There are now vast numbers of technologies available to people professionals for use in recruitment and workforce planning. This ranges from scheduling software,  to booking interviews and creating staff rosters to free up managers for other tasks, through to more innovative technologies like game-based assessments. 

As metrics and measurement continue to drive business decisions, people analytics provide valuable insights to inform recruitment and workforce planning practices. These insights can help people professionals respond to shortfalls in performance in a timely way and identify successes to be celebrated.

Technology is being used in diverse ways to optimise recruitment. The CIPD’s factsheet on recruitment outlines the main stages of recruitment and resourcing. Here are some examples  of how technology is being used across the recruitment cycle to ensure an organisation’s workforce has the knowledge, skills, and abilities to thrive.

The CIPD’s guide on strategic workforce planning  helps people professionals understand what this is and how to do it. Successful workforce planning is agile, evidence-based and analytical. Here are some examples of how technology is being used across the six stages of workforce planning to provide deeper insights and deliver more robust people plans.

Baseline – segmenting workforce data to generate insight into the makeup of your workforce (such as by demographics, job families, competencies, location).

Supply – synthesising attraction and retention data to assess workforce supply; collating commuting distance and exit data to understand the labour market.

Demand – workflow analysis to understand the activities or communication networks required for each task; forecasting resource demands across the year.

Gap analysis – modelling gaps between workforce availability, skills, and demand.

Action plan – project management oversight and scenario modelling.

Deliver – using people analytics to monitor actions and respond to specific challenges.

Technology has the power to bring significant benefits to organisations. When it is used responsibly, it: 

1    Reduces human bias to deliver fair and effective recruitment and workforce planning practices, supporting people professionals to:

•    create inclusive job advertisements by making language and imagery inclusive to help reach a more diverse candidate pool
•    develop targeted candidate attraction strategies, using personalisation to engage underrepresented groups and highly specialised talent
•    redact demographic information from applications, for example, protected characteristics such as age or gender (see also risks of redacting information)
•    analyse and score candidates based on specific criteria – advances in AI mean that CVs can be scanned beyond keywords to score or rank candidates based on specific programmed criteria
•    analyse and score interviews –  verbal and written responses can be scored by AI following a consistent set of criteria   to remove human biases from the selection and assessment process 
•    diversify assessments, using simulations or virtual reality (VR) to assess skills, capabilities and traits that are more representative of the working environment and remove reliance on verbal information that can disadvantage some neurodivergent candidates.

2    Delivers cost efficiencies through automation, reduced error and reduced resource requirements, supporting people professionals to:

•    reduce the time to hire through automated application sifts, scheduling interviews and requesting references; cost savings are significant for high-volume recruitment processes (eg Unilever saw a 75% reduction in their average recruitment time, bringing savings of over £250,000 in the first year of implementing their automated process) 
•    reduce staff costs by using automated functions such as the use of text or voice-based chatbots, allowing FAQs to be searched by applicants and staff 24/7 
•    reduce operational costs by automating activities like interview scheduling, reducing administrative involvement and optimising hiring manager time
•    reduce the risk of poor hiring decisions using predictive analytics to identify recruitment risks 
•    identify staff intention to leave using predictive analytics and recommend actions such as training or awarding a promotion (eg IBM’s ‘predictive attrition programme’ is 95% accurate and has saved the company over $300 million in staff retention costs).

3    Enables job enrichment by releasing some of the day-to-day administrative burdens, supporting people professionals to:
•    craft more enjoyable and fulfilling jobs, including those that involve more human interaction, and more fulfilling and meaningful work
•    focus on strategic and cultural impact, creating good policy and implementing cultural change.

When technology is not used responsibly, organisations and their people are exposed to risks. The most pervasive risks are: 

1    Becoming a barrier to equality, diversity and inclusion, which  can both prevent the benefits of technology being realised and, in some instances, compromise an organisation’s ability to meet their legal obligations and responsibilities. Discrimination can arise because:

•    access to technology can be a barrier to completing applications, with patterns of digital disparity mirroring patterns of labour market participation (eg in the UK  digital exclusion is greatest in the north of England and Northern Ireland and among disabled and older adults)
•    confidence with technology varies and may disadvantage some potential applicants who do not engage with the application or onboarding process, due to poor technology literacy or digital mindset, despite technology use being a core job requirement
•    redacting information from recruitment or workforce planning datasets can make an AI model less accurate or fair.

2    Lack of scrutiny of design features and limitations can mean that organisations are sometimes unaware how technology is manipulating data and driving insights. Technology is only as good as its programming and the data fed to it. This is a specific challenge for inclusion when it comes to AI-powered technologies where products have fast become so embedded in recruitment and workforce planning that often people professionals do not question what data is being used or how it is being used. 

3    Lack of investment in decision-making during procurement or the implementation of technology can be detrimental to organisations and people. These problems can arise when organisations do not invest time and resources to make considered decisions about the use of technology and its impact on people, or where adequate plans for implementation and monitoring have not been made. The CIPD’s framework for investing in and implementing technology provides clear stages for people professionals to improve outcomes. 

