The impact of adopting smart voice technology on HR managers
“Innovations in technology are changing the way organizations are structured and how work is organized and managed.”
Joan e. pynes, human resources management for public and nonprofit organizations, 4th edition
During the COVID-19 pandemic, technology sprang to the forefront of organizational operations when it served as the only communications channel that allowed many kinds of workers to get work done while preventing the spread of infection.
As it’s turned out, an array of digital communications, productivity, and data management tools have enabled agencies to fulfill their missions in ways previously not envisioned. Government and service organizations learned lessons about using technology to deliver critical services in the future: how to transfer workforces to telework, and how to establish and run programs to deal with the pandemic and continue delivering services.
“In the past, we tended to have the notion that technology and digital government were a bit of luxury, a novel or cool thing,” said Santiago Garces, the city of Pittsburgh’s director of innovation and performance. “Now we have come to terms with the fact that technology, in one sense, is the biggest enabler to maintaining operations in a safe way and protecting the lives of our employees and the public” (Partnership for Public Service, 2020).
Prior to 2020, agencies already were investing in information technologies, using digital tools — Internet systems — to augment human resources. For example, in Human Resources Management in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors, 4th Edition, Pynes shares a story about this technology application area, citing a USA Today article on “virtual cops.” The newspaper reported on police departments “turning to an online talking animated virtual officer to assist residents in filing an online crime report for nonemergency crimes…” (Pynes, p.10).
This description fits the profile of a chatbot: artificial intelligence (AI) technology invented in 1966 that relies on understanding the ways in which people naturally use oral and written language. Since 2020, an AI tech boom has created growing excitement and much debate.
Let’s explore the impact of “natural language” AI technology on HR managers in nonprofit service organizations, and the importance of including strategic human resource management in conjunction with operations and IT management to ensure success with the transition to managing human-computer resources.
AI is a vast field of computer science established in the 1950s. AI engineers create machines capable of performing tasks previously only possible within the realm of human cognition. Examples of tasks include “recognizing speech, predicting events based on past information or making decisions. AI tools use data to learn a task, and … answer questions by quickly finding relevant information in databases or documents, detecting patterns in data, making decisions about simple queries and predicting someone’s behavior based on past conduct” (Partnership for Public Service, 2020).
Today, the use of AI-based systems in service agencies is widespread. On healthcare organization websites, small programs called chatbots (similar to the “virtual cops” that Pynes described) are pervasive, responding to the public’s questions, and are said to help people learn to take care of our health (Mesko, 2023).
Chatbots are programmed to provide a series of canned replies to certain questions related to the service being provided. In this report, we’ll focus on the chatbot’s younger, more robust, powerful descendant: AI-based conversational interfaces that recognize and respond to the spoken voice to provide access to myriad information resources, services, and machine control functions. These systems are known as smart voice agents.
If you’ve spoken to Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, or Google Assistant to ask for directions, play music, or control your home thermostat or security, you’ve used smart voice agents packaged into consumer software products that rely on AI to function. Smart voice gizmos have multiplied in the past decade. Consumer voice agent products are designed to track, report, and sell usage data to enable personalized advertising.
Today, however, specialized, custom business voice agents that offer much more extensive security and deeper programming flexibility are being deployed across service organizations. New and emerging smart voice agents are easy to use and offer accessibility support, and can ensure data privacy.
To bridge service gaps caused by today’s workforce shortages, aging-services organizations must start to identify and define how to use this technology to augment service delivery, and to empower and attract workers and clients.
Consider that public and nonprofit agencies are labor-intensive, with employee costs typically between 50% to 80% of their budgets (Pynes, p.4); this drives the strategic importance of HR managers expanding beyond employing humans to deploying AI tools that can mitigate the labor load.
Pynes illustrates this point: “The treasurer of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, has replaced five workers with an automated tax processing system. Instead of opening envelopes and scanning and encoding checks, an automated processing system provide those functions.”
