AI and HR: Insights from SHRM 24 that Every HR Professional Needs to Know

Scott King
Well, hey everyone. Thanks for joining this episode of The Union podcast. I am Scott King and I’m joined today by Krista CEO, Michael Haske. Hey Michael, how are you?

Michael Haske
Great, how are you?

Scott King
I’m doing good. Enjoying the sunshine and the heat down here in Texas.

Michael Haske
Yeah, it’s really hot.

Scott King
But I understand you were just in Chicago last week. Many of our Krista software team members went to the SHRM24 show, which is the Society Human Resources Management, right? I’m curious what you guys learned from the show, especially when talking to HR professionals. They’re not the most tech-forward employees or organizations, but I listened to a couple of the conference sessions online. I think they have a big opportunity with AI. Johnny Taylor, the CEO of SHRM, really portrayed an important message on the opportunity that HR professionals have with shepherding in AI, building this learning culture, building this AI culture.

What did you notice from the show and what are your high-level observations?

Michael Haske
Thanks for asking. First, thanks for having me on The Union. As they say on radio, longtime listener, first-time caller. Great to be here with you. Just a little background on myself: I come from the human capital management HR industry. I spent 30 years in it before getting into other technologies like AI. It was great to be at the SHRM event this past week where over 26,000 members showed up in person.

To your point, Scott, there were some interesting things talked about. If you take an excerpt of Johnny Taylor’s post, there are three things converging at once on HR right now. He called it a polycrisis, which is a massive storm. The three things are: first, there’s a big backlash on all the DE&I initiatives that HR has been at the forefront of leading for years. Second, there’s a big civility issue in work, meaning people can’t disagree in a civil way anymore and HR needs to address that. The largest of all is AI. They talked about this massive storm that AI is coming and that it can do a lot of bad, but it also can do a lot of good. Johnny was calling on HR to take the lead in this, don’t run from it, run into it, don’t be afraid of it, embrace it because HR needs to be front and center. It was interesting to hear that from him. The conversations we were having with HR leaders at every level of the organization were fantastic and really interesting to see their perspective because they come from various starting points when it comes to AI.

Scott King
Yeah, you mentioned the storm. I appreciated his buffalo analogy. As soon as he said it, I knew where he was going because I knew a buffalo ran into the storm to make the duration shorter. I hope that people took that to heart because AI is going to touch almost every business function eventually. Getting started sooner than later is going to solve more problems. If you run from it, it’s just going to cause more problems.

He touched on the upskilling needs. As these technologies come in, there is fear, is it going to take my job? I don’t know how to use it, or I’m using it incorrectly. Were people asking questions about the fear, uncertainty, and doubt of AI? Were they worried about that? Or do they understand that it’s not going to take their job?

Michael Haske
No, they were absolutely worried about that. Education is greatly needed for everybody in the enterprise space and HR definitely needs to get themselves up to speed. We talked to people that were way ahead of the game, a lot of HR professionals that are embracing it and running towards it, but more of the conversations were people who were saying, okay, I need to get up to speed. I heard Johnny loud and clear, we know we need to do something now and we can’t take a back seat.

AI, unlike almost any other technology, will be different because when companies jump into AI, their business accelerates and starts moving at machine speed versus human speed. Unlike past technologies, you don’t slow down. That acceleration continues. So if you wait and jump into AI a year after your competitors, they’re not only a year ahead of you, they’re going to keep pulling away. You don’t catch up to them. That’s why SHRM has been so front and center about not waiting. Run into the storm. You need to shorten your learning curve. Get through this and to the other side. While there’s truth that this will eliminate jobs, I think he quoted something about McKinsey saying a billion jobs on the planet will be replaced by AI. But AI can also create jobs and uplift people’s ability to do jobs, which is why HR needs to be there for the upskilling. It’s about understanding how to reshape the workplace and the employees and setting them up for success in a world where AI can make them better while also taking away the work that nobody wants to be doing. The company doesn’t want people doing this kind of work and the people don’t want to be doing that kind of work. If handled correctly and shepherded by HR, this can turn out to be a really good thing versus the ominous, scary thing that people are making it out to potentially be.

Scott King
Yeah, I think I don’t know exactly the source of his billion jobs, but it was more that the billion jobs were transforming. So you could say that the old job is going away if you don’t get reskilled. The upskilling and reskilling to use the tools makes it a huge opportunity for HR organizations to enhance the learning and development process because that normally is with HR, right? Learning and development, career development.

Michael Haske
I couldn’t agree more. AI is its own category that SHRM is focused on. But remember, DE&I is another one. I participated in a CEO roundtable for SHRM while I was in Chicago. We had the Lieutenant Governor from Illinois, several senators, and the number one conversation was DE&I. It’s so front and center. We have made a lot of progress but have a long way to go. AI can absolutely help with that because it is a great leveler. People who maybe don’t have the same access to the same education, skills, and training can be armed with AI as a co-pilot and can be upskilled if they’re taught how to use it. Some studies show a person can go from a brand new person to the equivalent of a three-year veteran in capability and productivity when armed with a proper AI co-pilot. By embracing AI and HR taking its role, it can not only make sure that AI is a great thing for the business, but it’s also something that’s really contributory to their DE&I initiatives, allowing them to hire from pools that maybe they haven’t been able to hire from, driving two strategies simultaneously.

Scott King
Yeah, it can expand hiring. It can also help someone who maybe doesn’t have a four-year degree really elevate themselves. If you teach yourself the AI tools, the learning curve is short if you really get into it. An opportunity would exist for someone like that to train internal resources. So I think it’s a huge opportunity. I hope people see it that way versus AI is going to replace your job because it’s not the AI but someone who knows how to use AI that’s going to replace your job. Johnny talked about keeping AI and really the humans at the center. We talk about that too, meeting people where they are.

