HR: Early Adopters of Generative AI Hacks
NAREIM Talent Management meeting
Key takeaways
October 23-24, 2024
While 59% of GPs allow everyone in their organizations to use LLM and generative AI from an HR perspective, only 5% have a formal strategy related to how AI is used within the HR function.
Moreover, AI usage is more prevalent within the HR departments of NAREIM member firms than more broadly within their organizations, with only 41% are member firms working on integrating AI into business strategy or model from a corporate perspective, according to a live poll conducted at NAREIM’s Talent Management meeting in Chicago this week.
In whole-room and peer-to-peer tabletop discussions, members at the meeting exchanged tips and examples of how they are leveraging generative AI tools in their day-to-day roles, and swapped best practices for running internship programs, leveraging employee engagement surveys, and continuing to navigate hybrid-remote work four years post-COVID.
Click here to see the presentations and poll results from the Talent Management meeting.
The AI uses members shared for tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot feature included:
Summarizing large volumes of employee survey responses
Summarizing relevant emails to prepare an attendee for an upcoming meeting
Editing emails to be either “nicer” or “shorter”
First drafts of job descriptions and other tasks that require starting “with a blank page”
Training gated LLMs on in-house documents, such as leases and other contracts
While some firms have placed a blanket-ban on use of generative AI, it’s likely employees use it on their personal devices to assist with work tasks, members shared.
AI TIP: ChatGPT offers a setting that provides the sources of information the platform uses when it generates a response.
Level-Setting On Career Development
In a whole-room discussion on employee engagement and surveys, members shared the challenges and opportunities around career development conversations.
“It’s important to make sure employees understand title progression,” one member shared. “In the surveys we conducted, we found gaps in this understanding, and we are working on building it into our onboarding process to address those gaps.”
Members also shared the difficulty of supporting employees who are interested in exploring career progression beyond title progression.
“When someone expresses interest in moving to a different vertical, it’s important to discuss what that entails,” one member shared. “Acquisitions are perceived to be where the goodies are but sometimes once someone learns more, they realize ‘I don’t want that.’”
One member firm included a “survey-style” question about career goals in performance review self-evaluations, which yielded fruitful answers.
“We find out things we might not otherwise,” the member shared. “People include responses like ‘I want to move to L.A.,’ and once we have that knowledge, we can work with it, when thinking through opening a new office, for example. We can try to make it happen.”
Additional highlights from the meeting included:
When structuring benefits to offer beyond salary and bonus, one member firm uses student loan reimbursement as an escalating retention tool.
It helps to think about internship programs as learning experiences for the interns; conversion to full-time employment doesn’t have to be the only success metric.
Some member firms are conducting intern mini-performance reviews, or mid-summer check-ins.
Some member firms offer interns housing stipends, offer nearby dorm-style accommodations, and help with transportation, including Ubers and car services.
63% of attendees ask leaders to be intentional about how they use in office days.
Posting company announcements on an intranet and opening the comments function is a way to level the playing field to “water-cooler conversations” for remote workers.
One firm encourages peer-to-peer recognition by rewarding people for submitting shout-outs to colleagues or “props” for large or small wins, which are then announced in a public forum.
To solve for the drop-off in engagement on Friday afternoons, one firm holds their investment committee meetings from 1PM to 4pm on Fridays, with free lunch to sweeten the deal.
Click here to see the presentations and poll results from the Talent Management meeting.