Human Resources and Artificial Intelligence: In the face of administrative overload in companies, AI does not do everything. It does what humans should no longer do.

Can you tell us about your career path and what led you to work at the intersection of HR and artificial intelligence?

With pleasure. My career path began as a hands-on professional. I spent years as an HR director, immersed in operational realities, before moving on to manage larger transformation projects. And throughout this journey, I became convinced that HR is the true strategic driver of a company. However, I was constantly frustrated. I saw two things: on the one hand, incredibly talented HR teams spending their time on administrative tasks, chasing after time instead of investing it. On the other hand, traditional tools that were no longer up to the complexity of today's careers and organisations. We were kind of flying blind. It was this disconnect that led me to artificial intelligence, not as a miracle solution, but as a lever to increase our collective intelligence and give HR back the means to achieve its strategic ambitions.

When you talk about “AI-enhanced HR solutions”, what exactly do you mean? How is this different from simply digitising HR tools?

The difference is fundamental. It's the same as between an old road map and a modern GPS. Digitisation is simply transposing the paper map onto a screen. It's more convenient, but you're following a predetermined route. Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, is your satnav. It doesn't just display the map, it analyses traffic in real time, suggests alternative routes, anticipates problems and helps you make better decisions. It's the same for HR. Digitising a CV means saving it as a PDF in a database. Augmenting it with AI allows that CV to «speak» to us: it can reveal hidden skills or suggest potential for development that no one would have thought of. We don't just save time, we completely change our perspective. We move from reactive management to truly informed decision-making.

Can you give a specific example where AI has brought real added value, for example in recruitment, employer branding or organisational transformation?

Of course, and it's essential to look beyond recruitment. I'm thinking of a company I worked with where we took action on three aspects of everyday life. First, we improved the employee experience by automating responses to simple, recurring questions, such as requests for certificates or holiday balances. This freed up valuable time. Next, we completely redesigned the onboarding process for new hires. Gone are the standardised programmes; AI has enabled us to create personalised onboarding programmes that are tailored to each individual's profile and job. And finally, perhaps most fascinatingly, we used AI to better «listen» to the organisation. By analysing the semantics of annual reviews, we were able to identify weak signals, such as a loss of meaning within a team or a need for recognition that was not clearly expressed. As a result, HR teams were able to focus on tasks with high human value: listening, coaching and mediation. AI did not replace them; it enabled them to do their real job.

In your opinion, what are the most useful AI tools or applications for improving HR processes (sourcing, selection, monitoring), while avoiding cognitive biases and potential discrimination? 

For me, the best tools are those that act as an extension of human intelligence. I am thinking, for example, of intelligent sourcing, which can act as a radar to find atypical profiles, predictive analysis, which alerts us to the risk of departures, or career assistants, which help each employee to plan for the future. But this power comes with immense responsibility. Using AI in HR without safeguards risks creating black boxes that simply reproduce our own biases. To avoid this, we first need complete transparency about how the algorithms work. The second golden rule is systematic human supervision; the machine can make suggestions, but it is always a human who must make the important decisions. And finally, we need constant auditing of our tools to continuously track and correct biases.

What are the main challenges that HR must anticipate with the widespread arrival of AI, whether technical or ethical?

I see three major challenges. The most important one is not technical, but cultural. It involves overcoming fear and building informed trust in these new technologies. The second is, of course, ethical: we must ensure that AI is a factor for fairness and inclusion, not a new source of exclusion. And the third challenge, which is the foundation for everything else, concerns the quality of our data. Even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence will not produce good results if it is fed with poor-quality, incomplete or compartmentalised data. This is the number one task for any company that is serious about getting started.

Finally, what advice would you give to HR directors and managers to ensure that AI is perceived as a support rather than a threat?

My advice would be not to try to convince people with grand speeches, but to do so with evidence. You have to start small, by tackling a specific pain point, an everyday problem that everyone recognises. The important thing is to build the solution with the teams, not for them, so that they take ownership of it. And then you have to measure the impact, not in cold figures, but in human value. Explain how the time saved has been reinvested in support, listening or talent development. When employees see that technology gives them back power and allows them to do the most noble part of their job better, then it is no longer a threat. It becomes what it should always have been: an ally in the service of people.