At the heart of the evolving workplace is Niki Head, people and development director at Stellar Entertainment Software in Guildford, UK. The company, founded by former Criterion Games staff, is currently developing an unnamed AAA arcade racing game. Head recently spoke about the growing impact of AI on her role at the GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit, highlighting both the challenges and opportunities that come with integrating AI into human resources.

AI in Employee Complaints and Grievances

One of the most pressing concerns for Head is the increasing use of AI, particularly ChatGPT, by employees to draft complaints and grievances. While she hasn’t seen this directly in her studio, she has mentored someone who has. “I’ve seen an increase in employees using it to write things like grievances or complaints,” she said. “You can usually tell because the formatting is all off, and it quotes a lot of out-of-date legislation or legislation that’s not relevant.”

The most extreme example she encountered involved an employee who submitted a 30-page grievance, which was largely padded by ChatGPT. After removing the filler and fluff, the actual complaint turned out to be quite short. “It took the HR department ages to figure out what the real issue was,” Head said. “When you took out all the filler and fluff, it was actually a very short complaint, but it took the HR department ages to try and figure it out.”

This trend has made her job more challenging. “People are using ChatGPT as gospel,” she explained. “When they’re submitting it, they’re submitting it thinking that this is a legal document that has legal definitions or employment law references. But actually, the employment law references that they’re quoting aren’t relevant to what they’re complaining about.”

AI as a Tool for Efficiency in HR

Despite these challenges, Head has seen several benefits from AI adoption in her HR role. “A lot of efficiencies,” she said. “Obviously, AI can read data faster than you can, it can process massive amounts of data.”

Stellar Entertainment Software uses HiBob as its HR system, which has invested heavily in AI tools. These tools analyze employee data and provide insights on strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. “It will take the answers that have been given, and it will give strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities,” Head said. “It does a sort of analysis for you, almost a TL;DR of what you talked about with that employee. So we can take that as an overview and go, ‘OK, so the most common theme is this person needs to improve in this, and they’re really, really good at this.'”

These AI tools have been especially useful for managers who conduct many employee reviews. “It doesn’t stop us from reading the whole report, but it does pick out some underlying themes that you could then take and say that person could do with training and development in this area,” Head said. “That’s been really helpful for our managers, especially if they’ve got a lot of people that they do reviews for.”

AI Predictive Tools and Employee Retention

Another feature of HiBob’s AI system is a traffic light system that predicts potential risks for employee turnover. “It’s trying to predict what your risks are for someone potentially leaving,” Head said. “It doesn’t do anything with email, it’s purely going on the data that we’ve put into our HR system. How long have they been in the same job? Do they manage other people? How much time off have they had?”

While these predictive tools can be useful, Head cautioned against taking them at face value. “Some of it you have to take with a pinch of salt, because time off can be for numerous things,” she said. “But it will tell me, for example, that if someone’s been in the same role for two to three years, that can potentially come as a risk that they might be stagnant in what they’re doing. But what that doesn’t take into account is whether that person’s happy doing that.”

“It’s a signpost, but that’s where you see the limits of AI: it doesn’t know the person, whereas you would know the person. It’s good as an indicator, but I don’t believe it to be the sole proof that somebody’s going to leave or not. It’s much more complex than that,” Head added.

When it comes to the studio itself, employees are adjusting to AI tools at varying rates. “I think from the general conversations we’ve had around AI, our engineers are quite for it in the fact that they find it efficient: they can understand the logic,” Head said. “Artists are much more emotive, and I understand that, because it is a case where they think that AI is trying to take over, and it’s trying to cut down on opportunities and jobs that they potentially would have.”

“But definitely, we’ve got a couple of artists who are very anti-AI,” she added. “If the company wanted to introduce AI tools, how would you approach that conflict?”

“We first try to understand the issue. Is it a fear thing? Because if it’s fear that [they think they’re being replaced], we reassure them that’s not the case at all. We need artists. We love artists. We celebrate art a lot. But technology is moving, and we have to at least investigate these things. We have to have a look into it, because they might find it useful. Even if it’s just using it and throwing it away, that’s fine, but you can’t bin the tool until you’ve at least tried it.”

“So we set tasks. So one in particular, we set a task where they could explore it a little bit and give us feedback. They may come back and give you the exact same view, but at least you’ve given them the opportunity to learn it.”

“If it is needed for their job and it is a tool that we really want to use as a company, then yes, at the end of the day, that’s what we want them to do. But we’ll try and approach it with ‘how can we get you on board’, rather than dictate you use it.”

When asked if she worries about her role being replaced by AI, Head said, “I think it’s hard to say that we would be replaced. I think generally there may be companies that decide that they think that AI tools can replace HR. But the thing that sometimes gets missed by larger corporations is the definition of what HR actually is. We get a misrepresentation of being the people that hire and fire the people, that make those decisions, and are all about the company and never about the people. And it’s not true. We are the people in the middle that are trying to make sure that people are acting legally and ethically, but also making sure that the employees are having a really great experience at the same time.”

“We’re kind of the Switzerland in the middle of both. We’re there to advise, we’re there to give expertise, but we are making recommendations at the end of the day, unless someone’s doing something utterly illegal.”

While AI tools have been used in HR for some time, particularly for lower-level tasks like directing employees to policies or providing quick answers to managers, Head emphasized that HR expertise cannot be fully replaced by AI. “You can’t predict people’s behaviour,” she said. “AI can give you little pointers on attrition and things like that, but when you are sitting in a room, AI can’t predict that someone’s going to get up and throw a chair at you.”

“I’ve had someone throw a chair at me. I’ve had someone follow me home because they felt I was the person that fired them. I was just in the room, and I had nothing to do with the decision to terminate their employment, but they followed me to a train station.”

“So you can’t predict people’s behaviour. AI can’t help a manager in a situation when an employee is crying or they have to have empathy, they have to be able to communicate effectively, and HR are those people that can help train and support them in those situations.”

Head also noted the recent predictions by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman that most white-collar work will be fully automated by AI within the next 12 to 18 months. “What that’s saying is they don’t value the input of what a person will bring,” she said. “And it is a shame, because AI could replace…”