5 Ways HR Chatbots are Simplifying Hiring & Employee Engagement

So far, there were three most talked about recruitment metrics — time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and retention rate. Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the HR industry is facing another challenge of managing and interacting with the remote workforce.

The impact of Covid-19 will be felt beyond 6 months. Organizations are, therefore, keen on revising their HR processes. Apart from hiring and retaining talents, productivity remains a crucial concern for most employers.

Over 70% of organizations are opting for virtual recruitment methods and technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation and Machine Learning are leading this change. HR Chatbots are a well-known implementation of AI technology in recruitment.

5 Important AI-powered HR Chatbots Use Cases

AI-powered HR bots can streamline and personalize recruitment and engagement processes across contract, full-time, and remote workforce.

1. Screening Candidates

Almost 50% of talent acquisition professionals consider screening candidates as their biggest challenge. Absence of standardized assessment process, lack of appropriate feedback metrics, overdependence on employment portals, and ignoring the pool of interested candidates are some of the factors that create bottlenecks in the recruitment process.

Finding the best fit for the organization is in itself a challenge. On top of that, the time lost in screening the ‘ideal candidate’ leads to losing the candidate altogether. Nearly 60% of recruiters say that they regularly lose candidates before even scheduling an interview.

AI can help in making the screening process more efficient. From collecting resumes to scanning candidates’ social & professional profiles, recent activities, and their interest in the industry/organization, AI can connect the dots and shortlist ‘best candidates’ from the talent pool. The journey begins with an HR bot that collects resumes and initiates basic conversations with the candidates.

HR operations chatbot – View Demo

2. Scheduling Interviews

The biggest challenge with scheduling interviews is finding a time that works for everyone.

According to a recent HR survey by Yello, it takes between 30 minutes and 2 hours to schedule a single interview. Nearly 33% of recruiters find scheduling interviews a barrier to improving time-to-hire.

The barriers to scheduling interviews involve time zones, prior appointments, location, and commute. AI-powered chatbots can piece it together for both — candidates and interviewers and propose an ideal time in seconds. Moreover, today’s HR bots can handle reimbursements, feedback, notifications, and post-interview sentiments of the candidates.

Appointment scheduling chatbot – View Demo

3. Applicants Tracking

Many organizations have been using Applicants Tracking Systems (ATS) — a software for handling recruitment and hiring needs. ATS provides a central location and database of resume boards (employment sites).

How ATS Applicants Tracking System Works — *(Image)*

HR chatbots with NLP capabilities can be integrated into ATS to facilitate intelligent guided semantic search capabilities.

4. Employee Engagement

Even after the orientation, employees (especially new joiners) face hurdles in keeping up with the organization’s procedures. Reaching out to HRs is the solution, but they’re also bound by time. In most of the situations, peer-support is a way through for activities like using time-sheets, leaves, holidays, reimbursements, etc.

Chatbots have always been great self-service portals. HR departments can leverage bots to answer FAQs on the company’s policies, employee training, benefits enrollment, self-assessment/reviews, votes, and company-wide polls.

HR bots with NLP capabilities can converse with employees, understand their sentiments, and offer resolutions. 89% of HR professionals believe that ongoing peer feedback and check-ins are key for successful outcomes. Especially in large enterprises, HR chatbots can engage with employees at scale. Moreover, chatbot conversations provide actual data for future analysis. This will also help the upper management with an unbiased understanding of the sentiments at the bottom of the pyramid.

5. Transparency across Teams

Recruiting data is often siloed and confined with the recruiters themselves. Leadership only has a high-level understanding of recruitment at ground levels. Often, this data is not available to other members of the HR department as well. Less than 25% of companies make recruiting data available to the entire HR team.

One of the reasons for lack of information transparency is the use of legacy systems like emails, spreadsheets, etc. for generating reports and sharing updates.

HR chatbots - how are recruitment metrics shared — *(Image)*

With AI-powered systems, controlled sharing of data, dynamic dashboards, real-time analytics, and task delegation with detailed information can be simplified. AI-chatbots, integrated within HRMs can make inter/intra departmental conversations and information requests simpler.

