The ability of artificial intelligence to extract valuable insights and patterns inside large datasets that would be difficult or impossible for humans to perform is the true AI unlock for businesses—but it’s only an unlock if it’s sitting atop a foundation of useful and unbiased data.
Employee recognition software company Workhuman announced Wednesday it launched a new update to its platform that incorporates AI to provide productivity and skills insights inside its recognition and culture platform.
HR leaders don’t need another AI tool, Workhuman execs contend. What they need is a data set that will actually tell them something useful about their people, culture, and business.
“For at least a decade, HR people [and] people people have been saying, ‘We need people analytics. We need to understand these insights.’ But they have been pigeonholed to…what does the business say that it values, and what is the board saying that it wants to understand about the workforce?” KeyAnna Schmiedl, chief human experience officer at WorkHuman, told HR Brew ahead of the launch. “Where HR has been asked to [focus] people analytics…has been on the raw quantitative data that just tells you how many people, at what time, putting in what type of hours. Is that what we care about anymore? Should it have ever been what we cared about?”
Workhuman’s platform, Schmiedl contended, collects valuable data on peer-to-peer recognition and internal relationships. And with the AI tools the company is shipping inside its new Human Intelligence release, HR pros and workplace leaders can now better understand what makes employees good contributors and lift up the skills and competencies they find valuable when it comes to actually getting the work done.
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Using peer-to-peer recognition data, Workhuman created a set of training data for its Human Intelligence AI tool that organizes so-called soft-skills by understanding the text inside recognition moments collected by employees inside the platform. The recognition tool can quantify human relationships inside the company, talent and skills, performance details, and more.
This peer-to-peer data can be a better indicator of the pulse of the company and its culture. A manager’s annual evaluation is a small slice of an individual contributor’s performance, yet it has defined HR’s understanding of talent for years.
“Crowdsourcing that information” works more effectively, she said. “Don’t just take my word for it that Peter’s great at X. Look at these 50 other people, who aren’t even in the same department, saying the same thing over the last two years.”
Employees recognize aspects of performance that might not be top of mind for managers in that annual review setting. Inside a recognition moment, an employee might note another’s patience when working with a new team or appreciate how a colleague handled a thorny situation. The language in that moment actually describes a skill that’s critical to the success of that particular team. HR and managers might then look to scale that skill across teams or departments.
“Taking AI and putting it to a data set like that, that has this raw unfiltered information, allows you to ask these more intelligent questions about the workforce and to understand the individuals are making that up,” Schmiedl said.