4    Data security and privacy must be assured throughout the recruitment and workforce planning process. The recruitment and workforce planning processes must meet GDPR requirements. This means data security functions of providers, and internal processes and practices, must be scrutinised to prevent a security breach, and data privacy protections must be clear and the process for individuals to request access to their data needs to be transparent. 

Knowing why you want to use technology in recruitment or workforce planning can help to define the scope of the development, the procurement, the implementation plan and how the technology and its impact should be monitored. 

Consider where technology could deliver gains. For example, in recruitment, is the challenge attracting a diverse candidate pool, processing volume applications, or finding managers to conduct first interviews? In workforce planning, is the driver to better understand work demands or track diversity outcomes?

Our guide on responsible investment in technology provides examples when professionals and leaders have invested in technology in ways that have benefitted people and the organisation.

Involving a broad range of stakeholders in discussions about what technology to use, how it is introduced and how it will be used can improve the likelihood of achieving desired outcomes. For example, when sourcing new technology to support automated application sifting, involving recruitment advisers and hiring managers from different departments and locations can ensure that key data fields are included and that the format of outputs meets the needs of end users; or when forecasting resource needs, look beyond the data generated by technology and consider the impact decisions will have on people . 

The introduction of any technology may lead to job losses, changes to established processes, or at least training needs in your team (such as recruitment administrators) and other parts of the organisation (such as hiring managers). People professional involvement early in decision-making can allow the organisation to plan accordingly and manage risks to job insecurity, anxiety around change and learning needs. 

CIPD research suggests that technology is most effective when there is a clear plan for ‘people impact’ and when the approach adopted is the least intrusive and least resource-intensive.

People professionals have a role in ensuring that any technology implementation supports and enhances productivity and employee job quality. Job complexity, skills utilisation and workers’ autonomy all influence the likely success of technology in supporting strategic objectives. For example, introducing a technology-led workload review process or automating the administration of onboarding may require different skills of the individual responsible for the role, such as confidence using product dashboards, analytical skills, interpretation and translation skills. 

Considering the impact of introducing the new technology, and specifically the person specification for the new role, will help identify potential risks to the individual (such as anxiety) and organisation (such as a skills gap) and allow early action to be taken (such as through training or job crafting).

Those directly affected by technology, who are in the role the technological solution seeks to change, will have valuable insights into design requirements and potential risks of an automated solution. For example, recruitment administrators will understand the needs of the candidate pool and their potential reaction to an automated application process, while managers can help to identify talent gaps and provide input into hiring decisions, and data provided to managers can lead to timely action where they are engaged and able to interpret the information.

However, discussions around the introduction of new technology can bring uncertainties that may present a risk to people engaging in consultation openly and honestly if not managed carefully. For example, employees may be concerned that some roles in their team may be reduced when technology is introduced to manage the screening process of applications, or those responsible for reporting on workforce planning may be concerned that the system will not adequately capture the information needed to make good decisions. 

CIPD research shows that employees are more positive about technological changes when they are consulted about the process with 70% reporting they felt positive about the likely impact on their job quality, compared with 20% who  had not been consulted. 

Find out more about our guide on change management to make sure you have the right processes and policies in place when implementing new technology. Our guide on employee consultation provides a range of tips and strategies to help make sure consultation is done effectively.

Promoting and delivering equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) is an essential part of people management. Read our guide on EDI to find out more about how an effective EDI strategy is essential to an organisation’s business objectives. While technology offers a route to monitor progress and control for human bias in decision-making, there are several hidden barriers to EDI. To counter some of the issues raised with the potential bias, organisations can: 

•    use inclusive datasets for programming, as biased data will train AI to be biased (or to use the old maxim, ‘garbage in, garbage out’); using appropriate datasets can enable inclusive practices and fair decision-making
•    create diverse teams to consult and review the use of technological solutions, ensuring that employees involved in the design and monitoring of tech are diverse; this will help to identify and rectify issues of bias, including unconscious bias, and is of particular importance in the context of recruitment and workforce planning
•    actively monitor data to ensure that there are not any unintended impacts of the use of technology, whereby an attempt to remove bias leads to a different bias (such as when the software  may omit terms or place an overreliance on experiences that are not accessed by all socioeconomic groups) 
•    report on EDI metrics (such as selection ratios for minority groups, gender pay gap) and include relevant algorithms in recruitment and pay decisions, and how they are programmed to minimise biases; this transparency and critical review should minimise bias through open scrutiny
•    consider evidence critically to ensure that qualitative and quantitative data is interrogated fully (eg look beyond mean scores to examine the spread of data points or means for different groups and use external benchmarking data). 

