IBM CEO Ginni Rometty spoke at CNBC’s @ Work Talent + HR Summit in New York City about the company’s new, very helpful artificial intelligence. She explained how – with a 95% accuracy rate – their AI can predict which workers are about to quit their jobs. Meaning, out of the 350,000 workers IBM employs, they’ll know when any one of them is planning to leave, or they are searching for a new position. The point is they want to keep their employees.
“The best time to get to an employee is before they go.” – Rometty
Through all of Rometty’s seven-year tenure as CEO, IBM has been improving its AI devoted to the retention of its employees. The company’s human resources department even has a patent for its “predictive attrition program” which was developed with Watson to predict employee flight risk and prescribe actions for managers to engage employees.
Rometty claims the AI has saved IBM nearly $300 million in retention costs so far. She can’t tell how exactly it works but, in a nutshell, its success comes through analyzing many data points. The AI retention tool is part of a suite of IBM products that are designed to improve the traditional approach to human resources management.
AI will play a bigger role than just finding the quitters soon too. They are going to be the crutch, so to speak, for tasks a human would be inefficient at. Among these tasks that HR departments and corporate managers have not always proved effective at is keeping employees on a clear career path and identifying their skills. Being transparent with individual employees about their career path is an issue that is only going to become more critical in the future. At the moment, many companies fail at this which is why AI assistance is a necessity.
“I expect AI will change 100 percent of jobs in the next five to 10 years.” – Rometty
Another thing that lacks (and needs) transparency is skill sets – those that are actually needed for the job as well as those a worker possesses. Rometty said:
“If you have a skill that is not needed for the future and is abundant in the market and does not fit a strategy my company needs, you are not in a good square to stay inside of. I really believe in being transparent about where skills are.”
IBM AI can help with this by zeroing in on an individual’s strengths. In turn, this can enable a manager to direct an employee to future opportunities they may not have seen using traditional methods. Referring to formal skills assessments, Rometty said:
“We found manager surveys were not accurate. Managers are subjective in ratings. We can infer and be more accurate from data.”
IBM technology collects data points by viewing the tasks employees are completing, the educational courses they have taken and any rankings they have earned. These points can then be reviewed by HR managers to gain a greater understanding of an employee’s skill set than they could by assessing the feedback from manager surveys.
The AI also helps the workers. It is getting better and better at providing career feedback to individuals. IBM’s MYCA (My Career Advisor) AI virtual assistant uses Watson to help employees identify where they need to increase their skills. Its companion, Blue Match technology, serves up job openings to employees based on their AI-inferred skills data (employees opt into the service). 27 percent of IBM workers who received a new job or promotion in 2018 were assisted by Blue Match.
Rometty contended:
“AI will change all jobs once it is in the workflow, and that is the most meaningful kind of AI. Yes, some jobs will be replaced, but that is a red herring. It is about getting people to work at the intersection of this. This is all a game about skill and having people with the right skills, and everyone’s job is changing.”
A New Evolved HR System
Traditional human resource departments have been divided between a self-service system, where employees are forced to be their own career managers, and a defensive system to deal with poor performers. IBM employees no longer need to decipher which programs will help them upskill; its AI suggests to each employee what they should be learning in order to get ahead in their career.
“We need to bring AI everywhere and get rid of the [existing] self-service system.” – Rometty
Meanwhile, poor performers will not be a “problem” that is dealt with only by managers, HR, legal and finance, but by solutions groups. The way of the future is how IBM is using “pop-up” solutions centers to assist managers in seeking better performance from their employees. IBM’s bet is that the future of the workplace is one in which a machine understands the individual better than the HR individual can alone.
“We have to move away from centers of excellence to solutions centers.” – Rometty
This is not to say there is anything wrong with human resources, just that a machine can crunch millions of data points and learn in new ways, without prejudice. The new era of AI-centered human resources will improve upon something many human-led HR teams can’t handle as effectively alone. The AI has to be recognized as a true resource potential for individuals and a great service as growth engines for companies. Rometty said:
“It is at the individual level. You have to know the individual. Skills are your renewable asset, and you need to treat them like that.”
