With this new feature, the creators of the innovative employee onboarding app are breaking ground in machine learning and AI in HR
THE HAGUE - Talmundo has just announced its newest product feature - an onboarding chatbot to help its customers better respond to their new hires’ most frequent questions. Based in The Hague, the HR startup is the first company to launch this exciting new technology for employee onboarding.
AI poised to make big waves in HR
With the global AI market projected to hit more than $46bn by 2020, HR is an area in which all companies can benefit from investment today. As an ex-HR executive, Belgian CEO and Co-Founder, Stijn De Groef, points to three major reasons why HR, in large corporations especially, needs to be looking into how AI can improve their processes already:
- People Analytics - The insights to be gained by analyzing patterns in large and complex amounts of employee data sitting in HRM systems, for example. With a focus on high-performer indicators, this could be where the future of performance management lies.
- Language Analysis - By analyzing job descriptions for gender bias or other off-putting language, the talent pipeline is less likely to be skewed by non-conscious human bias, helping companies solidify their diversity initiatives.
- Chatbots - A chatbot is a first step into AI easily adopted by organizations as a way to further enhance the dataset available to HR. The technology behind it is already strong, while the user interface is plain simple.
De Groef, emphasizes how the last point turned into an “aha!” moment for Talmundo. “We’ve been HR tech disrupters from the beginning because we approach employee onboarding from the perspective of employee experience and culture-boarding. While our solution does structure and streamline the administrative side of onboarding, we’ve always felt that what was missing in the market was something that helps HR actually help their newcomers become integrated and productive faster and in meaningful ways.”
With that in mind, Talmundo has just announced that the very first onboarding chatbot in the market, part of their SaaS onboarding solution, is now in beta testing with some of their key enterprise customers and will be available to all their customers in early 2018.
Employees don’t always know who to ask
New employees at large corporations have questions about their new company that they don’t know who to ask, or are even scared to ask. Is there a dress code? What is included in the company mobile phone plan? How do I reimburse expenses? Not having a simple or consistent place or person to turn to for answers leads to employees often leaving questions unanswered, until they are either very urgent, or it’s too late.
Eva Baeten, Head of Key Accounts at Talmundo says, “Over the last couple years we’ve watched some of our clients struggle with creating comprehensive FAQs for their new hires so that they start as well prepared as possible. The more information you try to cover, the more cumbersome and awkward the user-interface becomes. By feeding that information into a smart bot, it makes the interaction more natural, as well as helps HR and the organization learn what their new employees really want to know.”
Chatbots will make HR more about humans
The deeper impact of HR bots is, when properly implemented, they will help companies remove many of the inefficiencies associated with a large workforce. They will give the humans in HR their time back so they can do what they do best - add the human touch in HR. HR professionals (and managers!) will spend less time answering repetitive queries or completing repetitive tasks, and will rather be able to focus on making sure that every employee is empowered to succeed in their role.
“The machine learning element is one part of the chatbot that we’re most excited about,” says Sander Stevens, COO and Head of Product at Talmundo. “It will take the guesswork out of answering employees questions. HR won’t answer the questions they think their new hires have or develop onboarding content that they decide is most relevant, but rather will be able to provide the information new hires really want and need to be successful from day one on the job.”
Demystifying AI: “It’s not robots taking our jobs or taking over the world.”
Talmundo’s chatbot feature will already come pre-loaded with 20 of the most commonly asked questions from new hires based on Talmundo’s own extensive research, its in-app data analytics, and then validated with some of their key customers to ensure that real people are still reflected in the content.
“There’s a lot of hype around AI and a lot of people throwing around the term very loosely,” says De Groef, “but we want to show the HR world that it’s not about robots taking our jobs or taking over the world. We saw a very clear case for AI, and a bot specifically, in our app, and so we’re investing in the future of HR automation now so that our customers can benefit from it today.”
End of press release
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About Talmundo
Talmundo is a Dutch startup founded in 2012 to revolutionize HR technology systems. With his background in HR, Talmundo founder and CEO Stijn De Groef had witnessed firsthand the need for innovation. Launched in 2014, Talmundo’s mobile-friendly cloud software modernizes and simplifies countless onboarding activities, keeping the employee experience as the main driver behind its solution.
Today Talmundo is already proud to serve leading multinationals like KPMG, Lidl, Bacardi, ArcelorMittal, BNP Paribas Group, Sodexo, Firmenich, Staples, Deloitte, Swisscom, and Telenet. In December 2016, investment fund TIIN Capital became a minority stakeholder in the young company.
For additional information try our free webinar: Meet Eva: Your digital onboarding assistant.
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