Scott King
Make sure the AI assists the human. I think that is important and should make people feel more comfortable among the unknowns. No one knows what this thing is going to look like in two or three years, but here today, we’re at a really interesting point where you have to pay attention and make decisions based on your current situation. What would you do? You’ve got more HCM experience than I do. If you were sitting in their shoes, what would you do? What would you advise your direct reports or how would you shift an organization? And then maybe answer it differently if you’re the only HR person at the company?

Michael Haske
Yeah, that’s a great question. We see both, right? We met with people that are a team of one all the way to major global corporations heading down this journey. The first piece of advice I would give the team is exactly what Johnny said: it’s time to get in the game and don’t be afraid of this. At Krista, we say think big but start small. The important thing is that you start your AI journey. You don’t have to have everything figured out, but you need to start taking steps. HR should be at the table in all AI decisions, not just AI for HR, which is a tremendous place of opportunity for AI, but any AI being brought inside the organization. This is the biggest change management we’ve seen in a long time, and HR needs to be involved. How we bring AI in, how we introduce it to people, get them excited about it versus afraid of it, is something we do every day here at Krista for our customers and something HR can add value to in an organization.

I often reference the CHRO of Salesforce. She was recently in an article on Fortune talking about how she and her CTO meet every week to discuss organizational-wide AI initiatives. She said the employee experience is HR’s charter, and three things impact employee experience the most: facilities, the leaders they work for, and the technology we ask them to use at our company. AI technology is going to shift that dramatically, so HR being involved in doing that the right way, which includes upskilling and helping employees get excited about AI and want to pull more AI into the business, is crucial. That’s why we all agree with SHRM that it’s time for HR to have a seat at the table on an enterprise-wide basis when it comes to AI decision-making.

Scott King
Yeah, I agree. Salesforce is an interesting example because they’re using AI, building AI, and selling AI. That brings up an interesting governance and bias issue. But you mentioned, start small, think big. What is SHRM doing with AI? Are they building AI products, selling AI products to members? What are they doing?

Michael Haske
Part of why we were excited to be at the show is that we have been chosen as the AI vendor to build the SHRM member-facing AI engine. They’re starting where we tell almost every company to start their AI journey, which is on the knowledge side. Find areas with massive amounts of knowledge that people need access to, whether it’s to do their jobs or whatever, and then leverage AI to organize all that so it can answer questions, do document analysis, understand, compare, and create drafts of things they would use in their everyday life. SHRM has 75 years of information. Their level of knowledge around HR practices is unmatched, and by feeding this into an AI engine, their members will have the superpowers we talk about when we think about putting a co-pilot next to them to help them do their job faster and more effectively than they could without AI. That’s what SHRM is starting with, but they have great aspirations to go beyond that, leveraging the unique compendium of knowledge they have and build on it every day. They have experts that can get involved, AI plus HI, as they say, which is artificial intelligence plus human intelligence. Their AI engine will surface opportunities where their people can engage with their members. It will connect dots for members to understand the knowledge, the AI, and the army of people at SHRM to support them, making that much more obvious and available.

Scott King
It would be a huge opportunity for someone paying attention to that. It can show all organizations, like dentists, doctors, and licensed professionals, how to use this for some third-party expert. That would be a huge opportunity. Since SHRM is so people-centric and you’re solving people’s fears, it’s an enormous opportunity. I’m glad we’re a part of it. It’s really cool. If you were an HR professional, what would be the top two or three things you would do right now?

Michael Haske
The first one’s obvious, and the conversations we were having were enlightening for the HR folks we met with. Starting with knowledge is a great, low-cost, low-risk way to dip your toe into AI and HR. Using a tool like ours, upload all your handbooks and policies, and expose those through AI to your employees. Instead of them having to look it up or call someone in HR, they have an AI engine that can answer questions specific to them and the company’s policies. An added bonus is that your employees are likely going out to OpenAI or Gemini, using those free versions for generative AI to help them do their jobs. The problem is those free versions aren’t secure, and uploading sensitive information can cause trouble. Samsung found out their employees uploaded a lot of sensitive information to one of those engines. Using something like us to put those policies out there means all your employees have access and can use it for all their generative AI needs securely. This is a great starting point for HR to show the value of AI, get people on board, and protect the organization.

Scott King
How long does something like that take? Is that a long time?

Michael Haske
No, it’s a super fast process. At Krista, our deployments are four to six weeks, and this is something we could do in four weeks or less. We could do all that work and deploy it in a safe way, similar to what we’re working on with SHRM.

Scott King
I like it. We were talking about education earlier. Did they mention any educational resources outside of what SHRM offers? Anything they said people need to view or listen to?

Michael Haske
They definitely should be pointing them at Krista and all we can do. The people coming by our booth recognized we were the only AI vendor there. Most AI companies focus on sales, operations, or the finance department. HR doesn’t get the same early respect and look. Clearly, we see the opportunity with SHRM, which is HR should be leading this and right next to everyone in the organization. That’s why we were there. The conversations were about helping us educate them. We had hundreds of people sign up for us to contact them after the show for a 30-minute education on AI, what the options and landscape look like, and the pros and cons so they can get grounded on what to do for their organization.

Scott King
Love it. Thanks, Michael, for the recap. Sorry I couldn’t attend. I was busy with other work, but I appreciate your insights and being on the show.

Michael Haske
We missed you out there. We’ll definitely go even bigger next year and make sure you’re there with us wherever they’re taking the SHRM show next year. Thanks, guys.

Scott King
All right, thanks so much. Until next time.