Is Conversational AI in HR the Next Big Thing?

Think conversational AI is just an incredible tool for developing stronger relationships with customers? Think again. Conversational AI in HR has the potential to revolutionize how companies recruit, train, manage, engage, and support their employees too.

With conversational artificial intelligence, businesses can create content that resonates with candidates, design comprehensive recruitment strategies, and automate a range of tasks that help them to empower their employees better. In fact, according to McKinsey, AI-driven systems could handle anywhere up to 70% of routine HR processes.

So, what are the biggest use cases for conversational AI in human resources, and how do you make sure you’re unlocking the benefits, while side-stepping potential challenges? This guide will introduce you to everything you need to know about the potential for AI in HR.

The Use Cases for Conversational AI in HR

We’ve spoken a lot on this blog about conversational AI – the technology that allows machines to engage in natural conversations with human beings. Conversational AI isn’t just another word for the traditional “chatbot” (check our guide to chatbots vs conversational AI here).

Bots and systems powered by conversational AI use Natural Language Processing (NLP), machine learning and advanced language models to actually understand and respond efficiently to human input. They can recognize human intent and sentiment, and help businesses automate countless tasks, from dealing with routine customer service inquiries, to enhancing sales strategies.

Just as conversational AI in customer service can improve interactions between businesses and consumers, the same technology can revolutionize HR processes too.

Here’s a closer look at the top use cases for conversational AI in HR.

Conversational AI in Recruitment and Hiring

Let’s start with probably the most obvious application for conversational AI in HR processes – streamlining the recruitment process. First, by analyzing company data, market trends, and other information, conversational AI tools can help HR managers take a proactive approach to building recruitment strategies – ensuring they can identify skill gaps and opportunities fast.

Next, conversational AI tools combined with generative AI capabilities can help organizations create compelling content for recruitment efforts. For instance, an AI bot could analyze a company’s data, and produce job descriptions that highlight the skills and credentials they’re looking for, and outline the main benefits of working with the firm – all while maintaining the brand’s unique tone of voice.

The same tools can generate employment contracts, business messages to guide candidates through the application process, feedback emails, and even scripts for interviews. Some tools – particularly those featuring agentic AI capabilities, can even handle the process of scheduling interviews, and requesting feedback from potential employees.

Conversational AI can filter through resumes searching specific words, terms, and credentials, to help HR leaders identify candidates best suited to a role. They can even analyze the results of initial standardized tests completed by candidates before a hiring decision is made.

The result of using conversational AI for HR teams is greater efficiency and productivity, as well as speedier and more intelligent hiring decisions. The result for candidates is a more efficient recruitment journey, with more consistent, ongoing feedback and transparent communication. It’s a win-win.

Onboarding, Training and Development with Conversational AI

Once a conversational AI solution helps a company attract, assess and hire an employee, these tools can also contribute to better onboarding experiences, and more personalized training and development initiatives for long-term employees.

During the onboarding process, a conversational bot built into an internal SMS system can provide a new employee with 24/7 support, guidance, and access to crucial resources. These solutions can ensure that staff members automatically get access to the tools and information they need to thrive in their roles, while freeing HR staff up to focus on other things.

As an employee continues their journey with a business, conversational AI tools can analyze data about their performance, goals, and potential weaknesses, identifying opportunities for improvement. Conversational AI tools can suggest suitable training programs and deliver learning resources to staff members based on their skill gaps, and even automatically generate content for training.

Some AI tools can even deliver training and coaching support to employees as they work – using real-time data to make suggestions on how staff can improve productivity, enhance customer experiences, or troubleshoot common problems – leading to faster skill development.

Enhancing onboarding and training processes with conversational AI in HR doesn’t just make teams more effective and productive – it can also reduce turnover. Studies show that employees confident in their ability to grow with an employer are more likely to stay within their current role.

Conversational AI for Employee Engagement and Feedback

Many companies are already using conversational AI to boost customer engagement and enhance relationships with buyers. AI tools are excellent for enhancing mass text messaging services – keeping customers up-to-date with personalized content and insights. They’re also fantastic at collecting insights from customers with automated surveys and review requests.

The same technologies can help businesses to boost employee engagement too. Conversational AI tools can ingest data about employees – gathering information about their job history, goals, and profiles – and use that data to create content that appeals to staff members.

