Event wrap-up: AI’s impact on HR in the modern workplace

In a time of rapid AI advancement, it’s crucial to discern reality from speculation.

On Wednesday 11 October 2023, Angela Franks, and the Frazer Jones Australia team, hosted an informative and fun event with guest speakers Troy Gread, from Workvergent, and Jason Portelli from Tech Pathfinder discussing how AI, instead of being an intimidating force, can be utilised to enhance the role of HR professionals in shaping the future of work.

Understanding how AI can impact your business is key and it really starts with understanding how and who is using it. If you haven’t used AI yourself there are plenty of ways to test it out for free. ChatGPT is probably the most obvious starting point.

There are huge benefits to HR including cost and time efficiencies in the form of tweaking content to suit rather than starting from scratch; revitalising existing content to add humour etc; summarising and analysing data; creating tailored images, audio and video content. From this small list, the two areas that cause the most concern to organisations and HR is existing content and data. If there are no controls or policies in place, employees (whether by accident or ignorance) will potentially be sharing confidential data and leaving the organisation open to a long list of risks. Other concerns can be assuming the information gathered from AI is correct, content could be biased/discriminating or harmful; and calculations and reasoning or logic can be inaccurate.

If we single out talent acquisition for a moment, the biggest challenge is knowing and deciding as a business how you feel about and deal with the use of AI. Are you okay with candidates using AI to write their cover letter and CV? If you aren’t, how do you know? AI can help identify if AI wrote it. But where does that end?

In a UK study released in October 2023 by Artic Shores and Opinium surveying 2,000 students and adults in the first two years of their careers, 33% advised they would not want to work for an organisation that said they couldn’t use Generative AI in their recruitment process.

The event encouraged participants to make sure, as HR professionals, that they are aware of what is happening and get ahead of it. Our guest speakers also received some great questions from the audience, opening up more diverse conversations about AI and its impact on HR.

The full slide deck can be downloaded by clicking below.

Hosted at Diageo Australia’s stunning office in Sydney, the audience also learned from Scott Gillen, how Diageo was using AI and Microsoft’s Copilot to take their business forward.

Thank you to our guest speakers Troy Gread from Workvergent, Jason Portelli from Tech Pathfinder, and Scott Gillen from Diageo, our host, Patrick Bruneau from Diageo, and to all our guests for a wonderful afternoon of learning, cocktails and canapes.

If you are interested in participating in any future roundtable events in Sydney, please contact Angela Franks, or for details on all other Frazer Jones events please click here.