Since the launch of ChatGPT in November of 2022, it has taken the world by storm and amassed over 100 million users in just two months. ChatGPT is the most advanced type of chatbot technology to date, as it has the capability to generate human-like responses to the user’s prompts in the form of an instruction, question or statement. It can do everything from writing an essay on any given topic to helping programmers write code. Companies are certainly wondering if they could implement this technology in the workplace to help employees alleviate their workload. In this blog, we are going to focus on how ChatGPT can help the HR department, and where there could be limitations.
Recruitment
One of the areas that can greatly benefit from the help of ChatGPT is the recruitment process. It can be deployed to write job descriptions for any position(s) that is needed within your company. To demonstrate, we’ve given it the instruction “Write a job description for the role of marketing manager”:
Within seconds of asking, ChatGPT has already generated an entire recruitment post for the marketing manager position, complete with job overview, key responsibilities and qualifications. As you can see in our example, you can be as specific as you like with ChatGPT to get a highly personalized job description that fits your company needs without requiring HR to drastically edit it.
In addition to job postings, ChatGPT can also help with other procedures in recruitment, including:
Interview question bank
Candidate rejection email
Frequently asked questions(FAQs) with answers
Job Advertisements
By using the assistance of ChatGPT to automate recruitment tasks like the ones listed above, HR departments can spend more time on areas that cannot be helped by technology, such as interpersonal skills during interviews with candidates or when communicating with current employees.
Research
In addition to recruitment, ChatGPT can also help companies with research and brainstorming. Let's say the HR department of a company would like to develop employee retention strategies and is in need of ideas. Before ChatGPT, they might have used search engines to help with their planning. However, now all it takes is a few seconds to input the instruction and ChatGPT will instantly create a list of strategies for employee retention.
You can add in additional instructions for a more tailored answer, so for example if the company is on a budget, and can’t just hand out raises to retain employees, HR professionals may have to think of retention programs that are not associated with any monetary benefits, like our example above.
A drawback we have discovered is it will not come up with any new and innovative ideas, and most of the ideas provided can be found by searching on Google. However, we still think it can be a useful tool for brainstorming, as it reduces research time by eliminating the repeated ideas from different sources/websites, then compiles the different ideas into a numbered list.
Risks of using ChatGPT for work related tasks
While ChatGPT is a very exciting new tool that offers numerous benefits and has unlimited potential, its current form of development may not be suitable for business use and could make companies enact policies to restrict the use of ChatGPT to specific use cases. Below we share a few disadvantages of this technology.
Inaccurate Information
The ChatGPT model uses a database from 2021. It doesn’t have access to newer information or real-time data, which can be an issue if HR officers want to quickly inquire about the latest up-to-date information on Hong Kong’s labor laws. ChatGPT in its current developmental stage is not trained to say “I don’t know” when they are unsure of an answer, which means it’ll answer any question very assertively, regardless of whether the answer is true or false.
HR professionals should not rely on ChatGPT to provide up to date information regarding Labour Laws. For example, the minimum wage in Hong Kong will be increased to $40 per hour on 1 May 2023. However, when we asked ChatGPT about this, the most up to date answer it can provide is from May 1, 2021.
Data Privacy
ChatGPT is developed by a company called OpenAI. It is an open platform that is utilized by millions of users worldwide, as its name suggests. However, this carries various security risks, including the collection of personal data from unsuspecting users, making it a target for hackers. While individual users assume the risk of interacting with ChatGPT, companies could potentially become liable for any security breaches.
Moreover, depending on the information provided in ChatGPT, there is a risk of exposing sensitive company information to the public. For example, if the marketing team uses the chat technology to brainstorm a compelling copy for an upcoming product launch email, the information regarding the product could become public before the product is even released.
Risk of Legal Issues
While ChatGPT and the content it creates is publicly available, this does not necessarily mean it lacks copyright or other protections. There is a risk that the content generated by systems such as ChatGPT could infringe on the copyright and/or database rights of the owner of the materials from which it was trained. ChatGPT is primarily trained on vast datasets of text and other materials from the internet. These datasets may include materials that are protected by copyright. The output produced by ChatGPT may be similar or identical to existing works, creating a risk that using the output without permission could constitute copyright infringement. OpenAI and individual users could be subject to legal action as a result.
Due to the existing risks of legal and security breaches that exist in using ChatGPT, companies should be hesitant to allow their employees to freely use ChatGPT to create commercial materials that would be released to the public.
The development of ChatGPT is indeed a technological advancement that could make our lives more convenient. It can help the HR department draft templates such as company letters and job postings which is a huge time saver. However, HR officers should be aware of the potential risks that come with it, with its limitations being accuracy and reliability. Additionally, there may be concerns around the use of AI in HR decision-making, particularly when it comes to issues of regulations and company-owned policies. Therefore, while HR officers can use ChatGPT, they should be cautious and informed about its limitations and potential risks, and should always prioritize the privacy and security of their employees' data.
Looking to boost the efficiency of your HR department? Consider adopting a HR system to systematically manage payroll calculation, employee attendance and rostering, leave/expenses application, and more.