For instance, an AI bot could automatically identify which employees are most likely to benefit from an upcoming webinar, training session, or event hosted by a company, and invite them to take part. Similarly, AI tools can help managers and supervisors rapidly identify top-performers based on their performance metrics, helping leaders to deliver recognition and rewards to key staff members.

By ensuring continuous recognition – even for remote or hybrid employees – conversational AI in HR can increase staff motivation and satisfaction levels.

Conversational AI tools can also create a platform for collecting constant feedback from team members. Bots can check in with team members, ask about their wellbeing, or issues they’re having in their work, and share that information with HR professionals. This can help businesses more quickly rectify issues that might otherwise lead to talent turnover.

Delivering Employee Support with Conversational AI

Customers aren’t the only people who benefit from constant, personalized support. Employees often need guidance too, whether they’re looking for help troubleshooting a technical issue, scheduling a shift change, or applying for specific benefits.

Conversational AI tools in HR give companies an easy way to deliver consistent employee support 24/7. Just as a customer service AI bot can answer customer questions in an instant, the same types of bots can answer queries about HR policies, benefits, schedules, and technology issues.

Companies can even take advantage of conversational AI tools aligned with auto texting services to distribute crucial resources to staff members proactively. For instance, when a company decides to make a change to it’s “time off” policies, a bot can share information on the new policies with employees automatically, and then instantly answer any questions they might have.

Alternatively, if a company decides to adopt a new technology, an AI bot could share resources on how to use that system with team members across departments in a matter of seconds. Conversational AI platforms could even provide employees with access to wellness resources, such as exercise guides, nutrition tips, or stress management techniques, improving overall wellbeing.

Upgrading Performance and Workforce Management with AI

Performance and workforce management tasks are two major areas where conversational AI in HR can make a big impact. Intelligent bots can streamline the performance review process, helping teams to collect metrics from different applications, and feedback from employees.

The same tools can easily identify which team members might be struggling, alerting managers and supervisors to staff members they may need to provide with additional guidance or training.

Conversational AI tools can also help with workforce management in multiple ways. They can analyze business trends and patterns to help business leaders and HR teams understand and forecast future staffing requirements, leading to more effective scheduling and resource management.

Companies can even use AI-powered SMS tools and bots to walk employees through the process of applying for shift changes, or requesting paid time off. Plus, with insights into business performance metrics, AI tools can help HR teams forecast future workforce requirements, and identify opportunities to either develop current talent, or hire new candidates.

All of this technology ensures HR leaders can take a more proactive approach to not only building effective teams, but making sure they’re getting the most out of their current resources.

Conversational AI for Compensation and Benefits Management

We’ve already discussed how conversational AI in HR can help professionals answer employee questions about things like compensation options and benefits packages. However, intelligent tools can support compensation and benefits management in other ways too.

AI built into an HR text messaging platform can handle compensation-based requests on behalf of HR teams. Bots can check up on payroll details, benefits deductions, and potential errors for employees, saving HR staff crucial time on routine tasks.

Virtual assistants can also guide employees on choosing the right benefits packages, or taking advantage of existing rewards. For instance, a bot could automatically detect which employees have failed to sign up for free wellness benefits, and send them a personalized message encouraging them to get involved in the program.

Companies can also use conversational AI assistants to analyze feedback from employees, alongside salary benchmarking data, to make more strategic decisions about how to renumerate their staff. This can help businesses to stay competitive in a skills-short talent market, and avoid losing employees.

Optimizing HR Compliance with Conversational AR

One of the most interesting benefits of conversational AI for HR teams, is that it can improve compliance with labor and staffing laws. AI tools can automate processes like tracking employee work hours, leave and benefits, ensuring that companies comply with industry standards.

It can ensure that employees gain access to the right health and safety resources and documents, and flag issues that might cause problems in a business – such as a team member failing to be paid on time. Agentic AI in HR can even take the benefits of conversational AI in HR compliance to the next level. For instance, after an employee reports a pay discrepancy to a bot, agentic AI can take over, validating the claim, and initiating changes to payment cycles.

With conversational and generative AI, companies can even ensure they’re adhering to compliance standards for business communication with team members.

They can ensure that all official documents and contracts include the necessary terms and languages to adhere to regulatory guidelines, reducing the risk of costly mistakes. They can also ensure that crucial documents are stored safely, and that sensitive information is retracted from shared files.

