AI seems to be having an increasing impact on HR, particularly onboarding.
81% of HR professionals have “explored or implemented AI solutions to improve process efficiency within their organization,” according to a research and consulting firm Gartner report, and 69% of HR professionals used AI in their onboarding processes in 2022, according to a survey from talent acquisition platform Eightfold AI.
These numbers are supported by the HR division of Genies, a software business that makes digital avatars. Makena Jordison, the chief of staff at the company, says that since 2022, it has utilized two chatbots that are based on OpenAI’s GBT-4 technology to inform staff members about the company’s primarily Gen Z user base and direct them to HR resources.
Everyone on board. Genies has dedicated time to educating its new staff on Gen Z in an attempt to make sure its platform is meeting the needs of its intended audience. This process has been streamlined significantly since the initial chatbot was released.
“We’ve created a bot that you can talk to, that can train you up, and then give you a bunch of information on what’s happening,” Akash Nigam, CEO of Genies, told HR Brew.
Workers have two options when posing inquiries to the chatbot:
—“Who’s really relevant [to Gen Z]? Why are they important? What is Gen Z? What did they like this week?” said Nigam—, or for a Gen Z-focused news digest, and “when you converse back and forth with the Gen Z [chatbot,] it will literally talk like a Gen Z person, so it’ll throw in ‘slay,’ or something like that, which is amazing,” added Jordison.
According to Nigam, it has made it easier for new hires to get up to speed quickly, and the creation and design of Genies’s app and avatars are based on their deeper understanding of the company’s target market.
Although the Gen Z chatbot doesn’t replace all of the training that takes place during the onboarding process, Jordison told HR Brew that it can replace some of the tedious meetings that many new hires might have had to sit through during their first few weeks on the job.
For example, according to Jordison, staff members “easily plug whatever they’re working on in, or any questions, into this chatbot, and it’ll tell you what doesn’t line up with the characteristics or traits of, like, a Gen Z girl,” rather than meeting with the marketing team to discuss what appeals to Gen Z.
A bot available for your use. Following the launch of its first chatbot, Genies developed a second one using GPT-4 to expedite the sharing of corporate information throughout the onboarding process. Holiday schedules, workplace policies, and documentation are all stored in this chatbot.
“Instead of having to scroll through Notion or Google Docs,” Jordison said. “You can literally say [to the chatbot], ‘What are Genies’ holidays?’ and, in two seconds, the list of the holiday calendar is a message back to you.”
The company’s HR staff is still working after implementing these chatbots. They collaborate with what Jordinson referred to as “AI gurus” from around the organization to teach staff members how to use chatbots to enhance their job performance.
“We don’t just take whatever this bot is [saying], and are like this is it, we’re going to launch this right now to the public…We definitely use it as a guiding principle,” she said. “We’ve definitely learned that some things can be helped with AI, and then some things it can’t.”