Look for more companies in 2025 to adopt artificial intelligence tools not only in their hiring processes, but to improve benefits usage, employee retention and experiences training, according to a researcher who studies the use of AI for HR.
More and more HR staffs will need AI to keep up not only with other companies, but with job candidates who deploy their own AI agents to apply to hundreds of jobs with just a click or to fake their way through job interviews, says Ben Eubanks, chief research officer at HR consultant Lighthouse Research & Advisory and author of "Artificial Intelligence for HR."
Mass job applications are "creating more clutter for employers," he says. "If employers are not using AI, then they are falling behind. There's no amount of human input that's going to keep up with that kind of volume."
AI can not only help to screen and sift through a bulk set of applicants for a given opening, but also to find excellent candidates who may be right for the company but in a different position than the one they are applying for, Eubanks says.
Most of the attention on AI applications for HR has focused on the hiring process, but AI can also predict whether and when a worker may need to access an employee benefit, Eubanks says. For example, claims data may show that a certain percentage of employees may be pre-diabetic but are unaware of the fact, so early screenings could stop them from developing full blown diabetes, which could potentially save their lives while also saving the company from work disruptions and more expensive treatment.
AI can also monitor employee activity levels or performance for signals that a human manager might not pick up on, Eubanks says. "That gives us, as HR leaders, a flag to know when to step in and help," or when to offer kudos for an employee's good performance that may have gone unrecognized by their human managers, he says.
Statistical data that predicts employee retention can be paired with AI attentiveness to individual worker performance or stressors—too many meetings scheduled in a month, for example—to alert managers when that employee may be in danger of quitting, he says.
In the training arena, some companies are preparing their managers for employee interactions with AI agent-led "experiences," Eubanks says. An AI agent can, for example, help a manager practice for a coaching conversation with an employee who is working "like a madman or madwoman" about how they should rein in and focus their work habits. The AI's "personality" characteristics can be tuned to mimic that of the particular worker—laid-back, straightlaced, serious, not kidding—and it will respond as the worker would.
"It gives you a chance to feel out that conversation before you have it in real life when the stakes are much higher," he says. "The data we have says that the number one way people want to learn is through experiences."
AI tools are now "smart enough" to be personalized to the individual so they can learn the specific skill an employee needs in the moment they need it, Eubanks says, "and not a single HR manager or training manager has to get involved. No one has to build a piece of content or a course."
Similarly, survey data shows that employees would prefer to have their initial discussions about potential promotions and career mobility options at their company with an AI agent rather than their human manager, he says.
As for HR technology that hasn't been introduced but is on the near horizon, Eubanks says current AI capabilities will combine and "start to talk to each other." An example might be AI spotting a performance problem with an employee, asking a human manager's permission to have a "chat" with the employee, then reporting back on how the chat went and whether the employee needs to speak with the human manager or to access company resources for more help. Or an AI tool could spot a performance issue and automatically suggest a targeted training tool solution to boost a specific skill, or it could intuit when an employee might need to access a company benefit that they aren't aware of.
"That really excites me because that enables HR teams to see beyond that level of 'What is your name? What is your pay rate? Where's your job title?' to see what you're really about, what makes you tick and how to best serve you at work," he says. "You can see AI tools as a way to keep employees at arm's length. But my position is that they help us know more about people so we can serve them better."
