Alanna is currently the People Analytics Change Leader at Schneider Electric, leading the data-driven transformation focused on culture change and product adoption. She has a Master’s in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of Missouri - St. Louis. Alanna is an active thought leader on topics including automated insights, technology adoption, change leadership, and organizational research. Alanna is shaping the future as a transformational leader.
 

Alanna’s mission is to unite analytics, technology, and human behaviour to support the transformation of businesses to be more data-driven. Through her work in People Analytics, she empowers HR professionals with augmented analytics and meaningful insights that drive well-informed decisions relating to people and the business.
 

When asked about how AI is transforming the HR industry, she added that AI is transforming HR in 3 key areas - improved decision making, efficiency in our ways of working and driving a better employee experience. AI is allowing the HR organization to lead with data rather than relying on gut instinct or perception. This shift has enabled HR to hire without human biases, dive into employee engagement data, and map diverse career paths for employees based on their skills and competencies. With AI, HR can effectively deliver its people strategy in this ever-changing world with a greater impact on employees.
 

In the analytics space, automated analytics and AI are no longer creating meaningful insights for only analytics teams to see. Data democratization is leaving the bottlenecks of information behind. With great power comes great responsibility. Now, HR professionals can access critical information in real-time and directly make decisions based on it. By uniting the value of AI and proper guidance on how to properly use it, the future of HR will be better equipped to navigate this ever-changing world.
 

AI in HR is a crucial subject because if the algorithm is biased the companies will have a skewed mix of employees and this, in turn, will affect the products or services being developed. Therefore, we asked her why more diverse employees, including women, should lead the digital transformation of HR using AI and people analytics to which she pointed out that as HR and People Analytics teams expand their use of AI, the importance of diverse perspectives, skills, and experiences building these solutions will become imperative. AI leveraged in various HR domains such as recruiting and talent management can remove human biases in decision-making to reinforce diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. If not monitored, more biases may be introduced, creating a counterproductive cycle. 
 

Diversity of thought enables greater anticipation of potential issues and creative thinking to generate solutions to these challenges. Gender, race, sexual orientation, experiences, and more are all important facets of diversity to consider. We should be diligent in promoting and hiring a diverse mix of people for all work in the AI space.
 

“AI is the future of HR organizations to generate meaningful insights and enhance the employee experience. By uniting analytics, technology, and human behaviour, we have the power to make a positive impact,” she added.
 

Her passion subjects in AI include people analytics, machine learning, ethics of AI, trustworthy & explainable AI.
 

With the right people analytics and monitoring, we can hope for a better future in the field of HR thus leading to making informed decisions and hirings.
 

Now isn’t that amazing! You can connect with Alanna on LinkedIn.
 

The Wairoes campaign is a collaboration between AI4EU - Europe’s AI-On-Demand Platform and Women in AI to celebrate and increase the visibility of women working in the field of Artificial Intelligence.