Name: AI: Punch Above Your Weight - The AI Playbook for Lean HR Teams
Uploaded: 2026-09-17T19:31:26.300Z
Duration: 55 min 4 s
Description: AI: Punch Above Your Weight - The AI Playbook for Lean HR Teams

Transcript for "AI: Punch Above Your Weight - The AI Playbook for Lean HR Teams": Hello, everyone, and welcome to Punch Above Your Weight, the AI playbook for lean HR teams. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Kayla, and I'll be your host. And as always, before we jump in, I do wanna give you a quick rundown of the webinar tools on your screen. If you've got any questions, please go ahead and pop those into the q and a. Don't be shy. That's located on the right side of your screen. We'll be actively monitoring the q and a, and we'll do our best to address as many as possible towards the end of the session. If you'd like to connect with fellow attendees, head on over to that chat tab on the right side of your screen, and we'd love to hear where you are tuning in from today, so let us know. Now if you're looking for extra resources, you can check out the docs tab. You'll find helpful links related to the session today as well as downloadable presentation slides that you can follow along. Now this session is eligible for HRCI and Chirm Credit. You will get an email from our third party certifier with your certificate twenty four hours after that webinar concludes, so be on the lookout for that. Lastly, if you'd like closed captioning on your screen, please click on the CC on the bottom right of your video player box, and you can change the language as well. So at this time, I'm gonna go ahead and pass it over to our speaker, and we have Jay Polacki. And Jay is the founder and CEO of HR Geckos. She is on a mission to change. She builds AI powered tools that take the repetitive off HR's plate without losing the human touch and makes HR matter in the first place. So without further ado, I'll pass it over to Jay. Thank you so much, so much, Kayla. Kayla. Welcome, everyone. And I'm so glad you're here today spending your afternoon with us. I'm Jay Polaki. I'm an HR practitioner, turned CEO of HR Geckos, and I spent about twenty five years in HR before I started building technology for HR teams at HR Geckos. So today, I'm definitely speaking to you, as a fellow practitioner, as someone who has lived your job, and that's the lens for everything we'll cover today. Happy to connect via LinkedIn. You can scan the QR code or via email. You can see my email on the screen right here. Happy to connect either way. I'm the only Jay Polaki on LinkedIn, so easy to find. I also host, the HR Bytes podcast where I bring you insights from HR practitioners who are digital HR leaders. You can catch it anywhere you get podcasts or on YouTube. And definitely join our HR Bytes community on LinkedIn and Facebook. It's where you live kind of, you know, in on the platforms, that you live in today. And definitely, chime in on our AI ready or not survey. It's an anonymized short survey. It takes about three minutes to share how AI ready your HR team and business is today because this informs our AI ready or not roadshows that we host both, in person and virtually throughout The United States. Of course, I also wrote my first Substack a while ago, but I'd love for you to chime in on this, and JSpikes is what's what it's called on Substack. So I'd love for you to follow along and chime in on, you know, the thought leadership that I have to share. So HR Geckos is a copilot for HR operations that automates HR processes and streamlines the HR help desk, OVR, a strategic integration partner with Paycor. And you can scan the QR code, to schedule a demo of HR Geckos to see what we can bring and what value we can bring to your HR team and business. And you can also find us on the Paycor marketplace, and the QR code is up on your screen as well. So before I dive in today, I wanna ask you something. Think about the last email you answered or a Slack message you replied to, that you answered at least 10 times before this year. Maybe it was how do you check or how do I check my PTO balance or where do I find the expense reimbursement form? Question similar to that. If that describes at least part of your week, I would say this session was built for you. So do drop, in the chat, how often does this happen to you? 10% of the time, 20% of the time, at least 20 times. And I'm trying to see, okay, 20%, Kinga, 25%, Stacy. Sue, 20%. Tee, 5%. Carla, 30%. Flying Bing, Stephanie, 30%. Paula, 25%. So as you, share, we'll share how this is actually panning out with HR teams across the board. You know, the average lean HR team spends 60% of its time answering the same routine questions over and over again. And for small to medium businesses, it's often worse. HR generalists at, you know, mid market smaller companies are expected to handle payroll, benefits, compliance, recruiting, employee relations, and onboarding simultaneously. Now how many of you can attest to that? Now this isn't a skill gap. Let me say that out front. You know, it's definitely a structural problem. And structural problems have structural solutions. You know, as I was speaking with an HR director recently, you know, she's an HR director at a midsize logistics company, about a 175 employees. There's one full time HR person and a part time admin. And she started keeping a log, of every email at some point in her HR life, you know, HR day. She just wanted to see, you know, how many emails