INTRODUCTION
Assimilation of digital technology into all areas resulting in fundamental changes to how companies operate and how to deliver. This at times means walking away from lengthy and time consuming business processes that companies were built upon in favour of relatively new practices. The current growth in artificial intelligence practices has created huge potential for government, society and industries. It is no more a buzzword of tomorrow; rather it is a marked reality of today and is the imitation of human intelligence by machines to solve problems, to act rationally like humans. It can be defined, as an intelligent agent that can differentiate the distinct environments, and take a suitable course of action, to successfully achieve preplanned goals (Mahmood, 2017). India’s investment in artificial intelligence games was $73 million in 2017. AI-based startup operations raised approximately $529.52 million funding in India and globally, and this data includes startups with investment at varying stages of development, from pre-seed to well-funded companies (Bhatia, 2019). In India, only 22% of companies are using artificial intelligence technology for their business processes including HR functions, which shows that the adoption of artificial intelligence in India is very slow (Pillai and Sivathanu, 2020). Human resources are considered as one of the utmost crucial assets for any organization, and developing them is perceived as the prime duty of the managers. HR functions consist of a wide range of activities like talent planning & acquisition, training and development, performance, compensation & benefits management, and separations (Strohmeier and Piazza, 2015). In an era of technological advancements, artificial intelligence is an advanced data-driven technology that is adopted, and accepted by many firms: be it a service, or manufacturing sector (Jain, 2017). Artificial intelligence is assisting each, and every sector from healthcare to finance, education, legal, logistics, and is now making its way into the human resource industry, as businesses are focusing on building a corporate culture that is more employee-centric (Rathi, 2018). Artificial intelligence technology in human resources has become apparent at three levels- assisted, augmented, and autonomous intelligence. Assisted intelligence-based tools like chatbots assist human resource staff to perform repetitive time-consuming tasks. Augmented intelligence is a kind of tools that make it possible for man and machine to work together like chatbots provide real-time experience to candidates by answering their questions and scheduling interviews. Autonomous intelligence- it is a type of intelligence enabled in machines or software that act on its own to provide the results like based on certain selected parameters, it delivers candidates selection result. A large number of available studies related to human resource technologies are digital innovation adoption like SaaS, ERP, e- HRM, business intelligence and analytics. But only a few studies are available on the adoption of artificial intelligence in human resource practices (Pillai and Sivathanu, 2020).
The use of IT in human resource management was traced long back in 20th century. The term e-HRM was first introduced in the late 1990s when e-commerce was broadening its business throughout the world, and subsequent to this; artificial intelligence was adopted to help HR practitioners to work efficaciously, and expeditiously to discover, and retain top most talent in the organization (Mahmood, 2017). AI is assisting managers to work productively, and in making speedy, intelligent, and error-free decisions. It is an emerging trend in human resource management and is assisting HR practitioners to complete routine, and repeatitive tasks, thus, providing more time to focus on complex decisions by helping HR practitioners to be more dynamic, and tactical (Benfield, 2017). The efficiency of the human resource department has enhanced and evolved as a powerful trend for development (Jia et al., 2018). Earlier, the applications of digital technologies were utilized for personal record management, but now they are adopted for the other functions of human resource management also. It is admitted by 70% of the companies in Russia, that digitalisation provides flexibility, and 85% believed that it helps to save time on repetitive tasks, and also in solving problems effectively (Odegov, 2018). It is found that to remain sustainable with the present competition, present HR practices need to be replaced with smart-highend technology processes. The application of artificial intelligence-driven technology in HR practices is aggregating day by day, therefore, it is important to link different functions of human resource management with artificial intelligence technology (Chaturvedi and Joshi, 2017). Very few industries have adopted artificial intelligence driven tools, though it offers a large number of benefits.
This study proposes to provide deep insight to the industry experts about the benefits of conjoining artificial intelligence and human resource practices. The outcomes of this paper will help HR professionals to understand the benefits of adopting AI based tools and the challenges they may face while adopting/implementing these tools for HR practices.
The next section of this paper has a detailed study of the literature available, followed by research methodology and discussion. The last section includes the conclusion and research gaps found in present studies which lead to future research studies.