Why should HR settle down in the AI era?

As we all know, in the AI era, many jobs are gradually being replaced by machines. Whether traders, bank employees, accountants, insurance brokers on Wall Street, factory workers, sanitation truck drivers, restaurant waiters, journalists, etc. Professionals from all walks of life may face the danger of unemployment every minute.

In the field of human resources, with the in-depth application of AI, more and more companies begin to explore the working mode of AI empowering HR, and human resources reform will be inevitable.

A study by Oxford University shows that the probability of human resources being replaced by AI is as high as 89.7%. AI replaces not only basic personnel work, but also a large part of recruitment work.

In fact, AI recruitment has gradually become popular, and some companies conduct resume screening, initial presentation and evaluation through AI. North America once held an annual industry competition in 20 17, requiring eight top headhunters and an AI robot to select the best resume from 5000 resumes. In the end, mankind won the first place. It took the headhunter 25 hours to accurately match the most suitable resume, and the AI robot ranked third in 3.2 seconds. Other headhunters also spent 4-9 hours respectively. More than three years have passed since this game, and many people in AI hope that even in the AI era, their careers will not be affected.

So in the AI ? ? era, why can HR settle down and not be eliminated by the times?

Regarding how to deal with the surging AI, Richard Baldwin, a professor of world economy at the Institute of Advanced International Relations and Development in Geneva, Switzerland, gave three suggestions in his new book "The Drastic Change of Global Robots: Globalization, Robots and the Future of Work":

Avoid competition with artificial intelligence, especially in the field that AI is best at (large-scale information processing)

Cultivate skills that machines don't have and only humans have.

Recognize that human nature is a competitive advantage, not an obstacle.

According to the research of Oxford University, the jobs that are least likely to be replaced by machines have the following characteristics:

1. Good at controlling opportunities

2. Master interdisciplinary knowledge and skills and become a top expert.

3. Become an industry expert

4. Produce content through creative thinking such as creativity and aesthetics.

5. Be good at man-machine cooperation and use tools such as AI.

6. handle humanized work such as interpersonal communication and emotional communication that AI can't handle.

Therefore, we believe that in addition to professional knowledge and skills related to human resources, HR personnel should also focus on cultivating the following abilities:

1 Open-minded

Mark Twain famously said, "Courage comes from resisting and conquering fear, not from the absence of fear". Facing all major changes and opportunities, we should first have an open mind to embrace the inevitable artificial intelligence.

As Carol Dwek pointed out in her book Lifelong Growth: Redefining the Thinking Mode of Success:

People with growth-oriented thinking mode not only need challenges, but also grow up in challenges; A fixed thinker is only interested in what he has mastered. If things become challenging-when they don't feel smart and talented, they will lose interest.

The difference between employees' monthly income of thousands and tens of thousands lies not in working hours, but in the way of thinking. Whether you are complacent or brave, it is between your thoughts.

2 Cross-border learning ability

It is true that a large part of the responsibilities of HR positions can be replaced by AI, but AI cannot replace complex, changeable and interdisciplinary work.

Cross-border learning ability is the ability to integrate, absorb and transform diversified information across one's own knowledge fields and professional boundaries. HR needs to combine cross-border knowledge with its own major and work in order to broaden its horizons, stimulate innovative thinking and cope with the complex business environment.

The valuable HR in the future are all masters who are good at cross-border learning.

3 Understand human nature

The core of HR is "people". People have both rationality and sensibility, and rationality is often dominated by sensibility. AI is an emotional machine. It doesn't understand human nature, not to mention its complicated insight and control. HR who understands human nature can do well.

In the AI era, facing the complicated and changeable organizational environment, individual needs of employees and intergenerational differences of employees, HR should pay more attention to the understanding and grasp of human nature, understand the personal characteristics, motivations and needs of employees under the water in the iceberg model, stimulate the goodness of employees' human nature through various systems, policies or means, and keep the evil of human nature in a cage.

Look at some psychological knowledge and understand human nature. For HR in the AI era, it is applicable today and will be applicable in the future.

4 ability to solve problems

As an HR, we should be able to see the correlation between different phenomena and different problems, and solve problems systematically and orderly, which generally includes finding and defining problems, building a framework, analyzing the interests of all stakeholders, defining the key points of problem formation, listing possible solutions, evaluating and selecting solutions, implementing them efficiently and readjusting them.

Higher-level HR, just like seeking medical treatment before illness, can predict possible problems in advance, nip them in the bud and eliminate them at the source.

5 business understanding ability

Understanding the company's business is the basis for carrying out human resources work, making human resources decisions and implementing specific human resources operations. Excellent HR needs to understand the business and keep business acumen, especially when designing the salary system, performance system and personnel training mechanism, HR needs to be able to think from the perspective of business and operation and apply the human resources lens to the workflow. The deeper the understanding of business, the stronger the landing of human resources policies, systems and programs, the greater the role they play, and the greater the contribution of HR. Of course, if HR wants to understand business well, it also needs to master knowledge in four areas, namely business management, finance, marketing and operation.

6 communication skills

The definition of management is simple. The past, the present and the future are all communication.

-Kōnosuke Matsushita

For human resources, effective communication is one of the cornerstones of personal and professional success. Communication is defined as the ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders, which is the basis of establishing and maintaining a person's social relations, and also the performance of a person's ability to deal with social relations.

Whether dealing with employee dissatisfaction, coordination between departments or cooperation with other organizations, effective communication is very important for explaining policies and activities, setting goals, communicating progress, and finally achieving the strategic goals of the organization. The communication ability of HR can directly affect employees' satisfaction with the company, and then affect the performance of business departments.

7 data analysis ability

We often say that data is the future oil, AI is based on big data, and big data can make us see the problem more comprehensively and deeply. Therefore, HR in the AI era needs statistical knowledge, data integration and data analysis, mining the logic and essence behind the data, and providing data support for decision-making.

With more and more application scenarios of AI in HR field, HR should learn how to cooperate with AI, make good use of various AI tools, learn how to train AI, how to interpret and analyze data, and how to show that data affects others, thus improving the work efficiency of individuals and teams.

Of course, in addition to the above seven items, there are other soft skills that are also necessary for HR in the AI era, such as critical thinking, adaptability, persuasiveness and teamwork. So I won't go into details one by one.

In fact, these abilities are not only applicable to HR, but also to other occupations, which is what distinguishes us from machines.

The singularity moment of AI is coming, which is an opportunity for the readjustment of human social structure and economic order. AI will replace some jobs, but at the same time it will also create a large number of new jobs, and the existing jobs will be "advanced" because of the benign help and assistance of AI-liberating people from repetitive work and spending time on more valuable things.

As the vanguard of enterprise management, HR, instead of being trapped in the panic that it may be replaced by artificial intelligence, should break the inherent thinking mode, seize the time to develop its core competence, change itself, constantly evolve, conform to the trend and face the difficulties.