According to a report from PWC, around 44% of companies currently using AI for HR related tasks say these technologies have had a positive impact on compliance.

Boosting HR Efficiency and Process Automation

Perhaps the biggest overall benefit of using conversational AI in HR practices, is that it makes teams more efficient and productive. AI tools are excellent at automating a range of tasks that would otherwise consume the time and attention of HR professionals.

We’ve already mentioned some examples, like automating the creation of job descriptions, streamlining application filtering processes, and distributing content to staff members. However, AI can automate other everyday tasks too.

For instance, AI SMS workflow automation tools can rapidly distribute information about business closures, schedule changes, and policy updates to staff members in specific teams. AI tools can automate the process of handling time-off requests, or submitting payment disputes to business leaders. They can even help with change management, answering employee questions about process changes faster than the standard HR professional.

As agentic AI evolves to enhance conversational AI systems, the opportunities for automation will be even greater. HR teams will be able to use bots to automate everything from schedule creation and distribution, to technical troubleshooting, and even offboarding processes.

The Challenges of Conversational AI in HR Processes

Although the benefits of conversational AI for HR teams are incredible, there are still some challenges that need to be addressed. The first, and most obvious issue is that AI tools are heavily reliant on data, which means they’re also subject to problems with data security and privacy.

Businesses need to be sure that they’re giving the bots the insights they need to support team members, resolve requests, and even personalize SMS employee communication. However, they also need to ensure they have strict guardrails in place to ensure that data remains protected.

Other common challenges to be aware of include:

• Algorithmic bias: AI tools can easily demonstrate biases in the HR landscape if they’re trained on incomplete, or inaccurate data. For instance, an AI system used to screen resumes that’s primarily trained on the resumes of male employees might accidentally overlook female candidates. Using diverse data sets in training is crucial to overcoming this challenge.
• Job displacement: The ability of AI to enhance everything from SMS workflow automation, to employee engagement and hiring tasks has left some HR teams concerned about job displacement. Companies need to be careful to ensure that they’re using AI to augment – not replace human employees, as many HR tasks still require the empathy, insight, and creativity that only genuine people can deliver.
• Language issues: Although tools offering access to conversational AI in human resources are becoming more advanced, some can still struggle with certain tasks – like recognizing different languages or accents. Investing in carefully training and fine-tuning bots with in-depth data can help to mitigate this issue.

The Future of Conversational AI in Human Resources

Although there are challenges to implementing conversational AI in HR processes, the impact these technologies have on productivity, efficiency, and employee engagement mean demand will only continue to grow. In the years ahead, we can expect to see AI-powered AI tools becoming more advanced, with the rise of trends like:

• Increased emotional intelligence: Intuitive AI bots will be able to understand human emotion and sentiment more effectively. This will make them more adapt at dealing with complex HR tasks, such as keeping employees motivated and engaged.
• Wider integration: AI tools in the future will be able to integrate seamlessly with a range of tools, from payroll systems, to recruitment apps. Solutions like Clerk Chat’s bot already support SMS and CRM integration options, as well as the giving companies the ability to connect their tools with collaboration and archiving apps.
• Agentic AI: Agentic AI, compared to conversational AI, will give HR teams more opportunities to automate various processes. Agentic tools will build on the capabilities of existing conversational bots, allowing companies to proactively handle everything from optimizing schedules and resource allocation, to addressing payroll issues.

At the same time, companies will continue to implement more advanced guardrails to make conversational AI systems more ethical, and secure. Advanced training strategies will help businesses to ensure that their systems adhere with everything from new SMS regulations, to increasingly complex data privacy standards.

Getting Started with Conversational AI for HR

Throughout industries, companies are already experimenting with conversational AI to deliver more personalized customer experiences, streamline operations, and improve the results of marketing and sales strategies. However, the benefits of conversational AI extend to HR processes too.

With conversational AI in HR, organizations can unlock new ways to improve hiring and recruitment processes, optimize training and upskilling strategies, and keep staff members engaged, all while boosting compliance with labor standards.

If you’re searching for an opportunity to leverage the benefits of conversational AI for both customer and employee engagement, Clerk Chat offers the perfect solution. Our platform empowers companies to use AI technologies to streamline and improve conversations both with internal employees, and external customers or contractors.

Discover the potential of conversational AI for HR today.