Paychex Engineer Brenton Dalgliesh on AI’s Real Strengths, and More

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[00:00:36] workforceai.news. I'm Mark Feffer. My guest today is Breton Galish, an HR tech engineer with Paychex. We're going to talk not so much about AI but about how people are reacting to it and putting

[00:01:01] it to use. And of course there's other things going on in HR tech like augmented reality. We'll look at those things too on this edition of PeopleTech. Hi Breton, welcome. There's so much talk about AI going on right now especially

[00:01:19] in the HR tech world but what do you think people are really thinking about it? How are they really reacting? Well I saw an article earlier today that was saying most people are secretly using AI at work even if

[00:01:40] their HR departments aren't authorizing it or aren't approving it. I think people are cautiously optimistic about how AI is going to work but I don't think anyone really knows what the end result will be. Like it changes daily

[00:01:59] and there's a lot of hype in terms of like what it might be able to do but I don't think we're really seeing a ton of things realized outside of maybe some of the LLM spaces. I know there's a lot of HR perspectives

[00:02:14] on the hiring space but all that is still relatively nascent in terms of like can we really prove it out? I'm excited about where it's going. I'm definitely not a pessimist but I think we have to recognize

[00:02:30] and own that this is still very fluid and a lot of people are investing a lot of money on a hope right now. And you know if I narrow it down a little bit about HR, I just saw a survey that said something like only 35% of HR

[00:02:51] departments or something like that have been really involved in their corporate HR discussions and about the same amount have even started to get into using HR. Does that chime with what you're seeing? Yeah, I think at the moment we're seeing a lot of larger

[00:03:11] organizations, enterprise organizations really lean into this and we're not quite seeing a lot of the smaller SMB businesses lean in yet but I think that's because there's this misconception that AI isn't for me, right? These are tools that the big cats can play with but they're missing

[00:03:35] the point that these tools are designed to take tasks off of their plate that are low level in there so they can then focus on building their business. So I think there's just, to some regard, I think there's a

[00:03:51] disconnect between where large businesses are able to operate and where small businesses think they're able to operate and I think we need to like close that gap a little bit and remind them that no these tools at the moment are really really beneficial for our smaller businesses because

[00:04:09] what they've built out uniquely designed to help take the low level tasks off of their plate. It's a little weird though that people are talking about AI but they're talking about AI almost like it's a product where it's really kind of an

[00:04:25] operating system and it makes me think about back in the day Dell was selling computers saying, has MS-DOS or something. Are people sort of missing the point here? Yeah, I think so. I think to take a little bit further it'd be like Dell selling

[00:04:46] computer that has the internet, right? Not to like what you can do with it. Like MS-DOS is what I didn't grow up using MS-DOS except for like when I wanted to geek out a little bit and like have a little fun just see like green screens, right?

[00:05:03] If you're like the matrix between what email was when it came out and what the internet was like when it came out. Like I think AI is in that same space where everyone is like, is it really going to be the thing that we think it is?

[00:05:17] I mean, I trust a lot of the experts when they say yes, but I also know that to your point earlier, a lot of businesses aren't taking advantage of it. With some of the research that we came that we were able to come up with

[00:05:32] earlier this year, it kind of segues into that a little bit where we have roughly, it's roughly a coin flip. 41% of employees would prefer less AI involvement, which I think doesn't contradict what we were talking about earlier when we were saying that most employees are secretly using it.

[00:05:56] And then a lot of the HR departments, what we're seeing is about 56% once again, a coin flip are excited to use AI in their practice or in their organization to take those low level things off their plate.

[00:06:09] But are we seeing the full scale adoption that you were referring to earlier? I don't think so. And I think where people are leery, especially the employees are how does the, how are our HR folks going to be using this and how will that impact me?

[00:06:30] Not like that AI is good or bad or indifferent, but if my organization is using AI, will that have like a detriment to my own career? That's where they're, I think that's where we're seeing some of these,

[00:06:44] like we're kind of like talking past each other in some of these studies or surveys. You know, it seems like all of the talk about AI really talks about its power, it's going to change things, but it all comes down to it's going

[00:06:58] to improve efficiency and it's going to improve productivity. I mean, that seems to be the message that most vendors are going out there with. Is there more to it than that? Or is that really what it's good at right now? It's a fascinating question.

[00:07:14] I think back to that study done in the sixties where, you know, they started looking at computers and they were like, with the advent of computers, we're going to be down to working three days a week because all

[00:07:27] of the efficiencies that are provided are going to make what we're currently doing, obviously, and yet we're working more hours today than we were then. Right? And I say that to juxtapose with the baby boomers retiring and the, you

[00:07:43] know, where there's going to be about a 10 million employee gap. And we're already starting to see some of that, you know, coming out of COVID and, you know, some of the most industries have bounced back all

[00:07:53] the way, but there are still gaps where employees were able to successfully move up into other positions at, you know, in their career. And so we're starting to see opportunities for these efficiencies that you're talking about to be realized on these low level job opportunities or job positions.

[00:08:14] And so I think that's going to coincide nicely with the employee gap and all of that to say, will the efficiencies be realized by all of us? I think so, but in a different way where we may not have or need as many jobs

[00:08:32] in the market because of some of these efficiencies. So will we see less work? I don't know. Will the four day work week be realized because of some of these efficiencies? Maybe. But then again, there's going to be a gap in employee, a deficit of employees.

[00:08:49] And you know, when you talk about replacing, you know, workers, one of the things that I see some things written about is the idea of AI essentially replacing HR, that there won't be an HR department anymore. AI will handle it. Yeah. Really sound.

