Using AI to support HR / L&D

AI excels at recognizing patterns and predicting outcomes, making it a powerful tool for HR and L&D tasks. Yet many in our line of work are intimidated by models like ChatGPT and are not sure how they could use it.

Here are some ideas, based on the ways that we and our clients have been using it so far…

Reviewing objectives

One of our clients uses ChatGPT, or their in-company equivalent, to review their team’s objectives. The Head of Talent copies each of her team’s objectives into the platform and asks questions like,

  • What trends do you notice?
  • Given we are a talent management team, delivering L&D, career development and succession planning support, what gaps are there?
  • What else could be working on, to add value to the business?

If you’re a people manager, why not try this with your team’s objectives, or performance reviews? The model can help you identify trends and make an action plan. If you’re working in HR / L&D, why not suggest this to your client people managers, so they can gain even more value from the time they invest in goal-setting and performance reviews?

 

Just-in-time learning

Anyone who has had a go at searching for ideas on Google or YouTube before a difficult conversation, hoping for inspiration, will know the pain of searching for a needle of wisdom in a haystack of trash. There is a lot of content online that is unhelpful and can take you off on a tangent.

Models like ChatGPT in contrast, give direct and specific answers to questions, so giving people managers access to a platform like that, can give great guidance in the moment. As examples, we have worked with people managers who have opened a free account on ChatGPT, and used it for questions like,

  • I’m about to have a difficult conversation with someone. I need to give them feedback and they usually get defensive telling me it was someone else’s fault. What can I do?
  • My team is mostly introverts and I can’t get them to speak up in meetings, what else could I try?
  • Every time I ask one of my team about their development and how I can support them, they just ask for a pay rise. How can I respond?

What you will notice as you start using the model, is that it takes a certain skill to ask the right questions, so you can get the information you need.

This is becoming a hot topic in the world of recruitment and future skills-building, as leaders ask the question, “how do we hire for people who can make best use of the technology of the future?” See our related article on top tips to get the best out of your AI conversations!

Learning design

Many of us find it easier to work with a draft design, than to create something from scratch. At Totem, we find it super helpful to put new design requests into ChatGPT, so we can get some initial ideas to work with. As an example, a client asked us to design a workshop on influencing, with an underlying theme of building credibility.

Their delegates need to build up trust with their internal clients, so they have a stronger foundation to influence from – so we were looking for ideas on how to combine those messages. And maybe there would be new ideas there we had not thought of.

It’s not like we can just replace all of our design time with AI, but it can give some useful ideas to get the creative juices flowing! In that particular project, the model gave us some good starting point ideas to explore with the client, and some great suggestions for scenarios. Useful questions to ask the model:

  • I want to deliver training that meets XYZ learning objectives, how would you structure a 90-minute online workshop to deliver that?
  • Given ABC context of the delegates, what scenarios could we work through to get people applying the ideas in context?
  • What could be some interesting practical exercises we could run, to get people putting the learning into practice?

 

Communications support

Similar to the point above on many people finding it useful to get going creatively, once someone else has provided some initial ideas, we have many clients who use an in-house model, or the public ChatGPT to get ideas for communication. Whether that’s titles for programmes, blurbs to market their learning, communications to new hires, emails to senior management about a forthcoming change, all sorts can be easier to write when you have a first draft to play with.

  • Provide some background context to the model, as part of the question you write. This helps the model understand more on what you’re looking for, to give a better first draft.
  • Provide some keywords, for example do you want certain terms to be included, or do you know that certain language suits this company? Then the model can use that language in your draft.
  • Iterate – you might take the first response from the model, tweak it and use it. Or you might ask the model to tweak it with instructions like, “say this in a more informal tone,” or “use more emphasis on the future opportunities.”

You’ll notice all of these suggestions are about gaining insights, saving time and boosting creativity by giving a starting point. These are some of the great opportunities with models like ChatGPT, so take advantage!