AI can help people deal with burnout, say HR managers

A new report from Sage claims that HR professionals now welcome AI to ease the burden of admin jobs, take away time consuming tasks, and, ultimately, ease burnout. The annual report, titled ‘The Changing Face of HR’ [registration], surveyed over 1,000 HR leaders across a range of sectors and countries, finding that 77 percent believe AI has the potential to revolutionise ways of working within their company. With 95 percent of respondents reporting an increase in their workload over the past year and 91 percent seeing an increase in more responsibilities in their role. HR leaders in the UK are particularly strained with workloads, with respondents twice as likely to work over 45 hours per week compared to before the pandemic, the report claims.

The report also claims to highlight areas of focus, with more than half (56 percent) of HR Leaders reporting that they need more technology to operate effectively. By utilising technology HR leaders will be able to collect, analyse, and report meaningful data-driven insights to better inform their decisions. Training was identified as key to taking advantage of the benefits of technology with 79 percent agreeing that education was needed to fully capitalise on AI’s capabilities.

In addition:

• Amount of work (80 percent), low morale and burnout of employees (79 percent) and limited budgets (79 percent) are the top challenges keeping HR professionals up at night
• 80 percent of HR professionals believe the role of HR will change considerably due to AI
• 71 percent of HR professionals believe implementing AI in HR tasks will create more jobs
• 45 percent of HR leaders are currently using HR metrics, 44 percent are utilising automation, and 43 percent employing cloud HR solutions, showing a significant shift towards automation and analytics

Future outlook 

Looking forward to the future, the top three areas HR professionals want to spend more time on are strategic planning (61 percent), using data to drive decision-making (59 percent) and employee engagement (59 percent). This demonstrates a fundamental shift from paperwork to people strategies, meaning that there is a need to automate labour-intensive HR admin tasks. Although 68 percent say over half of the HR processes in their organisation are automated, 79 percent say more could be automated to improve efficiency.

Interestingly, the research also revealed a gap between small businesses (57 percent) and medium businesses (80 percent) in terms of automation levels, indicating that smaller companies may benefit from investing in HR technology to keep up with larger competitors.

The report concludes that HR professionals are well-positioned to navigate these changes and continue to play a crucial role in shaping the future of work.