A year ago, I wrote an article for MeBeBot titled “Help Wanted: Digital Workplace Assistant for Employee Support Needed Immediately.” to “re-think” the place that AI will take in providing employee support to augment internal teams.
This piece was designed to help HR leaders shift their strategies in how they design their people teams, to identify time consuming and manual processes, and to explore where AI Assistants can create operational efficiencies for both employees and their HR Teams.
Fast forward to early 2024, I deepened my commitment to MeBeBot and witnessed its impressive evolution. Technologies have advanced, and so have the necessary skills and responsibilities that are required for an AI Chatbot / Digital Assistant for HR, IT, and Operations teams. Inspired by conversations with thought leaders and our customers, I have updated the job description for a Digital Asisatnt for to reflect these advancements and what is becoming the “new normal.”
Elevated AI Chabot for HR Job Summary
The AI Chatbot, powered by advanced generative AI (Artificial Intelligence), plays a key role in unifying employee service functions, including IT, Facilities, HR, Benefits and Payroll. By enhancing the employee service delivery model, it helps employees find timely and consistent answers, supports key moments, and gathers feedback on their experience. Reporting to the Chief People Officer or People Operations Lead, the chatbot acts as a trusted partner for all employees, providing analytics and usage data to inform continuous improvement. It serves as a digital front door, offering real-time, company-specific answers through Microsoft Teams, Slack, web chat and SMS Text messaging.
Generative AI-Powered Responsibilities To Deliver Employee Service Excellence
- Global Self-Service Experience: Provides 24/7 compliant tier 0-2 support for workplace services, benefits, policies, procedures, processes, and programs.
- Generative AI Utilization: Enhances and automates tier 0-1 employee service support while closely partnering with IT, Facilities, Payroll, and HR.
- Personalized Responses: Uses a centralized knowledge base to personalize answers based on employee location and workplace Q&A.
- Feedback Collection: Collects and shares employee feedback and data to recommend service delivery enhancements and surface employee sentiment.
- Conversational Learning: Engages with employees to continuously improve answer quality through continuous learning.
- Onboarding Support: Provides personalized support for internal hires, decreasing ramp time and improving business continuity.
- Push Notifications: Collaborates with service function experts to deliver meaningful notifications to the appropriate audience.
- Multilingual Support: Supports employees’ language preferences, ensuring inclusivity and accessibility.
- Compliance Expertise: Maintains compliance knowledge to generate accurate and compliant answers.
- Template Generation: Creates pre-written Q&A templates and collaborates to build custom questions and answers.
- Document Ingestion: Ingests company documents to improve response accuracy and relevance.
- Multiple Form Factors: Serves employees through various communication methods, including SMS.
- Consistent Tone: Generates answers in the company’s cultural tone, maintaining a consistent communication style.
Required Skills Checklist for an AI HR Intelligent Virtual Assisstant
- Within the Flow of Work: Install within Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Microsoft SharePoint as a web chat. Also available via SMS Text Messaging on mobile devices.
- Generative AI Fluency: Leveraging large language models and customer specific AI models to deliver over 93% accuracy in answers.
- Automation Experience: Extensive experience automating tier 0-1 employee service delivery processes, with the ability to escalate to an inbox or ticketing system
- 24/7 Availability: Servicing employees with routine questions anytime, anywhere.
- Communication Skills: Robust listening and communication abilities.
- DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) Efforts: Experience promoting and driving usage for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging programs.
- User Experience Expertise: Proven ability to apply user experience, human-centered design, and user interface best practices.
- Data Proficiency: Skilled in Data Analytics and Data Storytelling.
- People-First Focus: Results-driven with a focus on being accessible and easy to use.
- Compliance Expertise: Mitigate risk by providing accuracy of by managing content in a way that adheres to laws, regulations, and internal policies.
- Knowledge Sharing: Comprehensive knowledge of employee workplace service and support Q&A, with mentoring from internal teams.
- Growth Mindset: Collaborative, open to feedback, and able to improve immediately.
- Multilingual Fluency: Fluent in multiple languages to support global employees.
Ways Measure Success of a Virtual HR Team Member
- Rapid Onboarding: Onboard and launch tier 0-1 support within a month of hire.
- High Support Coverage: Answer 80% of global employees’ routine questions in Facilities, IT, Payroll, Benefits, and HR.
- Reduced Onboarding Time: Decrease internal and external onboarding ramp time and improve team continuity.
- Lower Attrition: Reduce regrettable attrition by resolving employee frustrations quickly.
- Increased Engagement: Improve employee engagement scores with 24/7 accurate answers.
- Strategic Focus: Increase time spent on strategic work, saving valuable time for service team members.
- Enhanced Productivity: Significantly boost employee and manager capability and productivity.
- Mitigate Risk: Significantly reduce company risk by providing compliant and verified answers to employee questions.
Opportunities For AI Chatbot Delivery Expansion
- Manager Development: Partner with Learning & Development to evolve the manager development program with interactive resources.
- Personalized Responses: Deliver detailed, personalized responses from internal databases.
- People Analytics: Provide answers to common people analytics questions, such as employee numbers, retention rates, and hiring statistics.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Mindy Honcoop
Mindy Honcoop is an experienced People Leader now serving as MeBeBot’s VP of Customer Strategy and Operations. Previous HR advisor to Care.com, Spiceworks Ziff Davis, HomeAway.com, Blackbaud, and Expedia.