Picture this scenario: you go to conferences and summits all year to learn more about how to elevate and scale your business using technology. You’re being told that incorporating automation and artificial intelligence into your business processes is THE KEY to staying competitive in the forever-evolving, competitive staffing industry. But, you leave the event feeling frustrated and confused about what exact steps you should take to  adopt this technology

Where do you go from there? Do you hire a third-party consultant or business analyst to make technology recommendations to you? How will you vet technology companies to ensure you’re making an informed and enlightened purchasing decision? 

In the fast-paced staffing industry, I want you to take a few minutes and slow down a little, rewind, and go back to the basics. Keep reading to learn about the differences between AI and automation, how each benefits the staffing industry, and finally key questions to consider when evaluating AI and automation technologies. 

Understanding the Difference Between Automation and Artificial Intelligence

What is Automation…? What is Artificial Intelligence…? Are they the same? How do they differ? And, what can they do for you and your business? 

Once the answers to these questions become clear, you will find yourself in the right place to explore the benefits of automation, artificial intelligence, and technology more broadly.

What Is Automation?

The term “automation” was coined in the automobile industry around 1946. Simply put: automation is the use of technology to perform tasks with minimal human intervention. 

When we think about automation in an industrial context, it becomes easier to understand. 

I love learning through simple examples, so let’s begin by thinking about owning a cookie factory, and then we’ll move onto automation in staffing.

In a cookie factory, we can employ hundreds of people to: 

• manually mix ingredients
• bake the cookies in an oven at the correct temperature
• remove the cookies from the oven at the right time,
• weigh and individually package the cookies, 
• place the correct number of cookie packages into individual shipment boxes, 
• and carry all the boxes to the pre-determined pickup location. 

In this example, your cookie factory’s growth depends on how many customers you acquire and how many cookies your employees can physically handle preparing. Without automation, more customers require more employees in order to perform the same repetitive manual tasks. As we all know, having more employees does not equal higher efficiency. 

Enter customized automation– using technology or tools to automate tasks specific to you and your process. Back to our example, with customized automation, we can upgrade our cookie factory with automation technology and have machines perform those same tasks, more rapidly, completely consistent, error-free, and without any of the innate risk and disruption that comes with a human process (injury, sick days, holidays, or time off). In this new example using customized automation, more customers does not equate to more staff. 

In almost every industry, automation offers distinct advantages and solves business challenges. It can increase company-wide productivity, reduce errors, cost savings, improve quality, improve safety, use resources more efficiently, add scalability, potentially improve customer satisfaction, and lead to better decision-making.

The ROI of implementing automation in a cookie factory is easy for us to understand because we benefit from the automation that emerged from the industrial revolution. 

How Can the Staffing Industry Benefit from Automation?

Now, let’s talk about automation’s place in the staffing industry. In staffing, you’re not going to see automation through the use of industrial machines. This time, the automation is less visible but still just as impactful.. 

Think about it this way: you employ a team of people with specialized skills to help you scale your company and generate profit for your business. Currently, 50% or more of the work some of your employees do could be automated, while the other half of their work requires uniquely human intelligence and skills.

With the correct technology, you can automate any tedious, repetitive, manual process that you and your team are required to do. 

To determine what tasks should be automated, I want you to consider the following: 

• How often have you sat in front of a computer and repeatedly downloaded files from one place just to take information from those files and type or upload data into another system? 
• How many times have you made a typing error while copying information from one system into another? 
• How many hours have you spent looking through data to find a data entry mistake made by someone at your company at some point in time? 
• How many times have you set a reminder for yourself to remind someone else to do something (like emailing a customer to pay an overdue invoice)?
• How often do you sift through your ledgers or "numbers" to determine how to correlate and apply payment?

Configuring an automation solution to fit your exact process using your specific, unique rules, calculations, and conditions while writing, matching, or transferring data/numbers from one system to another, is where automation can transform your staffing agency. You can reduce repetitive manual tasks leaving your staff free to focus their time and attention exclusively on revenue-driving activities. 

There are countless tasks performed every day in a staffing agency that resemble our example of the pre-automation cookie factory. In today’s reality, a cookie factory that chooses not to implement any form of automation cannot grow in a competitive market. Does this sound familiar? 

Staffing agencies and EORs looking for growth in the coming years must look in every corner of their business for opportunities to optimize–which often means automating existing processes even if they are working to achieve gains in efficiency, productivity, and more. 

What is Artificial Intelligence?

The term “Artificial Intelligence” was coined in 1956 at Dartmouth College. Simply put, AI is a form of computer science used to create intelligent machines that can learn, reason, & self-correct. 

