LISA GILLESPIE Head of Learning and Development Make UK
Lisa has been in the HR industry for 25 years in a number of roles. She holds qualifications in law, a post-graduate diploma in HRM, philosophy, psychology and creative writing. In addition she qualified as a practitioner in PRINCE 2 and neurolinguistic programming.
www.MakeUK.org |
lgillespie@makeuk.org HR & RECRUITMENT Chicken or egg?
• Content personalization: Providing a more personalized employee experience by using predictive analytics to recommend career paths, professional development programs or optimize a role-progression based on prior applicant actions. Now we’re getting really clever here. And this is my point about bootstrap paradoxes. Wait for it...!
I think I’m just about at that crossover period in my career where I either need to completely throw myself into the future state of my profession or discreetly start coasting towards ‘respected sage’ status by not bothering to learn much more.
The thing is, I really love science so the fact that HR, learning and resourcing are all starting to get seriously interesting as Artificial Intelligence (AI) creeps in, is opening up fascinating new prospects for me. To this end I totally ruined one of my friend’s evenings last weekend by turning what innocently started as a discussion about AI into an explanation of a huge plot-hole in the blockbuster Terminator movie series (spoilers ahead!).
The 'Terminator series' plot relies on something that is known in the trade as a ‘bootstrap paradox’ or in layman’s terms, a storyline in which the laws of time and chronology are irrelevant. In the case of Terminator, the premise that Cyberdyne Systems and Skynet were created by reverse-engineering a salvaged microchip embedded in the arm of a Terminator which was crushed in a wonderfully- equipped-for-the-job industrial plant simply wouldn’t work applying the normal laws of time. Why? Because the said Terminator only exists in the future after those technologies evolved - I’m exhausted just explaining it!
So what is my point? Well, let’s take a look at how AI and machine learning is finding its way into HR...
• Anomaly detection: Identify non- conforming items, events or observations in a dataset. Let’s not get too technical here – those of you around long enough to have used ‘The Bradford System’ to manage employee absence will recognise this as a fore-runner and very manual form of AI; spotting patterns and anomalies to create an assumptions-based set of rules to spot disruptive absence patterns (also known as swinging the lead) which would then lead to formal absence management.
• Background verification: Machine learning-powered predictive models which can extract meaning and raise red flags based on structured and unstructured data points from applicants’ CVs. Let’s not go there in too much detail – it’s a GDPR nightmare.
• Employee attrition: Find employees who are at high risk of leaving, enabling HR to proactively engage with them and retain them. This is the really interesting stuff – given that the biggest investment organisations make is on their people in terms of salaries, training, pensions etc, proactively looking after your investment makes as much sense as fixing your leaky roof. If you don’t, everything else starts falling apart and costs you more money.
The point... The classic CV is a chronological list of experience, roles and qualifications which candidates use to showcase their suitability for roles whether it is for a new role or internal moves/promotion. But quite often the systematic and planned personal development, opportunity or experience isn’t what stands out in us humans - it’s the potential and capability we have, the ‘what if this person had to lead this project or design this process?’ Creativity will be more important to future workplaces than anything we can train or qualify people to do. Why? Because we can build machines to do almost any rules-based task or process.
Egg? We’re way off the point that we can say machines will be as powerful as the human brain in the art of creation. Physically we are light-years ahead. Just look at how well-engineered babies are! But let’s embrace what machines can do as well as recognise their limitations and aim to enhance our industries by automating the boring and optimising the opportunity for our people to be creative.
No, chicken... but maybe egg One of the most important things that fascinates me working in the manufacturing sector is that it all started roughly around 3.3m years ago when somebody made the first tool. Wow! Imagine where we would be if bootstrap paradoxes were real? How on earth would Stone Age Man have charged his iPhone 11?
29
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36
