Despite what you might think, AI isn’t purely the domain of big businesses. Organisations of all shapes and sizes can benefit from AI – especially HR teams, and to some extent, especially small HR teams.
If you already have a huge HR team, you can probably share the burden of tedious admin tasks, or you’ll have specialists in different areas who can whizz through their allocated tasks. But for a one-person HR team, everything falls to you, whether it’s something you excel at or not.
Small HR teams need to wear all the hats – you need to have great soft skills, be a fantastic writer, be super organised, good at scheduling, a strong diplomat, an engaging trainer… it’s not easy! That’s where AI comes in – with the right tools and technologies in place, you can effectively build yourself an extra team member to deal with all those excruciating manual processes and fiddly tasks.
If you could hire a new HR teammate today, what skills would they have to make your life easier?
AI for small businesses will almost always target increasing operational efficiency and reducing time spent on mundane tasks, and it’s no different for HR. Nobody gets into HR because they absolutely love scheduling meetings or chasing up on compliance training – we do it because we enjoy working with people to solve their workplace problems.
Many HR professionals find that their time is taken up with tedious manual admin activities, which takes their focus away from the tasks that help them ensure a smooth-running, happy, productive working environment. If that sounds familiar, it could be time to get to grips with the best AI tools for small business HR teams on the market right now. Let’s take a look!
Even small businesses can find themselves inundated with hundreds of CVs for any job vacancy, but you may not have the capacity within a small HR team to review every single application in detail.
For small HR teams, automated CV screening can be a lifesaver. Tools like Gem or Affinda’s CV Parser enable HR teams to quickly review CVs in bulk, looking for specific criteria in job applications to intelligently highlight strong candidates.
There are also suggestions that using AI in your recruitment process could help reduce unconscious bias when hiring. Instead of unconsciously favouring certain candidates because of their name, gender, location, age, race, university or similar, AI-enhanced recruiting tools like CandidateX will automatically redact demographic information from job applications, meaning you’re truly focusing on the candidates who are the best match for the job.
Content writing doesn’t come naturally to everyone, which can make writing your internal comms messages a real slog.
Fortunately, tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Claude have made it significantly easier for HR professionals to craft comms that hit the right tone and resonate with your employees.
The key to using generative AI tools as a small business HR team is to master the art of writing a great prompt. The more detail you give the tool, the better the outcome will be. For instance, instead of:
‘Write me a message to tell employees that we’re considering trialling a four-day week’
Try something like:
‘I’m an HR leader at a small business in the software industry. Write me a 200-word email to employees saying that we’re considering trialling a four-day work week, including the benefits and potential risks, and ask them to respond with feedback. Keep the tone informal, friendly and free from jargon.’
The better your prompt, the better the output, helping you improve the impact of your internal comms.
Here's our CEO Philip Huthwaite talking about how AI can help you streamline your content creation process with quick and easy AI descriptions:
Choosing an AI-enhanced LMS is a great way for a small business HR team to embrace AI without needing any expertise. Because the AI is already built into the LMS, you don’t need to lift a finger once your learning content is in place!
The way it works is simple. You upload your elearning, videos, PDFs, job aids and anything else your employees might need, then the LMS itself can suggest the best content for each employee. This takes the ‘matching the right employee to the right training content’ task off your plate, as the AI functionality can analyse each employee and make recommendations in seconds.
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Employee wellbeing is a significant priority for organisations worldwide, with 80% of executives committing to prioritise wellbeing at work. But the quality of employee wellbeing programmes can vary wildly from one business to another.
76% of professionals are currently experiencing moderate to high levels of stress.
- Champion Health
Offering up employee wellbeing resources can be useful, as can building a playlist of mindfulness and meditation exercises, but sometimes it might not be enough. Small business HR teams are already stretched thin, and you may not have all the answers to deal with severe cases of burnout, stress or anxiety at work.
Perhaps surprisingly, 75% of employees say that AI has helped their mental health at work. Employee wellbeing AI platforms and tools such as Betterspace, Lyra Health and Wysa are designed to support employees who may be struggling with their mental health, providing much-needed additional capacity for small HR teams who still want to provide effective employee wellbeing solutions.
In a small business, any employee turnover can have a huge impact. If you have lots of one-person departments, once that person quits, you’re suddenly left with a huge gap that needs filling immediately. This then creates even more work for HR, who need to scramble to hire a replacement and find cover for any at-risk projects.
Shopworks’ employee retention AI tool was created to address exactly this, alongside platforms such as FORE Enterprise. Instead of simply waiting for employees to resign, HR teams can use the power of AI to forecast potential resignations based on key employee data points. If the tool flags up employees who may be unhappy and looking to leave, it gives you the opportunity to proactively work with the employee’s manager to find out if any issues are solvable.
AI can also help you identify attrition risks in specific areas of the business. In smaller businesses, it might not be easy for HR to spot these patterns, but AI is great at noticing things humans can’t. If you notice that several employees in a certain department seem unhappy, you can act faster, which could prevent resignations or poor employee engagement.
We’ve previously written about the benefits and drawbacks of building your own elearning content or buying from a content provider, and the same debate has already arisen for AI solutions.
However, the major difference between elearning content and AI solutions is that developing AI tools requires a lot more technical expertise. You need developers who understand AI and can create the precise solution you need, whereas creating learning resources often requires little more than Microsoft Word or a drag-and-drop authoring tool.
The main benefit of building an AI tool is that you can create the exact solution you want. There’s no need to compromise – you can ensure the tool does exactly what you need it to do.
The main drawback is that most small businesses won’t have an AI expert! Developing AI solutions requires a different skill set to normal software development, and as workplace AI is still relatively new, you probably won’t have these skills in-house. This would mean working with an external AI developer to build a custom solution, which could quickly get very expensive, and could take months to create a viable tool.
For small businesses, buying AI solutions is likely to be the better option. Instead of having to learn to develop AI tools from scratch, you can simply take a look at what tools are already on the market (like the ones listed in this post) and choose the AI tools that best suit your HR needs. While building your own AI solution offers you total control over the output, many off-the-shelf AI tools can still be configured to meet your needs.
Alternatively, another great option is to choose platforms with AI-driven solutions on the roadmap. Future-focused vendors will have concrete plans for enhancing their platforms with AI, so you can benefit from getting set up right now on a platform where the vendor is doing all the hard work for you, while you can sit back, relax, and wait for the AI features to arrive in your platform.