she answered in a single week, and she was just curious to see where her time was going. Right? So at the end of the week, she tallied them all up. And about she found that 73% of the emails she received were questions she had, you know, responded to before, and some of them in the same month. And then she told me this. You know? She said, I'm not doing HR anymore. I'm running a help desk. And, you know, and she said, I don't even have the help desk software to show for it. How many of you recognize that feeling? I'm trying to see in the comments. Kinga says it's easier for employees to ask us rather than look on the Internet. Absolutely. Yes. That that, you know, it's definitely easier. And there's AI for it to augment your work today. So I'm going to pause a little bit here and see if there are any more reactions out there. Sue says, yes. Yes, Sue. AI. Let's let's look at AI. Now AI is not the end all and be all of anything. Okay? It's not a magic system. Let me put that out there. So let's talk about what AI actually is in HR and what it actually means. Right? Because there's a lot of noise out there. I don't know if you watched the news, but this past weekend, there was a lot more noise about AI if you're following along. So I wanna say this upfront again. It is not replacing HR folks. It is not some 6 figure enterprise implementation, and it's not a magic system that runs itself. That's definitely not it. So what it is in plain terms is three things. And if you ask me, it's conversational AI that answers employee questions automatically. Like, you know, think of think of, the PTO questions that you get day in and day out. Now those are questions that can be answered automatically. It's workflow automation that triggers the right steps based on events like a new hire or a termination or a suspension. And it's definitely analytics and insights that surface patterns in your HR data before they become problems. Right? So it's definitely helping cutting through the noise today, and I'd love for you to think of this in terms of a mental model. You know, think of this as a very capable junior HR assistant. That's how I would like you to think of this today. And I'll definitely speak more to that, next. So the three flavors of AI and HR, you know, the three layers, I'm thinking cake here again. Kayla can can attest to this. I'm always thinking about cake. But most HR lean lean to HR teams who are very lean should start with layer one, the conversational part of it, because the ROI, is immediate and it requires the least infrastructure. So conversational AI is, you know, chatbots, copilots, agents answering employee questions automatically twenty four seven without HR picking up the phone or responding via email. You know? These are answers that can be structured that don't need, you know, too much, nuance or judgment, and they can easily be structured so these AI tools can respond to those type of questions. Right? The second layer, and once you have this knowledge base and it's solid, is workflow automation. You know, workflow automation, which triggers the right steps based on any HR events, like a new hire or a termination. And the third layer is analytics. Because once you have enough data flowing through the system to be meaningful, that's when, you know, you can surface patterns in the data, that you can see coming from miles away before they actually become a crisis. Right? So keep this visual in mind, you know, three blocks, one preceding the other. That's the order in which you should think of AI and HR today. And, again, there is no silver bullet here. It's not a magic system that runs itself. Okay? So what's happening today is, you know, there's a lot of noise out there, as I said. There is a lot of stuff around AI that's not equal. You know, not all AI in HR is equal. And here's what has genuinely kind of proven ROI for companies your size. Right? And what's still emerging and worth watching and what I tell you to ignore for now. So let's, think of this as an exercise in how we look at AI and HR today. So the proven ROI, you know, with some of the AI tools that are out there has definitely been in the policy q and a and procedure q and a space, you know, PTO and benefits questions, onboarding checklist, off boarding workflows, all of that. There's proven ROI today. What's still emerging is definitely the performance coaching support. How many of you have tried to use a an AI coach, during your performance review process, both as a manager, as an as an employee as well? Have you tried it? Have you found that it's really not up to par? Yes. I have. Predictive analytics at scale. Definitely. Still a lot of work to be done in that side of things because have you ever tried to run a report, through Claude or through, you know, ChatGPT or any of the other, LLMs out there. There's a lot of hallucination that happens with the analysis even today, no matter how fast these things are evolving. Right? And, definitely, things to avoid and and because they are still emerging. And then what's definitely not ready for lean HR teams today? You know, autonomous HR decisions, Definitely not ready. You know, you cannot have a fully autonomous HR decision making, process built into any of these tools today and definitely sensitive employee relations. Right? Definitely not. And I'm looking at the chat here to see, you know, someone says I've done the same thing. I'm I'm thinking it's about the AI tool and, you know, how you've