Sasha Sywulsky, CPHR
HR consultant,
Government of Yukon
Whitehorse, YK

Sasha Sywulsky, MA, CPHR is a human resources consultant with the Government of Yukon. She has over 20 years experience working in the public sector for various levels of government, and loves being a public servant. Sasha is motivated by opportunities to improve organizational culture and increase employee engagement. She specializes in facilitating strategic planning and using collaborative, participative methods to assist organizations in developing their corporate vision, mission and values.

Currently the most common uses for A.I. in human resources management are recruitment and retention, reducing bias, and decreasing administrative burden. However, I find that one of the most intriguing potential applications is the ability to monitor, influence and manage organizational culture.

The ability to collect and analyze vast amounts of data and assess patterns of behaviour is beyond any human’s capacity – but not beyond that of A.I. Monitoring behaviour patterns through HR statistics, exit interviews, discussion threads and other data sets can create a real-time culture calculations that flag systemic issues or risks.

The potential of A.I. to influence and even manage organizational culture is on the horizon. For example, behavioural insights and individualized communication can lead to greater employee engagement and a more productive workforce. Effective use of this technology has the potential to empower and inspire the workforce, but also raises questions of ethics, privacy and accuracy.

Bill Bouthot, CPHR
HR manager,
Secwepemc Child and Family Services
Kamloops, BC

Bill Bouthot, CPHR, is currently the HR manager at Secwepemc Child and Family Services Agency in Kamloops. As a first year member of the Central Interior Advisory Council for CPHR BC & Yukon, Bill is responsible for the Membership and Communications Portfolio. Bill has over 25 years of HR and operational leadership experience, with advanced training in performance management and leadership, employee and labour relations, risk and threat assessment, occupational health, safety and wellness, and incident command.

With our increasing challenges of recruiting strategically, I feel that there will be some real advantages emerging with improving machine driven intelligence that can assist in making the complex, and sometimes tedious, task of sorting through large amounts of applicants more adeptly than the applicant tracking and HRI systems that we currently use.

Anything that can help me in making the recruitment-to-hire process faster and more efficient, so that I can have more time to use my Natural Intelligence to communicate meaningfully with employees, will be welcome.

Though I can see AI as having the ability to filter out skills and patterns, I can’t see a day any time soon where it will replace our ability to truly reflect on personal experience, team fit, potential, etc.—or to be able to reason and problem solve in environments where face-to-face communication has a direct influence on workplace culture.

Tajinder Kumar
CEO, Percipient Solutions Ltd.
Vancouver, BC

As CEO of Percipient Solutions Ltd., Tajinder Kumar has 25 years experience in business development and corporate human resources. Tajinder has held corporate roles ranging from Asia Pacific director for the GTO business at Deutsche Bank AG, to Senior VP for Citibank NA, to head of HR for the RBL Bank. Tajinder earned his Master’s in Industrial / Organizational Psychology & HRM from City University of New York.

AI will impact all areas of HR, from Resourcing to Operations to Learning & Development. We expect to see significant upside in Recruitment & Hiring, as AI is poised to transform hiring efficiency by increasing the speed of profiling, sourcing and selection processes. If sufficient data is available on past employees’ characteristics and performance in a given role, profiles can be generated at lightning speed using AI.

Moreover, AI is an excellent sourcing tool. With predictive analytics, interested candidates who are the best fit can be sourced in a very short-time.

Selection can be improved by bringing recruitment, interviews, assessment, and background verification services into a single platform. Such a platform may also include suggesting compensation mix / model, benefits and a follow up with candidates for future opportunities in the organization. The candidate’s experience will also improve with a more streamlined process.

Carol Currie, CPHR
coordinator, community education & workplace training,
Selkirk College
Trail, BC

For over 20 years, Carol Currie, CPHR has worked in the human resources, career practitioner and workforce development fields, which she feels are all just different threads of the same web. “Human resources focuses on the needs of the employer, while career practitioners focus on the worker, and workforce development on the community in which the work takes place. It is an incredibly interactive, dynamic system in which I have been fortunate to experience many roles.”

There are a number of benefits Artificial Intelligence can offer to HR practices, but the opportunity to reduce, or even eliminate unconscious biases in hiring and promotion practices is one of the greatest.
Unconsciously, humans will gravitate to those they perceive as being most like themselves: people who speak and write as we do; people who use terms that we know; who have gone to schools that we are familiar with….and this can lead to workplaces that are less diverse, inclusive, and innovative than we strive to be.
Imagine what it would be like however, to have thoughtfully-designed algorithms that would help HR professionals eliminate unconscious biases in in their recruitment materials and candidate selection. Not only would we be able to attract a diverse array of talent, but we could also be confident that we are selecting candidates based on data rather than “gut” feelings.

Farheen Husain,
recruitment specialist,
LMS Reinforcing Steel Group,
Vancouver, BC

A successful professional with 16 years of experience in people and organizational transformation, Farheen Husain is a certified global professional in human resources, Marshall Goldsmith coach, clinical hypnotherapist and member of CPHR BC & Yukon. She has extensive experience leading and managing HR teams across industries ranging including banking  and finance, I.T., food and manufacturing and construction. Having been part of the corporate landscape in Middle East for 15 years, Farheen’s expertise now creates value for British Columbia. 

Although it is called Artificial Intelligence, I consider AI an extension of Natural Intelligence. The human mind with its unlimited potential has already extended itself, creating the ability to work faster, smarter and easier.

Through its learning algorithms, AI enables us to enhance the power of the human intelligence, decision-making and action. It is already being deployed in various disciplines of HR like recruitment, on-boarding, performance management, learning & development and employee engagement, leading to an upgrade of these functions and gradually creating a seamless integration of people and processes.

HR has transformed by leaps and bounds from being an administrative, process-driven function into a strategic business partner—and AI is one of the platforms that has and will continue to support this transformation. Through the intelligent automation of repetitive processes, HR continues to move in the direction of being a strategic revenue generator versus a cost centre.