[00:09:08] No, our research would coincide with that assessment perfectly. We saw almost three out of four employees would prefer that conflict resolution and disciplinary actions be handled by a human, right? You know, I was listening to one of your recent podcasts and they were talking

[00:09:26] about would I want to be interviewed by an AI and it's like, no, I don't know that I would write and you know, this phrase human in the loop will likely be banned by that. I don't know if you've heard, but there's a school in Northern

[00:09:44] Michigan that has a list of banned words every year. Yeah. You know, people, you know, that they over there overused. I imagine human in the loop will be one of those banned words in 2025, but my,

[00:09:57] the point is like, there's no way that we can do human resources or we can even do work itself without humans, uh, legislatively or practically, right? Like it, this is one of those weird, uh, opportunities where things come

[00:10:12] together, whether it's from a legal perspective or just like, this is what my employees want. They're not quite ready for some kind of unknown, unknown to kind of rule their future. Are employers in line with that? I mean, you know, employees have certain concerns about wanting to deal

[00:10:32] with people, employers are looking for ways to be more efficient and save money. So, but are they feeling like they want to keep people involved in HR as strongly as the employees want them to? I would, yeah. I would imagine that completely. Yes. So they need the employees.

[00:10:52] I mean, HR has proven, especially during the result, like during the those past few years with, uh, the pandemic, HR has stepped up and become not only an integral member of the executive suite, but a trusted partner for employees as well, you know, when there's so much uncertainty

[00:11:13] knowing that you have a person that you can connect with, whether it's virtually or in person, but having that person that you can trust and rely on, um, is not something that businesses can afford to lose.

[00:11:30] So you've got this advanced technology and then you've got people and I'm wondering, what are the dangers that AI might present to HR? Well, with anything, uh, the danger is that you begin to rely on it and you stop using your brain, right?

[00:11:55] If we stop being critically thinking, um, I, you know, I'll see about this from another perspective a while ago. Cause people are like, well, won't AI make us dumber? And I'm like, well, do you, are, do you feel dumber when you Google something?

[00:12:12] When you go online and you search for something that you maybe should have known or you didn't know, I don't necessarily feel dumber. I feel more, I feel like I, I know that I can find the answer. So I reserve my mental energy for other things.

[00:12:28] I feel like this is the same, right? We can, we can conserve our mental energy for the tasks that require it. And then rely on, rely on the fact that we've trained our model effectively to avoid discriminating and, and that's, you know, a whole other aspect of this

[00:12:47] that, you know, we could delve into. But the whole point is save your mental energy for the task that really require it, and then give yourself that leg up and time savings. One of the other cool things that we, we discovered from our surveys

[00:13:03] is that according to the HR professionals that we surveyed, they predicted or they said that they were already saving about seven and a half hours per week in tasks that they weren't having to do anymore.

[00:13:17] I know we're still on the fence as a, as a society on whether we move into a four day work week or not. I know we've kind of very touched on that, but if those results are,

[00:13:27] are proved out over time, we might be able to make that case a little bit more strongly that a four day work week is coming. So you talk to HR people a lot, I would imagine. I do. Um, how are they sorting through all this?

[00:13:44] There's an awful lot of noise out there about AI and AI and HR. How are they dealing with it? All right. I want to talk to you for a moment about retaining and developing your workforce. It's hard. Recruiting is hard. Retaining top employees is hard.

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[00:14:33] Well, some to the, to your point earlier in a wait and see mode and others are, I need this yesterday because I'm doing too much, you know, depending. Like I said, a lot of these HR departments of one are, you know,

[00:14:50] sourcing, hiring, training, dealing with employee relations issues. You know, the list goes on and any anywhere that they can shave off a few hours is going to, they're going to be excited about. On the other hand, there are those concerns about ethics and discrimination

[00:15:09] and whatnot that have to be balanced effectively and accurately. So there, a lot of folks are really mixed on this one, you know, wait and see, or let's go. You know, I can't help but ask we've been talking about AI and, you know,

[00:15:25] we're sort of in tune with the industry there. Everybody's talking about AI. Yeah. But what else is interesting to you when you look at HR tech right now? Are there other things going on that just being given short shrift? Yeah.

[00:15:41] Well, I'm super excited about where we can go with augmented reality. I don't know that that's gotten as much air time as it should, but with the prevalence and the ability to make these smart glasses that

[00:15:57] can overlay, you know, the digital world on top of the real world. There's a massive push for increasing training opportunities, right? Instead of like the, you know, the mental load between watching a video, remembering that video, and then going to apply what you saw in that video

[00:16:17] into, into real world versus being able to see step-by-step that what, what you need to do is, is crazy. And so I think the next, I mean, outside of AI, I think augmented reality is

[00:16:31] going to really change how we, how we train our employees, how we work as employees, just there's just so much there, you know, I have three monitors in front of me, I could have one pair of glasses and have an infinite number of monitors wherever I'm at. Right?

[00:16:51] I'm not, I'm not necessarily stuck to, to my seat in that, in the same way going forward. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty geeked out about where we're going to go with that as well. Brenton, thanks very much for stopping by and talking with me.

[00:17:08] It's been great and I hope you'll come back. Thanks, Mark. I really appreciate it. Look forward to it. My guest today has been Brenton Gaglish, an HR tech engineer with Paychex. And this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of WorkForceAI.News.

[00:17:34] We're also a part of the Work Defined Podcast Network. Find them at www.wrkdefined.com. And to keep up with AI technology and HR, subscribe to WorkForceAI today. We're the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.workforceai.news. I'm Mark Feffer.