used it, Amy. And Paula says, yes. So, you know, the mental model, again, that makes all of this work is very, very simple. Let me show you how. So as I mentioned and alluded to earlier, you know, the mental model I want you to walk walk away with today is this. Think of AI as a very capable junior HR assistant. You know, it's fantastic at high volume, low complexity work, the kind of work that fills your inbox but doesn't require too much of your expertise. You know? I would always say that it should escalate to you for anything sensitive, nuanced, or relationship driven. And as I said earlier, your job is not to be replaced. Your job is to define all of these boundaries and then let the machine handle its side of them. Right? So, again, always always think about how your job is to define the boundaries, and not let the machine replace you, but you tell the machine how to handle its side of the job that you define. That's the mental model that you should be thinking of today. And, again, your job isn't to be replaced. So think about, you know, an assistant whose boundaries are defined, who has some structure, and can be, you know, supervised just like you would sue supervise a junior HR assistant, to do the job. So that's the mental model. And then let's look at the five workflows AI can handle right now. So let's get practical. These five workflows where AI delivers proven immediate value, for a lean HR team and brings ROI, have been tested over the past couple of years. And as I go through this, I want you to be asking yourself, which of these sounds most like my Monday morning? Because that is where you're going to start. So, you know, bring a piece of paper or, you know, open your note, on your on your iPad or on your laptop and take down, as we go through this, what sounds like your Monday morning. So policy and procedure q and a. You know, the highest volume comes here in this in this, segment, and it's the easiest win. PTO policies, benefits explanations, expense procedures, handbook questions, compliance FAQs. All of these, you know, employees seem to ask the same 40 to 60 questions in different ways, and AI can handle all of them today. The second, you know, workflow where AI can really bring lot of value is the onboarding task management. We see this at HR Geckos a lot because we custom build onboarding workflows for our clients. And, you know, when a new hire starts, I've been in your shoes. It's mayhem, especially these days. Right? It's with the I nine and with collection of documents, especially if it's a distributed team, a remote team. You know, today, AI can automate it automatically generate a checklist, and send the right docs, remind the hiring managers, and track completion of all of those tasks that you need done on day zero. And it doesn't forget. You know? It doesn't get distracted by the, you know, myriad things that we as a HR human has to do. It definitely manages the task very well. So that's one place where there's definite ROI when you automate an onboarding workflow using AI. Again, the same thing applies to the offboarding workflow. How many of you think this is the most messiest process in a lean HR shop? I do. You know, AI can trigger and receive all of those IT access revocation notifications that you need, especially you if you're a small shop but have utilize a lot of different systems. It can also handle benefits terminations timelines in a very timely manner. It can ensure exit surveys are delivered and collected and also equipment return tracking. So if you have a distributed team or, you know, a team that works off-site mostly, equipment return is a big thing. Right? So all of these, can be handled by AI in an offboarding workflow from one single trigger event. It doesn't have to be multiple touch points. One single trigger can automate and activate all of this off boarding workflow. So that's one place that AI can definitely help. And the fifth is employee self-service data lookups. Like, what's my PTO balance? When do my benefits renew? And if you're a Paycor, customer right now, all of this data exists in your Paycor system. You know, what's the 401K match? These answers already exist in your HR system, and AI surfaces them instantly without anyone's involvement. And that's where our integration with Paycor comes in. HR Geckos does this for our Paycor clients. So now that you know what to automate, I hope you were taking down notes. So let me show you how to build the foundation that makes it work, because as you all know, technology is only as good as the content to give it. Right? I I recently wrote, my my newsletter on LinkedIn is also called Jase Bytes, similar to my Substack, and I recently wrote an article, you know, AI is only as good as the data you feed it. And do you have the data to feed it if you're deploying an AI agent? So I'll let you read that, at your leisure. But let me talk about the knowledge base. You know, before you evaluate any tool or talk to any vendor, do this audit, please. This is the most important first step that I would advise anyone looking to incorporate AI into your work today. You know, go back through ninety days of email. Right? Any Slack messages, any other communication tools that you use that produce tickets, whatever your inbox looks like. Go back to ninety days of that. Now write down every question you answered and then group them. So, you know, again, I hope you're writing this down or take a screenshot of this slide. This is