A 2018 research study had posited that AI’s role in the workplace would happen first at a task level rather than at a full job level, and initially to perform “lower” intelligence tasks as these are easier and less complex to be performed by AI than human employees (Huang & Rust, 2018). And that is what has transpired.
As individuals increasingly accept conversational interaction with smart voice agents for personal home use, agency professionals likewise will increasingly benefit from delegating repetitive, low-intelligence but vital tasks to non-human laborers.
Voice agents in service delivery by direct-care staffers
For example, an agency’s smart voice agent can proactively guide clients toward frequently requested info; the voice agent can ask and answer questions, and “speak” reminders to keep clients on track with, for example, nutrition and exercise routines.yes In residential care settings, a smart voice agent could suggest and present personalized entertainment activities for individual residents — or resident info to staff.
The use of smart voice agents to augment service delivery requires HR managers to train workers to facilitate the voice agents’ use by staff and/or clients. “Key strategic human resource management challenges facing organizations will be the ability to attract and hire qualified applicants and provide training for incumbent employees so that the benefits of technology can be realized” (Pynes, p. 10).
AI-based voice agents are poised to disrupt traditional human resource functions, “providing growing strengths and potentialities for HR management but also formidable challenges including job-specific obsolescence” (Vrontis, 2022). Therefore, agencies need to focus on training and ongoing development of workers so they may attain the KSAOCs needed for working with AI agents (Lindsay et al., 2014).
“Successful health care and service orgs can use AI to support workers especially in those areas where there is a workforce shortage. It doesn’t have to be a competition between humans and tech for scare jobs, but rather a way to have people in those jobs that require human interaction.”
Daniel O’Leary, Former executive director of Mystic Valley Elder Services, Massachusetts
Voice agents in worker training and support
At a more specialized programming level, artificially smart technologies can be implemented to provide training and give feedback and guidance. AI voice agents capable of natural language processing and real time learning can play an important role in complementing human interactions and increasing problem-solving effectiveness (Behrend & Thompson, 2011; Singh et al., 2017).
Research highlights the use of intelligent agents for multiple training purposes, giving feedback and providing support like a human trainer. These intelligent agents can learn while doing, adapting to individual users over time, learning their preferences and tailoring their training to their knowledge base, which can improve engagement with training activities (Behrend & Thompson, 2011).
A balanced approach to set and manage expectations
Agencies need to fulfill their missions using the right technological tools, not necessarily the newest ones; agree! and the use of these tools have altered the KSAOCs needed to succeed, and the responsibilities of workers who manage tech assets and resources.
The most effective smart voice agents streamline a person’s relationship with technology, not disrupt workflow (ZD Net). Regardless, technology isn’t a panacea. Agencies recognize that technology-based service does not always lead to better service delivery, especially if the system isn’t cost-effective or is difficult to implement, maintain, and deliver. For example, when Internet access or even electrical power is not available to support online services, for example, agencies need to find alternatives. If workers don’t feel adequately trained to use the technology, they will resist making the best use of these tools.
Data security and protected information for the organization, its workers, and its clients are critical factors to analyze and accommodate when a computer tool is able to listen, understand, and respond to natural language. The introduction of AI for the analysis and collection of personnel data in predicting work-related issues have raised concerns pertaining to human privacy (Bhave et al., 2020). There is an emerging necessity for developing AI technologies with built-in privacy safeguards, and for regulations that guarantee the rights of employees or job applicants for the protection of their data (Vrontis et al, 2022).
Although agencies might assume that ensuring data security is a job for IT departments, this effort benefits from involving strategic HR input. HR is responsible for compliance with employment regulations, and therefore its managers are uniquely qualified to track and help agencies comply with data privacy regulations; after all, “state-level momentum for comprehensive privacy bills is at an all-time high” (Folks, 2024).
Conclusion
Organizations know that smart voice agents as alternatives to “human resources” in functions traditionally requiring human interaction are changing the organizational structures and nature of work (Vrontis et al, 2022).
