HR departments not embracing AI, suggests REC survey

A survey has found that nine out of 10 senior HR professionals interviewed said that their respective organisations do not use artificial intelligence (AI) in their recruitment. And of these 92% of slow adapters, just three per cent of them intend to use AI in the next 12 months.

A total of 167 people who work in senior HR roles in different size organisations completed the REC/Savanta survey across the private and public sector.

The survey was carried out in August 2023, soon after the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told London Tech Week 2023 that the ‘tectonic plates of technology’ are shifting and how he wants to make the UK the best place in the world for AI technology.

Kate Shoesmith, Deputy Chief Executive at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), said:

“Hirers must play tech catch up with jobseekers who are already way ahead of them in their use of AI. HR professionals must start to embrace AI if they want to successfully attract and retain top talent.

“AI can speed up and make processes easier for HR professionals such as scheduling and personal training plans. After all, there is nothing more productive for organisations than to hire the right person, optimise their performance and keep them.”

Of those 8% of senior HR professionals who reported in the survey that they do use AI:

• A total of 54% use it to help with sourcing candidates (e.g. AI generated job adverts, AI based targeted advertising).
• A total of 44% use it to help with candidate interviews and selection (e.g. voice and face recognition in video interviewing).
• A total of 29% use it to help with screening candidates (e.g. automated CV sifting, AI based psychometric testing).
• And 27% use it for candidate onboarding (e.g. automated HR on-boarding processes).
• ‘Any other way’ was the answer of 19%, and 20% said ‘don’t know’. 

Kate Shoesmith said:

“HR departments still have plenty of time to turn to external support from recruiters who can help them to accelerate their shift to AI. Recruiters are charging ahead on AI as part of their delivery, advisory and consultative work. As we found when publishing our recent Tech-Enabled Humanity report, many recruiters are using AI to deliver transformational experiences to workers and their clients.”