one thing that you can do this week. Okay? So write them all down, then group them by category and count the frequency. So group them, count them. And you'll find something that surprises you. Most of your volume is a small number of topics but phrased in dozens of different ways. Like, you know, it could be under five to eight categories like PTO benefits, payroll, onboarding, policies, company systems, and tools, but it could be phrased in so many myriad ways. Right? So rank them all by frequency and group them by category. Now whatever you see in front of you, and definitely, you know, make sure that everything that's phrased in the dozens of different ways falls under the right category. This audit is your road map. It tells you exactly what to automate first and how to write the content that makes the AI actually work. Remember, garbage in, garbage out. Right? So any questions where the answer is always the same, that's an automation candidate for you. You can automate that really well. Any question requiring context, sensitivity, human judgment, that stays with you. And and, you know, I think this is one of the biggest mistakes everyone's making today. They're missing the step or skipping the step and just, you know, bringing a tool in. This really, really matters. Please make sure that you do not skip this step, because most teams that are failing with AI and HR today are skipping the step, and they're starting with the technology instead. The tool, again, as I said, is only as good as the knowledge you give it, and and definitely garbage in garbage out. Sorry for the expression, but that's the way things are working out today. So remember that logistics company that I mentioned, at the outset when we started today's conversation, that HR director did this exact audit. You know, she found she had been answering 47 different questions, but most were variations of the same eight topics. And then she went ahead and reorganized her knowledge base around those eight topics. Right? So she did exactly what you're doing. Then added the AI layer that connected directly to her Paycor data. So that could be us HR geckos or it could be, any of the other workplace, partners on the Paycor marketplace. You know, you can connect directly to your Paycor data so you can get answers to PTO balances, benefits info. All of that is pulling in real time. It's not from a static document, and nothing changed in Paycor. It was already there. So what she did was she just gave employees a front door that they could actually use. And within thirty days, she was getting back about six hours a week. Six hours a week. She used those six hours to finally run the performance review process. And let me tell you, she was grappling with this for some time. And she'd been, you know, definitely deprioritizing this for almost a year. So she used that finally to run the performance review process, and she told me, I really finally feel like an HR person again. And and that's what this is all about. Right? It's not the AI. It's getting your job back and feeling human. I've been there. I've been in that in those shoes, and I've done exactly what, you know, she was doing, but I didn't have AI when I was in in in my role. Today, there's AI to augment your work and be that, you know, right hand, be that junior assistant to get you to the next step. So there is a huge payoff, and that's why I'm sharing in this in this, story with you because, you know, smaller sized companies do not have to struggle, when it comes to any of these newer AI tools out there. There is a tool for you, and there is a partner with Paycor that can, you know, bring this to your doorstep immediately. So all you have to do is go on to the paper marketplace and find us or anyone like us who can help you connect all of this information and provide this data to your employees. So, you know, again, all of this is great on paper. We're talking about this today. We are seeing visuals. We are sharing stories. But how do you make the case for your leadership? Right? This is one of the most, I think the most challenging and the biggest conversation that's happening in organizations, small, medium, or large today. All of us need to make a business case before we can move forward. And let me give you some language, so you can pitch this, as time and not as technology. So frame it as time, not technology. Say I'm spending six plus hours per week answering the same questions. That's three hundred plus hours per year. I'm not spending on recruiting, retention, or compliance. I mean, you can word it, with the language that suits your current situation. But always frame it as time and not technology. And, you know, when you pitch it as time, your leadership understands time. They understand what it costs when a compliance issue slips through or a good hire falls through because recruiting moved too slowly, you know, and quantify the risk of not acting. So always say, what does that cost the company? It definitely costs more than most AI tools today. And and always start with the pilot. You know, start small. Frame AI as a structural fix for a structural problem. Right? So pilots are much easier to get approval than a whole transformation. So start with the pilot, ask for, like, a sixty to ninety day trial on one use case. Pick one use case, and then measure it, and then show the results. Once you're able to prove that ROI, you can expand. Right? So there's a term that, sales folks use, land and