Strategic HR managers can lead their agencies in establishing an organizational environment in which human employees and technology can coexist. Yes. Needs to be clearly defined why we are doing this, what are the expected outcomes, what we are going to do to support you as staff and also get feedback and input on how consumers use and feel about the technology and adjust accordingly.
HR managers who want to plan for the future will gain understanding of the impact of AI voice agents on job responsibilities, to improve recruitment, staff / client education and training, and strategic decision-making.
In an article suggesting how HR professionals might navigate the AI tech journey, organizational futurist Bob Johansen wrote in 2020, “What can humans do best? What can computers do best? The organizational function that is best equipped to answer these questions is what we call today ‘Human Resources’ or ‘People.’ The best strategic human resources organizations already think about talent acquisition, performance management, employment data analytics and ethics. I’m suggesting that HR must now extend into the world of superminds [sic]” (Johansen, 2020).
As HR managers learn the processes involved in leveraging smart voice agents, and by managing smart voice technologies as valued “human-computer resources,” these strategic organizational leaders will contribute to workforce learning and development, and their agency’s intellectual capital.
“What we call HR today will be very different tomorrow as humans and computers become increasingly intermingled” (Johansen, 2020).
Strategic HR managers who track what’s going on with their humans who interact with computers will be equipped to best support their organizations to meet their missions. This type of strategic approach starts at the top of the org. HR is an important player, while other department managers and line staff MUST be part of the solution and problem-solving. And let’s not forget the impact on clients and residents!
The team responsible for choosing and deploying a smart voice agent system will best serve the organization’s mission through cross-functional collaboration that makes strategically minded HR managers an integral part of that process.
References
Behrend, T.S. & Thompson, L.F. (2011) Similarity effects in online training: Effects with computerized trainer agents, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 27, Issue 3, Pages 1201-1206, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010.12.016.
Folks, A. (2024). US State Privacy Legislation Tracker (March 1, 2024). International Association of Privacy Professionals. Accessed 3/8/2024. https://iapp.org/resources/article/us-state-privacy-legislation-tracker/
Johansen, B. (2020, Fall). Creating Superminds of Human-Computing Resources: As technology increases, HR must navigate the digital aspects of work and transform into human-computing resources. People & Strategy, 43(4), 34+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A649183613/AONE?u=mlin_b_umass&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=37ec723f
Lindsay, C., Commander, J., Findlay, P., Bennie, M., Dunlop Corcoran, E., & Van Der Meer, R. (2014). Lean’, new technologies and employment in public health services: Employees’ experiences in the National Health Service. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(21), 2941–2956. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192. 2014.948900
Mesko, B. (2023, August 2). The top 10 healthcare chatbots. The Medical Futurist. https://medicalfuturist.com/top-10-health-chatbots/
Partnership for Public Service (2020). Bit by Bit: How Governments Used Technology to Move the Mission Forward During COVID-19. Partnership for Public Service & Microsoft Corporation. https://ourpublicservice.org/blog/three-lessons-governments-learned-using-technology-during-covid-19/
Pynes, Joan E. Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 4th edition, 2013, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Singh, J., Brady, M., Arnold, T., & Brown, T. (2017). The Emergent Field of Organizational Frontlines. Journal of Service Research, 20(1), 3-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670516681513
U.S.Government Accountability Office (2022, November 10). Artificial Intelligence’s use and rapid growth highlight its possibilities and perils. U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/blog/artificial-intelligences-use-and-rapid-growth-highlight-its-possibilities-and-perils
Vrontis, D., Christofi, M., Pereira, V., Tarba, S., Makrides, A., & Trichina, E. (2022). Artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced technologies and human resource management: a systematic review, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 33:6, 1237-1266, DOI: 10.1080/09585192.2020.1871398
ZD Net (2021). “The best voice assistant” (Sept. 9. 2021). ZD Net. Accessed 3/3/2024. https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/smart-home/the-best-voice-assistant/