HR leaders say AI ROI is a red herring. Here’s what firms should focus on instead
A few weeks ago, on a call with Fortune 500 CHROs across a multitude of industries, one tentatively brought up an issue she’d been having with her leadership team: They had asked her to prove the ROI, a figure showing monetary return on investment, of her investments in AI. She was perplexed.
It turns out, she wasn’t the only one. A recent MIT report showed that, despite the billions spent on AI initiatives, 95% of companies are seeing no measurable impact on their bottom lines.
But Ruchi Kulhari, chief human resources officer of IT solution company Unisys, spoke up to say that ROI is the wrong question, at least at this stage.
“If we truly believe AI to be an enabler, It’s going to reflect its positives in everything we do in a strategic, smart way,” she said. “If we are looking for that one silver bullet output,” she added, “we’re kidding ourselves.”
If AI initiatives genuinely work, she said, the results will eventually show up in retention rates, the new skillsets employees build, and—in time—the revenue a company generates.
The question leaders should be asking instead is whether they are willing and ready to challenge the status quo—and empower their employees to do it, said Teuila Hanson, LinkedIn’s chief people officer.
“You can’t just sprinkle AI on top of existing structures and expect your metrics or some wild metric to skyrocket,” Hanson said. “As an organization, you need to really reimagine how work is going to get done and how ideas are generated.”