expand. I think that applies to our HR space today as well. You know, land the pilot and then expand. So tie all of this to a business goal that leadership already cares about, you know, growth, retention, cost reduction. You pick their language, not HR language. So that will set you up to get a yes for HR tools today. Okay? Try it, and let me know how it goes if you try it. Okay? You can always catch me on LinkedIn. So here's what I want you to do with what you've learned today. Right? This is your ninety day action plan. This week, go ahead and do the inbox audit. You know, thirty minutes, just the list. Don't solve anything yet. Right? Try to do it this week. I mean, it's about September 17. You know, give or take a few days, it'll be the end of the month, and you'd be ready for next month. You go ahead and rewrite your top 10 questions in plain language, and that's your knowledge based starter kit. You know? All of this is pretty easy to do because it's one use case. If you do not want to, you know, take on all of the questions, you can also pick a segment of the questions, like, say, a particular category that you feel requires a tool to be able to provide structured answers and and automate that. So then go ahead and in this quarter, if you can, before December, evaluate one tool that connects to your existing HR system. So if you're on Paycor, you're already ahead because the Paycor marketplace has integration partners like us specifically built to connect to your data without disrupting anything. You know? So start there, pick one use case, and then, you know, after you've done the pilot of that use case, measure what changes. What it was before, then what changed after the pilot. So before the pilot, after the pilot. This is a very easy ninety day action plan. Let me tell you, it's not going to be too cumbersome on you. You know, it's very actionable. It's, not something that you can, you know, think that it's very complex. It's you can do this when you log off today. You can start small. So, again, to reiterate, do your inbox audit, rewrite your top questions in plain employee friendly language. That would be your knowledge based starter kit, and then evaluate one AI tool that connects to your existing system. So, again, look on the Paykel marketplace if you're on the Paykel marketplace to layer that on top of your existing data. Because this will be your fastest path to value. You know, the data is already there in Paycor. All you have to do is pilot one use case. So measure it and keep what works. That's all. So I, you know, wanted to end today's conversation. I know, we have a lot of questions also coming in. And Kayla and I wanted to actually give you an opportunity to ask the questions so we can have a conversation, and I'm not the only one talking about, this. So I'd love to open up the floor, here for any questions. Kayla, I'd love for you to ask, folks if they have questions, to, you know, drop them in the q and a. Yes. Please, if you don't mind, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and go into the q and a and ask your questions. We'd love to hear from you. So we can go ahead and get this party started. Did you have a couple of things you wanted to end with, Jay? Sure. So, you know, I definitely wanted to say that the goal here isn't to replace yourself with AI. As I said, it's to free yourself up to do the work only you can do as a human. And you didn't get into HR to answer the same question 200 times a year. Right? You got into it because you care about people. So I would say let the machines handle the inbox and get back to the people work. Right? So that's that's what I'd like you to focus on while we take questions. Kayla, over to you. Alright. So then we do have a question really quick here. This is from Sherry. What is a resource? Let let's say that, you know, we they don't have Paycor, as an. HCM solution. What is a resource Mhmm. or, to preview or research AI resources for a small office? What are your recommendations for Sherry? Sure. Definitely. So, Sherry, are you a member of any of our professional HR associations out there? If you are, SHRM has a pretty good, you know, resource that you can access, where it talks about all kinds of tools. In. fact, we are on that particular work tech marketplace as well. You can actually see what the tools are, and you can see what they do and you can get in touch with the providers right there on their platform as well. So that's one place and HRCI also has a resource list that you can access. Those are the two big ones. But if you wanted to just ask AI, you know, it can pull up a big list for you today. You know, Claude does a pretty good job. ChatGPT does a pretty good job. But, again, some of these lists may be a little more biased to certain companies because they are bigger and they've been out there with the AI, prompts responding to AI prompts that these LLMs have been putting to the websites that vendors host. So you just have to be a little careful about the type of content that's coming in. But I would say, maybe as a baseline, use the LLM and then go to the really structured resources like the SHRM or the HRCI lists where you can then compare notes and, kinda get an idea of what type of tools exist for smaller businesses today. We at HR Geckos focus on the smaller to mid market, companies, below 5,000 employees. Our smallest clients are 50 employee companies. But there are some tools out there that are able to do that kind