, and train your employees to use AI. That's easier said than done.
“A place you can trust”
Heather Conklin, Torch CEO. torch
The standard scope of HR includes both operational tasks, such as recruiting, onboarding, benefits, and compliance, and strategic tasks, such as talent development and managing organizational change. Simply put, it's not a sector known for being particularly tech-savvy.
But at the dawn of the AI era, that's about to change, says Heather Conklin, CEO of Torch, a corporate coaching firm that helps companies navigate change, including AI adoption. “HR professionals are being forced to reinvent themselves,” she says. “And the people that I see being successful are the ones who are successful in the beginning.”
Conklin said these teams are treating their departments as testing grounds, trying out different tools and learning what works and what doesn't. “They are working on AI themselves, even if it’s not technical,” she added. “If you haven't done it before, you can't spread it throughout your company. You need to spread it from a place of trust.”
When employees are alert, their credibility becomes currency. Dexter Batchelder, CEO of Propel People, an AI recruitment platform for the construction industry, says that engaging CHROs lead with problems worth solving.
Dexter Batchelder, CEO of Propel People. Dexter Batchelder
“This isn't about HR driving AI. It's about the questions employees have: How can we have AI do our paperwork for us so we can finish work faster and get home to our families faster? How can we automate some of the less enjoyable manual tasks at work? How can we make this process better and faster?” Batchelder says.
In other words, employees are more likely to use AI when they see how it makes their daily tasks easier. “If you can solve a problem for your employees, you are using technology for a purpose,” he says. ”
Nothing increases trust and adoption like having your colleagues explain things to you. When a foreman explains to another how a particular tool is used in the field, it can be very effective to say, “This is how it works on our project, and this is how it might work on your project.'' “It's not coming from IT or management or HR. It's coming from colleagues, and that's what really drives adoption.”
“There's a real opportunity here.”
Part of HR learning how to work with AI and gaining employee trust is to understand what is no longer working within the organization and what AI can do to address those gaps.
HR leaders have a unique stake in this transformation. Batchelder says many departments have been dealing with inadequate technology for a long time, and many of the tools and processes that HR has relied on for years weren't built for this moment.
“I don’t think HR has some say in the technology they use because a lot of the tools are tied to financial systems,” he says. “There's a real opportunity here.”
For example, traditional learning management systems have difficulty keeping up when skill requirements change more frequently than every few years. Annual engagement surveys cannot capture employee sentiment as quickly as possible to respond to rapidly changing organizations.
Additionally, performance review cycles designed around annual goal setting are often disconnected from organizations where priorities change quarterly. Additionally, hiring systems built to screen for specific technical competencies may miss candidates with the problem-solving skills needed for AI-related roles.
Of course, upgrading your HR system won't completely solve trust issues. Employee concerns about job security and algorithmic bias are beyond the scope of any tool to resolve. And HR leaders still need to answer employee questions about transparency, fairness, and accountability for AI decisions.
“This is difficult to do at this point,” says Torch's Conklin. “But if HR leaders don’t understand this, they will be left behind.”