Final Thoughts

Today, recruiters prefer technology-based solutions to make their hiring process more efficient, increase productivity and candidate’s experiences. Tools like conversational chatbots are becoming increasingly popular because of the intuitive experiences they deliver. Chatbots can simplify HR operations to a greater extent and at the same time provide better employee engagement rates than humans.

Multilingual AI-powered HR Chatbot with Video – Hitee.chat

In the world of product design, consistency is the cornerstone of delivering a seamless user experience. As digital products evolve and scale, the challenge of maintaining design consistency across multiple platforms, teams, and touchpoints becomes more complex. This is where design systems come in. A design system is a comprehensive set of guidelines, components, and tools that help designers and developers create a consistent and cohesive user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). From a designer’s perspective, building and maintaining a design system requires a strategic approach to ensure scalability, flexibility, and alignment with business goals.

Source: https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/design-system)

Why Design Systems Matter?

Design systems are more than just style guides or pattern libraries. They offer a unified language for design and development, bridging the gap between creativity and functionality. Here are a few reasons why they are critical:

Consistency Across Products

One of the primary goals of a design system is to ensure uniformity across different platforms and devices. When users interact with a product, whether on a website or a mobile app, they expect a consistent experience. A well-implemented design system ensures that visual elements, interactions, and behaviors are aligned, offering a familiar and intuitive experience for users.

2. Faster Iteration

With a design system in place, teams can reuse components and patterns rather than reinventing the wheel for each new feature. This speeds up the design and development process, allowing teams to focus on solving new problems instead of reworking existing designs. For designers, it means less time spent on repetitive tasks and more time dedicated to innovation.

3. Scalability

As products grow and new features are added, maintaining a coherent UI/UX without a design system can become chaotic. A design system provides a scalable framework, enabling teams to add new elements or modules without compromising the overall consistency of the product.

4. Improved Collaboration

A design system fosters collaboration between designers, developers, and other stakeholders by providing a shared language and reference point. This ensures that design decisions are communicated effectively, reducing friction and misunderstandings between teams.

Building a Design System: A Designer’s Perspective

Designing a system from scratch can seem like a daunting task, but with a clear roadmap and understanding of core principles, it becomes a powerful tool for creating scalable and user-centered products.

1. Define the Core Principles

Before diving into visual components, it’s essential to establish the core principles of your design system. These principles serve as the foundation and guide decision-making throughout the process. Ask yourself:

• What are the key values of your brand?

• How should the design reflect the needs and emotions of users?

• What goals are you trying to achieve with your design system (e.g., accessibility, flexibility, innovation)?

For instance, if accessibility is a top priority, you’ll need to ensure that your design system accommodates users with different abilities, by providing color contrast guidelines, clear typographic hierarchies, and accessible components.

2. Create a Unified Visual Language

Once the principles are established, the next step is creating a cohesive visual language. This includes defining elements such as:

• Color Palette: A well-structured color palette ensures harmony across different UI components. It’s crucial to include primary, secondary, and accent colors, along with usage guidelines to avoid inconsistency.

• Typography: Define a typography system that establishes hierarchies and clarity, including font styles, sizes, line heights, and spacing. Consistent typography helps users navigate content effortlessly.

• Spacing and Grids: An established grid system ensures a balanced layout and harmony between different UI elements. Proper spacing guidelines prevent crowded or misaligned components.

• Iconography and Illustrations: Design guidelines for icons and illustrations help maintain visual consistency. Icons should follow a standard style (outlined, filled) and size, ensuring they align with the overall visual language.

Iconography and Illustrations: Design guidelines for icons and illustrations help maintain visual consistency. Icons should follow a standard style (outlined, filled) and size, ensuring they align with the overall visual language.

