HR leaders weigh in on the reality of AI initiatives

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Bettina Deynes, Global CHRO at Carnival Corporation, says she understands young workers' fear of AI because if AI had arrived when she was more junior in her own career, she would have been "petrified."

"I know all that it takes to be where I am today, and what would that journey mean now in the era of AI?" she said. "It would probably be very different. But I think you've got to embrace it -- but not use it to replace who you are [and] the intrinsic value of what you bring to the table."

Deynes and Njsane Courtney, vice president of HR for the American Bureau of Shipping, discussed AI's role in HR during a panel titled "The ROI of AI: How HR Leaders Are Using AI as a Value-Add," which was hosted by Growth Institute faculty member Mo Fathelbab at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Annual Conference in Orlando, Fla., and recorded for the SHRM podcast People + Strategy.

HR can lead the way on AI, as the department does on many other topics, because of the flexibility HR employees must bring to their jobs, Courtney said.

"HR is uniquely positioned to handle almost everything, because being able to pivot, having to influence, having to direct people who are four or five levels above us -- we call that Thursday, right?" he said.

Courtney said he came to believe AI has benefits in the workplace after the technology helped him with an HR-related problem. When he was driving to work, he asked AI to help him create a response to the work situation, omitting confidential information when he described the details to the AI.

"By the time I got to my parking garage, I had a working theory," he said. "[I asked myself], what would this mean for our HR administrators who spend 30% of their time doing repetitive tasks?"

For Carnival's AI journey, Deynes said that owning AI technology was a must because if, for example, another company charges 10 cents per candidate, the cost would climb quickly for Carnival, which has 10 million candidates apply every year.

"We are putting the money upfront, the investment, because we're going to own it and we're going to build it ourselves," she said.

One AI use case for Carnival is reducing work for recruiters, with the company currently building a platform that can filter resumes.

"It's making the job of the recruiters a lot easier," Deynes said.

A current struggle for many recruiters is distinguishing between AI-generated and human-generated resumes, as well as making sure that job applicants themselves are human.

One finding Deynes says she learned from Carnival collaborating with Gartner is that companies will need to implement a step in the hiring process where candidates prove they possess the right skills.

"You're going to have to start doing assessments when you hire to make sure that the people you're hiring know what they're telling you that they know and they know it without the AI," she said.

Many companies are currently dealing with employee concerns over what AI will mean for their future.

Communicating about AI in the right way is crucial to alleviating employees' AI fears, Courtney said. He said an HR administrator at his company came to him worried about losing her job, and he asked her to write down five tasks that needlessly took up her time and that AI could potentially carry out.

"It does not mean that what she wrote is going to be exactly what we did," he said. "It's not a democracy, and I'm not trying to paint it as though it is. But when you do that and you just take those three minutes…. She is now one of our top champions."

Molly Clancy is the senior site editor for Informa TechTarget's SearchHRSoftware and SearchERP sites.