Exploring AI in HR: How Are Chennai Companies Adopting These Technologies?

I am Hemalatha from Chennai, a Ph.D. Research Scholar. I am interested in gaining insight into Artificial Intelligence technologies used in Human Resource Management. Based on a review of past literature, I note that AI is exclusively used in HR practices such as recruitment, training & development, performance appraisal, and more in countries like the USA and Canada. I am curious to learn about the state of AI technologies in HR in Indian cities, specifically their applications in organizations based in Chennai. I truly value all your suggestions and ideas to advance my research. My primary research objective is to identify the various AI technologies utilized in HR practices and their impact on Human Resource Management practices, with a focus on Chennai. Please advise me on the practical possibilities and limitations of this research topic.

Exploring AI in HR Functions in India

Dr. Hemalatha, happy to note your keen interest in interdisciplinary research. Your post dated 18.02.2020 has not been responded to by anyone yet. Therefore, I am making an attempt to respond to you.

It's my personal feeling that exploring areas of AI implementation in the HR function is still far away in India, other than the IT sector. As you know, the role of AI in the HR domain starts with recruitment and goes all the way to performance appraisal of employees. In India, only the big corporates in the IT sector are using AI to increase the efficiency of human resources. The role of AI extends across various functions carried out in the HR department, where robotics companies can handle recruitment, hiring, data analysis, data collection, workload reduction at the workplace, and enhancing workplace efficiency.

In this forum, we are generally labor law learners. Many of us may not have even heard the word AI yet. You need to do some research on Google Baba to find an appropriate forum for you. There, you may find many study reports on AI and its impact on HR functions.

Redefining Research Objectives in AI and HR

In my opinion, there is a need to redefine the research objectives. Identifying the various AI technologies used in HR practices and their impact on human resource management practices is somewhat banal. I suggest expanding it to measure the perception of employees towards AI and how organizations are coping with the transition.

The Scope of AI in HR

HR has tremendous scope for AI as there is a lot of repetitive data-based work. The basic particulars of the employee, such as qualification, date of birth, experience profile, and training and development exposures, are required across the breadth of the employee's service. By digitizing them and utilizing AI technologies, a lot of man-hours can be spared. AI has started making its presence felt in workplaces and even in core areas like attitude assessment of employees, where chatbots have made an entry internationally.

Future Fields of AI in HR

The core human skill sets—analytical, strategic, critical thinking, cultural awareness, emotional intelligence, etc.—are the fields of AI in the future.

So far, what we have seen is that most of the HR processes in India have not yet reached a major level of standardization and are in a state of constant process re-engineering. At most, I have seen AI being implemented for some chatbots, and these have not been impressive because the NLP implemented fails to capture the context of the employee query through keyword recognition.

A number of companies have started investing in data analytics and high-cost ERP packages, but the high-cost ERP packages mainly focus on the primary business processes with less emphasis on the HR processes. This is mainly due to the cost factor, where the cost of resource supply for HR is still lower compared to the AI implementation cost in the process.