Image Source: https://designerup.co/blog/10-best-design-systems-and-how-to-learn-and-steal-from-them/)

3. Design Reusable Components

A design system is incomplete without reusable UI components. These components include buttons, forms, modals, and navigation elements that can be used across various features and pages. Each component should be:

• Modular: Components should be flexible and adaptable for different contexts. For example, a button should have variations for different states (hover, active, disabled) and types (primary, secondary, destructive).

• Documented: Each component needs comprehensive documentation that explains how it should be used, its variants, and the rules governing its application. This ensures consistency when different team members use the same component.

4. Implement Accessibility Guidelines

Accessibility should be at the forefront of every design system. As a designer, consider:

• Color Contrast: Ensure sufficient contrast between text and background for readability.

• Keyboard Navigation: Ensure that interactive components are navigable via keyboard for users who rely on keyboard shortcuts.

• Responsive Design: Components should be responsive, adapting seamlessly across different screen sizes and devices.

• Assistive Technologies: Design components should be compatible with screen readers and other assistive technologies to provide an inclusive experience.

Maintaining a Design System: Evolving with the Product

Once a design system is in place, the work doesn’t stop there. Maintaining it requires ongoing effort as the product evolves and new design challenges emerge. Here’s how designers can ensure the design system remains relevant and effective:

1. Regular Audits and Updates

A design system should be treated as a living document that evolves with the product. Regular audits are necessary to identify outdated or unused components. Designers should collaborate with developers to ensure new features are aligned with the existing design system, and updates should be documented to avoid fragmentation.

2. Version Control and Documentation

Version control is essential for keeping track of changes in the design system. Documenting why and how changes are made ensures that the design system grows in an organized manner. It also helps onboard new team members quickly, as they can reference updated guidelines.

3. Foster Collaboration Across Teams

Designers need to maintain an open line of communication with developers and other teams using the design system. Tools like Figma, Sketch, and Zeplin allow designers to share components and guidelines in real-time, fostering collaboration and ensuring that everyone is aligned.

Some well-known examples of design systems that have set benchmarks in the industry:

1. Google Material Design

URL: Material Design
Overview: Google’s Material Design is one of the most comprehensive design systems available. It provides guidelines on how to create visual, motion, and interaction design across platforms and devices. Material Design is known for its grid-based layouts, responsive animations, and depth effects like shadows and lighting.
Features:
- Comprehensive color palettes, typography, and iconography.
- Extensive component library (buttons, cards, etc.).
- Customizable UI components for both web and mobile applications.

2. Salesforce Lightning Design System

URL: Salesforce Lightning
Overview: Salesforce’s Lightning Design System provides a comprehensive library of UI components and resources to help build applications on the Salesforce platform. It ensures a consistent experience across Salesforce products and enables developers to create custom apps easily.
Features:
- Ready-to-use components, design tokens, and code snippets.
- Comprehensive accessibility guidelines to ensure inclusivity.
- Detailed documentation for developers to integrate components into Salesforce applications.

3. Microsoft Fluent Design System

URL: Fluent Design
Overview: Fluent Design is Microsoft’s design system, created to provide an engaging and scalable UI across all Microsoft products. It is heavily focused on interaction, animation, and motion while ensuring accessibility across various device ecosystems.
Features:
- Focus on depth, motion, and light to create modern and interactive UIs.
- Cross-platform components supporting web, desktop, and mobile applications.
- Accessible components with detailed guidelines for developers.

Conclusion

Building and maintaining a design system is an investment that pays off in the long run. It ensures consistency across your product, improves collaboration between teams, and allows for faster iteration and scalability. For designers, a design system is more than a collection of reusable components — it’s a framework that enables you to create user-centric products with confidence and clarity. By embracing modularity, documentation, and accessibility, you’ll ensure that your design system remains a valuable asset as your product grows.

About the Author:

Shristi is a creative professional with a passion for visual storytelling. She recently transitioned from the world of video and motion graphics to the exciting field of product design at Mantra Labs. When she’s not designing, she enjoys watching movies, traveling, and sharing her experiences through vlogs.

5 Ways HR Chatbots are Simplifying Recruitment and Employee Engagement