I am sure you must have heard of or seen some of the following popular AI-themed movies: the Terminator franchise, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, iRobot, Ex Machina, Her,  2001: A Space Odyssey, and so on. Is this the type of artificial intelligence that you are expected to allow to run your business? Is AI really going to take over the world as we know it?

Although we may get to that point one day (hopefully not too soon), I am relieved to confidently report that the human mind has not fully been recreated in the form of artificial intelligence… Yet!

Today, the only type of AI that we have available comes in the form of what we call Narrow AI or Weak AI. Weak AI can still perform tasks that go far beyond the capacity of what any one human can achieve. Given this fact, how can it be categorized as “Weak”? Weak AI (or today’s AI) is designed to only perform specific tasks or solve problems within a limited domain. 

Whereas General AI (or Strong AI) would be capable of performing any intellectual task a human can do as well as understand or learn any subject without any specific pre-training. Hollywood loves to make movies about this type of artificial intelligence.

Here are some examples of Weak AI that you come across every day and why they are weak: 

• Virtual Assistants, like Siri or Alexa. These AIs struggle to maintain context across multiple back-and-forth exchanges.
• Personalized recommendations like Netflix or online shopping recommendations from Amazon. These AIs cannot explain why a particular recommendation was made. We know they use patterns, but the AI cannot explain their rationale in a way that makes sense to humans.
• Image recognition for identifying faces or objects: These AIs cannot understand the broader meaning or context of an image. 
• Autonomous Vehicles performing driving-related tasks. These AIs can’t handle rare, unexpected situations that fall outside their programming or training data, such as interpreting a new road sign design.
• Chatbots, like chatGPT. These AIs cannot form personal opinions, exhibit creativity beyond predefined structures, or experience emotions.

How Can The Staffing Industry Benefit from AI?

In a staffing agency without any AI, decisions are made based on the limited information available to them, the experience and biases they have accumulated, the constrained time they have to digest information, and the limited guidance they have on new industry trends and profit-generating strategies. Today’s AI can provide insights into areas where there is far more information available to process than a human can thoroughly analyze on their own. AI enables staffing firms to handle significantly larger volumes of candidates, jobs, and client interactions without sacrificing quality or efficiency. Aside from exclusively analyzing existing data, AI also provides predictive trends which can help you not only run your business today, but make informed decisions about the direction of  your business. 

How Can  Staffing Agencies Evaluate AI and Automation Technologies? 

AI and automation are everywhere–in the news, in your inbox, and on the agenda at industry conferences. Now that you know how AI and automation are defined and can support the staffing industry, let’s explore how to identify and select automation and AI technologies that will effectively support your business. 

1. Make sure you get a simple and clear explanation. Any technology vendor you speak with should be able to explain exactly how their technology works and how it applies to your specific circumstances. If their explanation sounds complicated and vague, it is not you who is not educated enough, your vendor needs to offer a simpler and cleaner explanation. If you are in touch with a salesperson who lacks the technical background to answer your question, request to connect with an engineer who can explain the technology to you in layman’s terms. 
2. Get a personalized demo. When it comes to automation, your vendor should spend time understanding YOUR end-to-end process and be able to come back to you with an implementation plan that represents your unique business case. 
3. Do they integrate with your existing tools? Find out if the automation solution integrates with your existing tools (e.g., ATS, CRM, payroll systems). You should be able to understand exactly how your data will be processed and how your automation solution will be configured so that you can clearly identify the benefits with as little change management required on your end as possible.

For AI specifically: 

• Find out what type of database the AI algorithm was trained on. Was it industry-specific (e.g., staffing and recruitment) or general-purpose data? 
• Understand how they keep it current. Ask the vendor how often is the AI model updated or retrained to stay relevant with industry trends. 
• Address any privacy concerns. Does the AI learn from your data as you use it? If so, how does it ensure your data remains secure? 
• Dig into consistency and accuracy issues. Find out how accurate the AI is in its recommendations or decisions by asking your vendor to provide examples or metrics.
• Ask whether the AI can explain why it made a specific recommendation or decision.

When it comes to any technology solution, it’s always important to understand: 

• What kind of support is available if you encounter issues or need help? 
• What’s the timeline for implementation, and how disruptive will it be to your current operations?

The hype of AI and automation is ever-present, and easy to get swept up in. Technology will continue to evolve at a rapid pace, and it’s critical that you understand it so you can make informed decisions to support your business.I hope this post helped provide a bit of clarity and direction as you navigate technology trends. Did you see something related and interesting? Do you have a follow-on question after reading this? I would love to hear from you–connect with me on Linkedin.