Dive Brief:

• While most have heard of or used chatbots and other artificial intelligence in the recruitment process, AI is moving into more applications within the talent management realm. A report from KPMG suggests "conversational agents" will soon be assisting business with employee productivity, engagement and assuring successful employee outcomes.
• As businesses look for new ways to enhance talent and business management systems, AI may be reshaping how employers interact with employees and respond to their needs, KPMG noted. In the same way AI can predict consumer desires (i.e., movie suggestions based on your prior viewing), savvy business leaders are looking to predict employee wants and desires based on their own use histories and tasks. For office operations, the tech may be used to support routine work, freeing up employees for more important tasks.
• To help integrate AI in more business functions, the report suggests it be allowed to learn, and to fail "usefully" in order to hone its skills and knowledge base. The tech must also be personalized and designed to prioritize user needs and experience.

Dive Insight:

As talent pros increasingly manage people with different needs and expectations — as well as understand that people are nigh guaranteed to leave for somewhere else in today's market — many have turned to technology to improve the employee experience and the quality of the work done while the employees are at the organization. But businesses are also working from the position that every job seeker is a potential employee with the possibility of growth, longevity and impactful contributions to the company. Total talent management is shifting the paradigm and transforming how managers even approach the work in the first place.

Total talent management not only includes performance management, but learning and development as a part of the employee lifecycle — not an optional benefit. AI may still be at the inception stage, but many believe the massive amounts of data employers have on their employees and candidates is ripe for use in myriad ways, possibly including the ability to identify employee potential. Despite fears, AI is poised to create more jobs than it may eliminate, some studies claim. And with the prospect of talent management in AI's future, human and tech interfaces may change the way people work in so-far unseen ways.