of work as well. There are not many that focus on small businesses. I can tell you that. That's why we exist, but there are some companies that do both. They focus on the bigger companies as well as on the smaller companies. So you'll you'll be able to compare notes if you use all of these resources, you know, together. Yep. Thank you, Jay. We the questions are coming. in here. So, this next question is from Julia. So how can AI help us understand not only how to answer questions, but how to understand when a question extends beyond the scope of our role or responsibility as an employer. I think that's a great question, Julia. Absolutely. Wonderful question. So you're asking us to, you know, help you understand why using AI, how to answer, questions which are beyond the scope of your role or responsibility as an employer. AI can do that when you have it within a walled garden as we call it. So if you're deploying AI, within your company within a walled garden, you can structure the answers. So for example, I recently demoed HR geckos, and I asked our geckobot to give me a recipe for chocolate cake. Right? Our geckobot is built within a walled garden. It will not respond to questions that are out of context or out of, you know, the role responsibilities of the employer. And it gave us a really nice answer during the demo. You can catch our demo on LinkedIn, which is on our LinkedIn company page. It was, I think, our August 19 demo, but it lives on our LinkedIn company page. You can go look it up. It was with Amber Clayton of the SHRM Knowledge Center, actually, the former director of the SHRM Knowledge Center who's on our board of advisors. And we had fun asking that question and showing how, the AI is not responding to it because it's within a walled garden. Now if you've opened up your data to Claude or chat GPT and it's not residing within a walled garden with, you know, structured guardrails, then, of course, it could be answering questions that are outside of the scope that you do not want it to answer. So that's where you have to be really diligent and careful and use your judgment when you're deploying AI tools. You just don't wanna connect all of your Google Drive, to ChargepT. There are some companies that are saying they'll do that for you pretty easily. I wouldn't just try that, even pilot it because it's very dangerous, since you're dealing with employee data. And I know companies that are small use Google Drive a lot to manage all of their, you know, files their personnel files reside in Google Drives, and, it's very dangerous to connect that. So thank you for that question. That brings me to that governance topic that I really wanted to talk about too. So I'll hold on to that and wait for. the next question, Kayla. Okay. That sounds good, Jay. I know there's a lot of things coming up here, and that's a very good call out as well. You gotta be careful with some of these things. Alright. So then, you covered some hallucinations with analytics. Any ideas on how to limit these types of issues? And I think that might be a good segue. Great. Again, AI is not fully out there with predictive analytics at scale. You know, it can do brief, smaller analysis. Like, say, for example, you could give it a set of survey data that you pulled your employees on and, say, you know, you pulled them on, let's say, going for your next summer picnic and you were pulling on a location, you can pull all of that and give it to, you know, your your your Chan GBT or your Claude to come up with the, the results. But if you gave it a large set of data, like, for example, we tried this. You know, we test the AI a lot at HR Geckos. And so our AI ready or not roadshow and, virtual events, we had about seven sessions since fall of last year to the spring of this year, and we actually kicked off last week with our fall sessions again. And you can catch those if you wanna follow along on what's happening on that side of things on LinkedIn. But we put we fed the AI all that data that we gathered in these sessions on our roadshows. And we found that it was very easy for it to make suggestions based on what it was fed that were really, I would call it, gibberish. It made really bad suggestions, and sometimes it was really gobbledygook. It was it was hallucinating to such an extent that we had to reframe and say, no. Look at the data points here and look at, you know, how you're assessing it and how you're, you know, kinda giving us the analysis here. So it's very, very difficult today for the AI to give you a correct concise answer without the human supervising and making sure that all of these calculations and, you know, assessments are correct and accurate as as, I would say, 99.9% accurate. Accuracy is what you should aim for when it comes to using AI. It's not there at 100% yet, but, even the 99.9% is very difficult to get at. So, I hope, you know, I answered your question. But to limit some of this, again, you'd have to have that walled garden kind of environment. You don't want to, you know, open up your data to any of the open LLMs out there, the large language models. It's still a work in progress. I don't know if you're again following along the news, since this past weekend with all the AI company CEOs saying we need a kill switch for the kill switch and. the slowdown. Yeah. Right? So we definitely need to slow down in that in that in that sphere. That's why when I asked you to look at how you wanna implement it, analytics was the