As AI technology becomes a bigger part of the hiring process and as more people are dealing with a challenging job market, AI vendor Phenom revealed on Wednesday that it has acquired AI-native agentic people analytics platform Incorporated.
Phenom HR professionals and business leaders plan to use Incorporated’s technology to be able to provide more people analytics tools and actionable workforce insights on workforce deployment. The integration comes amid a job market in which many vendors are cutting jobs and blaming AI for the layoffs. despite this A increase in layoffsSome observers say AI and automation will affect only a small number of American jobs. For example, a Forrester report this week said AI will take 6% jobs Between now and 2030. For Mahe Baireddy, co-founder and CEO of Phenom, the role of AI technology is to enhance jobs and create new jobs, as AI automates the most routine tasks. In this Q&A, Baireddy addresses some concerns about automation and emphasizes the need for collaboration between AI and the workforce.
Many vendors are blaming AI for layoffs. Does this mean that AI will automate everything?
Mahe Baireddy: We constantly think about what can be automated, what can be scaled and what can be agentic in the workflow. Those are the three elements we look at in the workflow. We have seen that complete end-to-end automation is not possible anywhere.
But in frontline jobs, in recruiting and talent acquisition, in particular, you can have 70 to 80% automation. End-to-end automation is not possible, but the middle parts of the workflow can be automated. This is where we automate based on the type of job, the location it belongs to, and also what industry it actually belongs to. That combination determines where in the flow you will effectively automate and enhance so that you can improve the productivity of overall HR teams, so that the candidate experience is better, the employee experience is better, and the manager and leader experiences across the overall people ecosystem are better.
It’s interesting to hear you say that not everything can be automated. What about the current environment in which many companies are replacing employees due to AI?
Baireddy: I’ll give you some examples of how we think about this.
Ten years ago people predicted that radiology jobs would be lost. But today the demand for radiologists is very high. This is because the price of CT scans, MRIs, and other imaging tests has dropped really dramatically. Additionally, we have an aging population. So, because of that combination, the number of scans that we’re doing has actually quadrupled. Even though AI is 30% automated, the other 70% has to be controlled by a human. Because of this, the job of radiologist actually turned into a new job,
If the cost of a particular service decreases and the amount of usage of that service increases, work will change at the basic level. A new job is indeed going to open up, and that’s the opportunity we’re looking for for every job family we work with. Some working families will disappear altogether, and others we never expected will emerge.
If this is true, then what is the reason for the loss of jobs being attributed to AI technology?
Baireddy: Our primary view is that we are in a rescheduling of work.
We’re really resetting the overall system of how work is getting done. AI is performing some tasks that a human can do. And there are tasks that a machine can do that a human has to do.
Because of that, you see some job families that are actually shrinking, but not everywhere.
So, if you take knowledge workers, we are seeing a lot of replacement like developers and programmers. We’re also seeing this in call centers and customer support, where AI can help.
The third area, where it is really helpful to this extent, is in assisting doctors and nurses. But it is not eliminating them. Doctors and nurses can’t be eliminated, but AI can help. If you actually look at an average doctor, half the time they’re seeing the patient, and the other half they’re seeing how the patient should be billed? But if you look at jobs in frontline use cases, people who work in retail or nursing or people who work in manufacturing, those jobs are not going anywhere, because robotics are not as advanced. The knowledge worker sector is the only place where we are seeing job replacement. But everything else is still open. The market is tight, and it depends on exactly what job you’re looking for and what impact AI has on that particular job. From our perspective, not all jobs are equally impacted by AI.
You just got included. Where does people analysis fit into this relationship between automation and job reset?
Baireddy: Right now the primary point, in people analysisWe have to understand which pieces can be automated, which pieces need to be augmented, which pieces need to be manual. For this, you need to have a very clear understanding of the data.
Infused AI is an agentic infrastructure for people analytics that can be transformed into actionable workforce insights so that every HR professional, every business leader, every people leader can understand how their people are deployed. And what are the actionable insights that they should be focusing on with people, so that they can grow in the company, or actually bring new people into the company, or change their fundamental jobs, what they’re actually doing.
Because HR people can go into finance, finance people can go into tech, tech can actually go into marketing, marketing can go into sales. All such changes will take place. Analytics is the fundamental ecosystem to understand, to be able to create a diagnostic process where the bottlenecks are and how people can actually be moved, and the speed to optimize productivity.
editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
