ORLANDO, FL — Bettina Deynes, global CHRO at Carnival Corporation, says it’s understandable that younger workers have fears about AI. Because if AI had come along earlier in her career, she would have been “petrified.”
“I know everything it took to get to where I am today, but what does that journey mean in the age of AI?” she said. “It’s probably going to be something completely different. But I think you have to embrace that, but not use it as a substitute for yourself. [and] The intrinsic value of what you bring to the table. ”
Daines and Nisan Courtney, vice president of human resources at the U.S. Maritime Administration, discussed the role of AI in human resources during a panel titled “The ROI of AI: How HR Leaders Are Leveraging AI to Add Value,” hosted by Growth Institute faculty member Mo Fazelbabu and recorded for the SHRM podcast, at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) annual conference in Orlando, Florida. People + Strategy.
Courtney said HR employees can take the lead on AI, as they do on many other topics, because they must have flexibility in their work.
“HR is in a unique position to handle almost everything because we have to be able to pivot and influence and direct people four to five levels above us. We call it Thursday, right?” he said.
Courtney said that since AI solved HR-related problems, he has come to believe that the workplace can benefit from AI as well. As he drove to work, he asked the AI to help him create a response to a work situation, omitting sensitive information when explaining the details to the AI.
“By the time we got to the parking lot, we had a workable theory,” he said. ”[I asked myself]what does this mean for HR managers who spend 30% of their time on repetitive tasks?”
Daines said owning the AI technology is essential to Carnival’s AI efforts. That’s because, for example, if another company charges 10 cents per candidate, costs quickly rise for Carnival, which receives 10 million candidates each year.
“We’re going to own it and build it ourselves, so we’re putting money up front, it’s an investment,” she said.
One of Carnival’s AI use cases is to reduce work for recruiters, and the company is currently building a platform that can filter resumes.
“It’s made a recruiter’s job a lot easier,” Daines said.
What many recruiters currently struggle with is distinguishing between AI-generated resumes and human-generated resumes, and ensuring that the job seeker is human themselves.
One of Daines’ takeaways from working with Carnival and Gartner is that companies need to put steps in the hiring process to demonstrate that candidates have the right skills.
“You need to start assessing at the time of hire to make sure that the people you hire are telling you what they know, and they would know it without AI,” she says.
Many companies are currently addressing employee concerns about how AI will impact their future.
To reduce employees’ fear of AI, Courtney says it’s important to communicate about it in the right way. She said her company’s human resources manager came to her because she was worried about losing her job, told her she was wasting her time unnecessarily, and asked her to write down five tasks that could be done by AI.
“It doesn’t mean what she wrote will be exactly the same as what we did,” he said. “This is not a democracy, and I’m not trying to paint it as if it is a democracy. But when you do that and just spend those three minutes… She’s now one of our top champions.”
Molly Clancy is a senior site editor for Informa TechTarget’s SearchHRSoftware and SearchERP sites.
