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After adopting AI, IBM's HR department has achieved a 55% lift in its approval rating from the business, and a dramatic reduction in admin work is opening up opportunities for its HR practitioners to work in L&D, tech-based and client-facing roles.

When IBM began adopting AI internally, it decided to start with HR due to the division's procedural, policy and task-driven underpinnings, says Richie Paul, who leads the generative AI practice.

Noting that IBM employs about 290,000 people around the globe, Paul says much of HR's work has traditionally involved supporting its many managers via "really basic pie-chart tasks", such as those relating to pay, department moves, people manager moves, promotions, and leave approvals.

The department's AI journey by identifying situations where it could provide instant responses to basic, high-frequency questions; situations where humans were simply referring to policies and procedures and regurgitating the answers.

It's since evolved into generative and agentic AI, meaning IBM's chat-based AskHR interface can complete the vast majority (94%) of transactions without any human intervention, Paul says...