Wakeup Call for HR: Employees Trust AI More Than They Trust You

I’ve been a fan, advocate, and friend to HR for a long time. And in every discussion I have with HR teams, I’m impressed with the passion, commitment, and goodwill among HR teams everywhere. Yet despite our best intentions, a new survey of 851 business professionals found that “people trust AI more than they trust HR.”

What? How could this be true?

Before you dismiss the findings, let me explain the data. It’s not exactly what you think.

First, when asked “do you trust AI more than HR professionals,” 54% said they prefer AI and 27% said they better trust HR. This data, as odd as it sounds, is focused on the topic of trust. People know that managers are biased, so any HR-delivered performance review, pay increase, or other feedback is likely to be biased in some way. (Even recency bias is bias.)

AI, on the other hand, has no “opinions.” When implemented on real data, it’s likely to be more “trusted” – and 65% of respondents were confident that AI-based tools would be used fairly.

And this makes sense: we’ve crossed the chasm between thinking AI will ruin the world to seeing it as a statistical, data-based decision-making system. And you can ask the AI “why did you select this candidate” or “why did you rate this employee in this way” and it will spit out a precise and accurate answer. (People have a hard time explaining their decisions.)

Second, AI is already trusted as a way to evaluate performance. While few AI performance tools exist yet (Rippling’s is one), 39% of respondents believe AI-based performance evaluations would be fair, and 33% believe AI-based pay decisions would be unbiased. Again, this is likely because we can ask AI to explain its decisions clearly where managers often go on “gut feel.”

Third, when asked “would you value an AI-based performance tool to coach and advise you on professional goals” fully 64% said yes. Again, this shows how badly people want feedback and guidance, something many managers just don’t do well (or openly).

This Is Not An Indictment Of HR: It Shows Why We Don’t Trust Managers

To me this data shows three important things, each of which may surprise you.

First, we don’t always trust “managers” to make sound, unbiased decisions about hiring, performance, and pay. Employees know that bias exists and they’re search for systems that select and evaluate them fairly.

Second, we’ve crossed the chasm beyond “AI is scary” to “AI is trusted,” enabling organizations to now use AI systems for people-related decisions in an even more expansive way.

Third, the direction for HR departments is clear. We now have the mandate to learn about AI tools immediately, put them into some of our most important HR domains, and spend our time managing them, training them, and leveraging them in our profession.

And as far as people trusting HR, it now goes like this. Our ability to engender trust and support in the company will more and more depend on our selection and implementation of AI systems. Employee expectations are high, so we have to live up to these desires. Whether we like it or not, AI is here to transform the way we manage people.

Additional Information

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