last layer, you know, to look at and to implement AI in. Right. Okay. Well, Yes. thank you. Uh-huh. Keep them coming. So we do have another question from Brianne. So this all sounds great. I'm the only HR person at my company and barely have time to get through my inbox. How realistic is it to actually implement something like this without it becoming a huge project that takes months? Great question. You know, the short answer is it depends on what you start with. As I mentioned, you know, I asked you to take notes while I was talking earlier. You know, trying to implement an all in one AI platform across every workflow on day one, yes. Definitely overwhelming. Right? You don't wanna do that. But, you know, you can start with your knowledge base audit. That's a very small, you know, process to kinda kick off. It it's free because you already have the data. It's in your Paycor system or in your system of record already. It just takes a few hours, and it's definitely the single most kind of valuable thing you can do before any technology con conversation today. You know? Once you kinda know your top 10 to 15 questions, you're already kind of 80% ready for a tool, because the actual step for a focused AI tool, especially one that connects to your existing HR data or h HR system is often measured in days and not months. Right? When we are asked how many days does it take you to implement, to, like, HR geckos that sits on top of the pay core data, our answer is also it depends on what you're trying to implement and what are the workflows that you're trying to implement, and what's the data that you already have? Is it structured? Is it, categorized? Like, I asked you earlier to kinda, you know, engage in that exercise. Companies that struggle are the ones who try to boil the ocean. Right? Don't try to boil the ocean. Start with one use case. And then, as I said, land and expand. That's that's the that's the motto for today. I love the motto, Jay. We have another question here from Taylor. What's the biggest mistake you see HR teams making when they first try AI, and and how can we avoid that? That's actually a very good question too. And, you know, we think of this all the time because we work with smaller teams. We work with teams that are kinda distributed. And, to me, the the very basis of all of this, the data, the data work is crucial. Yeah. This is where many, many, many HR teams are failing because they're skipping the step. You know, skipping that content work and going straight to the technology, I see this every single time. Right? A lot of times, they already have the data. They already have a system in place. And then they assume that the AI will figure out all of their policies on its own or that it can learn from all of this disorganized SharePoint folder stuff that you have. It really can. Not reliably, at least, because it's not well structured enough to trust what it will produce after you gave it access to this disorganized content or just give it access to your policies without, you know, giving it some structure. AI is only as good as you fee as what you feed it, the data you feed it. So to the biggest mistake that we see is treating that knowledge base as an afterthought. Right? Do the audit first. Write clear, organized answers before you ever demo a tool. And if you do that, implementation kind of becomes almost trivially easy. It's it's very simple if you have your data structured in a way that the AI can actually read it and, you know, use it and bring value. So if you skip it, you'll definitely spend weeks frustrated that the tool isn't working, but the problem really won't be the tool. It's actually, you know, skipping that content work that I spoke about earlier. It's a great. question. Thank you for asking. Yep. Yeah. The data is key. You gotta have good stuff in there. Okay. That's good to know. So this is from Cassie. So we're already a Paycor customer. Does that give us any kind of head start when it comes to adding AI to our HR workflows? Great question, and I'm actually, very glad that someone asked this. Actually, yes. Right? Being on Paycor is a real advantage. You know, your core HR data is already centralized, already structured. Your employee records, your PTO balances, your benefits information, your org structure, all of that is already there. So all you need to do is add an AI layer on top of that, and you're not starting from scratch. Right? So. you're giving employees a way to access what's already there in a conversational self-service way. Okay. So, you know, I definitely point you to the Paycorp marketplace as a first stop. There are integration partners there, including HR Geckos, which is, of course, my company, that are specifically designed to connect to Paycor without any big IT lift. We already integrate, and, you know, it's pretty easy. But regardless of which tool you evaluate, right, the Paycor integration question is one of the first things you should ask. Because if you're on Paycor, you want this tool to be integrating with Paycor. If a tool connect can't connect to where your data already lives, then you're definitely creating more work for yourself, not less. It's it's a big heavy lift if that, you know, if that's not Paycor and you're trying to connect to something else. Right? Right. It's a. great question. Thanks for asking. Yes. Yeah. Thank you all for sending your questions in. They've been super helpful with the conversation today, so keep them coming. We