Bridging the AI gap in HR: Why employee buy-in is key

1. Engage employees early with open communication

Involve employees and agents from the start to pinpoint where AI can make the biggest impact for them. Ask about pain points, inefficiencies, and frustrations to identify clear opportunities for improvement.

Back up these qualitative insights with data. Audit your existing operations and analyze support trends to spot recurring issues. For instance, if employees cite slow response times and support data shows onboarding ticket backlogs, AI agents can step in—accelerating responses and improving the new hire experience.

Transparently communicate your AI strategy with employees. Show them where processes will evolve and how they’ll benefit. For instance, introducing AI agents could mean that employees now get immediate support over modern channels like Slack and Microsoft Teams, complementing traditional channels like email.

2. Offer upskilling opportunities

With 80 percent of employees wanting their company to prioritize career development, integrating AI training into your upskilling initiatives is a powerful way to boost adoption while preparing your workforce for the future. It allows employees to gain competitive skills like AI literacy and AI management, while providing hands-on experience with emerging technologies.

And AI isn’t just enhancing skills—it’s reshaping job roles. By automating repetitive tasks, it frees employees to focus on critical thinking, complex problem solving, stakeholder management, and process improvement work. In fact, as AI becomes more embedded in the workplace, over 90 percent of HR leaders say that skills like empathy, communication, and leadership will be even more important.

Investing in AI education not only accelerates adoption but also reassures employees that they play a vital role in an AI-driven workplace.

3. Pilot a few use cases at a time

Start simple by piloting one or two AI use cases at a time. This phased approach allows you to collect early feedback from your employees, refine your strategy based on their input, and build confidence across the workplace before scaling to more advanced applications.

Gather employee feedback on new AI tools through focus groups and surveys to understand their experience and address concerns. Highlight quick wins from successful pilots to drive buy-in and enthusiasm.

Two simple starting points that make a big impact on HR support are AI-powered help centers and AI agents pre-trained on help center content to automate responses to high-volume inquiries. With AI handling routine tasks, HR teams get time back to focus on the employee moments that matter the most—think: career growth, employee well-being, and key life events.

If you want more control, start with HR specialist-facing AI tools. AI copilots assist HR teams in real time by offering suggestions and contextual insights to improve response accuracy and personalization, while allowing specialists to edit replies before sharing them with employees.

4. Prioritize security to build employee trust

Privacy and security are top concerns for both employees and HR leaders when it comes to AI adoption. In fact, 57 percent of employees worry about how their HR department’s AI tools handle sensitive data, and 91 percent of HR leaders acknowledge that managing these concerns will be a major challenge in the coming years.

To ensure compliance, collaborate with your IT and security teams early in the AI implementation process. Prioritize AI tools with enterprise-grade privacy and security controls to keep employee data safe—and communicate the safeguards in place to your employees to build their trust.

5. Gather learnings from your CX leaders

Take a page from CX leaders by partnering with them to identify the strategies and tools that successfully drove AI adoption among customer service teams—and apply those insights to HR.

The same AI solutions powering fast, personalized, and scalable customer service can transform employee service, too. Collaborate with CX teams to understand how they’re using AI-powered help centers to scale self-service, real-time copilots to guide HR specialists through interactions, and AI agents to automate support. By aligning with proven AI-driven service best practices, you can accelerate adoption, enhance employee experiences, and ensure AI delivers real value.