do have another question here from Irene. Let me go ahead and push this to the stage. I think there was one from Erica before that as well. Okay. Yeah. I can see them. Yeah. Okay. Okay, Arlene. What's. her question? Irene asked, in regards to managing inboxes, will we need an AI that could work with Outlook regardless of the HR system? Or how would that work? Or do you know? Yes. So. if you're managing inboxes, Mhmm. definitely, it needs to integrate with the tools that you have. Right? Right. So if you're using Outlook, regardless of the HR system that you have, it would have to integrate with Outlook. If you're using Microsoft Teams, it would have to integrate with Microsoft Teams. It would have to integrate if you use Slack with. your Slack channel. If you use, what are the other tools out there? WhatsApp. If you use WhatsApp, yes, it has to integrate with WhatsApp. So, yeah, we at HR Geckos, let me tell you, we integrate with all of these tools because it's important that, you know, if the conversation is being, carried on in Slack, it's easy to convert it to the geckobot and bring it into the geckobot where the geckobot is the actual connector and can connect and in a very walled garden structured, confidential way respond to questions. Because, again, Slack giving access to Slack also, has some liabilities and compliance issues when it comes to HR data. So you have to be careful where you connect the data. Okay. That's good. to know. K. Alright. So this is from Erica. So I work at a small software development company with AI specialization, that use Paycor in some capacities, but also likes to use what they've created. The problem is that those programs and Paycor don't speak to each other, which causes inefficiencies in numerous areas. How would you recommend I approach leadership to persuade them to adopt using Paycor in a larger capacity? Great question here, Erica. I can try to provide you some resources as well. But and we also have a whole team that can help you as well. So I think, Erica, you can always reply in our survey that I'm gonna actually launch here in a moment, and let us know, how we can help you because we certainly can. So just let us know in that survey. We'll get right with you. Yeah. Great question, Erica. And, you know, this is I speak to a lot of Paycor clients as well, and they do face these challenges because, you know, a lot of times you have the system already to do a lot of the pieces, but then you don't have the connectors or you don't have the the management buy in for making all of this work in cohesion. So it it's actually bringing value and the ROI that you built all of this to bring to the table. Right? So definitely, yes, contact Kayla and her team. Yes, please. They have all the resources to help you. And like I mentioned, start the conversation, you know, in terms of time, not the technology. Start the conversation in terms of time. It always lands better. So. try that. Let me know how it goes, Erica. I'd love to hear from you too. Sounds good. Alright. Great. So we are coming up at time. Let me go ahead. I would love to launch a survey. It should be, on your screen right now on the right side. Please go ahead and take some time to answer that. We would love your feedback. It does really inform us of what sort of topics that you would like to learn more about in the future on the program and, prepare resources such as this session today. So please let us know. We would love your feedback. Anything that you'd like to share, Jay, before we close out? Oh, I I'd just love to, you know, have you take the AI ready or not, anonymize survey too because that'll also kinda get you into that frame of mind, Erica, especially you. You know, it'll get you thinking about why things are the way they are in your organization today. You know, AI ready or not is actually a conversation that's happening in every workplace today because, believe it or not, none of us are ready for this. Not yet. It's happening, but it needs to be slowed down too, as, as we are seeing outside of the workplace with the conversations that are happening, you know, in the economic and geopolitical spheres of our lives. So definitely keep all of the conversations that we've had today about the different segments of AI and how it can be useful or not so useful. And, you know, get back to that people work that we've always cared about and the reason we exist in HR for. Again, the goal isn't to replace ourselves with AI. Right? It's to free ourselves to do the work only we can do as HR folks. So thank you again, Kayla. Thank you, Brianne. Thank you, Cass, for having me on today's session. I really enjoyed talking about this as you can tell. I'd love. to continue the conversation. And, you can always reach me on LinkedIn or, you know, like I said, contact us on h r geckos dot com to, find out more about what kind of value we bring to HR teams and your business with AI today. Absolutely. Well said, Jay. Thank you so much for coming on the program today, sharing your expertise and experience with us, and giving us some good takeaways too, some things to think about. AI is not going anywhere, so we kinda have to get used to it. Whether we like it or not, it's here to stay. So, thank you so much, Jay, for your time, and thank you all for sending in your questions and your chats. We appreciate you. That's all the time that we have, so, we'll see you all at the next webinar. Yep. Take care, everyone. Yep. Thanks, everyone.