The variety of technological solutions available on the market to support recruitment and workforce planning can feel overwhelming. Ensuring that providers demonstrate a commitment to the responsible use of technology in their design, implementation support and ongoing management process can help you in your efforts. This could include: 

• Examining the evidence-based principles used to inform design: for example, when selecting an assessment tool for recruitment, ask yourself the same questions about the tool that you would ask if you were buying a paper-based assessment: is it reliable and is it a valid measure? This is important both to save time and money in appointing candidates who have the skills for the job. Examine the effectiveness on a case-by-case basis for each role being recruited for.
• Checking for inclusivity at all stages of design and implementation: carefully consider and question vendors about accessibility of assessments and data capture to avoid any discriminatory practices. Questions could include: 
  • To what extent does the system use diverse datasets and how is this monitored?
  • To what extent has the technology been user-tested by diverse groups of people, including different demographic groups, disabled and neurodivergent groups?
  • How will your organisation be assured that diversity metrics are monitored on an ongoing basis and what action will be taken to address any bias identified? 
• Starting small and piloting the approach when using AI: by starting small and focusing on AI  adoption in low-risk, low-complexity tasks, organisations can build trust and experience with AI before deciding whether to invest in larger-scale projects. For example, first implementing a chatbot to respond to a small set of questions about the application process could be advisable rather than opting for one to sort CVs, as it’s lower risk.
• Adopting an agile approach: allowing for testing, learning and refinement in the early stages of procurement can build confidence in the approach and ensure organisational and people needs are met. For example, piloting an approach to personalise job adverts for one or two roles before fully integrating the product can help to examine whether personalisation achieves the desired impact and identify any unforeseen issues.

Our guide on responsible investment in technology has been designed to help people professionals and leaders invest in technology in ways that benefit people and the organisation.

Technology can be used to help organisations stay up to date and comply with employment law, for example with pre-employment checks, right-to-work checks, criminal record checks, medical checks, as well as source references and conduct online and social media checks. It is important that organisations:

• Follow relevant employment legislation: read more about an organisation’s legal obligations during recruitment and workforce planning.   
• Follow relevant data security legislation. For example, organisations and the companies that they contract to, such as for screening applications or running assessments, must operate within legal parameters regarding data storage and usage, privacy and confidentiality, opportunity to opt out, and allow employees and prospective employees the right to be forgotten. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK has useful information about legal obligations for data security in recruitment.
• Use expertise to inform your practice. Include experienced professionals to ensure their knowledge and expertise of the tasks being created, automated or augmented are used to shape the technology being developed and ensure compliance with the organisation’s practices. Consider getting an external consultant to advise if you don’t have internal expertise.    

It is good practice to be transparent with both current and prospective employees about how technology is used. HR managers, hiring platforms and so on should adopt a ‘glassbox’ (as opposed to a ‘blackbox’) approach. 

• Candidates and employees should be made aware of privacy policies and provide informed data consent. It is good practice to provide support systems for candidates who have questions about how their data is used.

In recruitment:

•  Research suggests that ensuring candidates know how AI functions, including detailing the data collected, how it is used, by whom, and any measures taken to mitigate bias, improves the perception of fairness and positivity towards the organisation .
• Candidates should understand how the technology is used, with explanations being understandable, transparent, appropriate and with prompt feedback provided.  
• Communicate using different channels and engage in dialogue to ensure that it is clear, and the process is not depersonalised. It is crucial to build genuine relationships between candidates and hiring managers, so consider the relative use of technology in recruitment from the candidate perspective.

In workforce planning:

•    Consider communications at all points across the employee lifecycle, regularly updating employees when changes are made to recruitment or workforce planning practices, such as who data is shared with, what tasks are monitored and how data is used, which will ensure a transparent process. 

Managers contribute to an organisation’s responsible use of technology. When managers manage well and build trust-based relationships with their team, they help to create an environment that is open and respectful, in which people feel ‘psychologically safe’. This means individuals feel able to speak up about concerns regarding the use of technology in the knowledge they will be listened to as well as receive support and understanding. This can help to identify hidden issues not otherwise identified by technological solutions, such as in candidate attraction strategies, or unintended barriers to workflows that would otherwise present as a labour supply shortage.

Find out more about how line managers can support the people profession in delivering impact for the organisation and its people.

The rapid socialisation and advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to influence all aspects of recruitment and workforce planning. Yet the speed at which the technology has developed has meant that research, practices and policy are lagging. There is still much we need to learn about the impact of AI in recruitment and workforce planning, with concerns for large scale misinformation, discrimination and unintended consequences dominating recent discussions. Organisational policies regarding acceptable and ethical use of AI are not well developed yet, with clear guidelines for good practice also still in their infancy (for example, many organisations have yet to develop a nuanced response to the emerging challenges raised by candidates using AI to their advantage, such as using generative AI to do their job applications ). 
 
Applying an evidence-based practice approach to decision-making will help people professionals draw on the best available evidence and consider new knowledge. Specifically, it is important for people professionals to remain alert to: 

• new evidence as it develops
• emerging AI regulations and guidelines to ensure compliance and ethical decision-making
• ongoing discussions regarding acceptable and ethical use of AI
• the changing needs and concerns of the diverse stakeholders impacted by decisions to employ AI tools.

Staying up to date with new developments will allow people processionals to embrace the opportunities and address the challenges presented by AI.

Responsible use of technology

CIPD Guide: Responsible investment in technology 

For further information on research and thought leadership on technology, the workplace and people management, the CIPD’s research series explores technology use and its impact on people practice in the physical and digital workplace. 

For more detail on the case for adopting technology responsibly, and its impact on good work, see the Institute for the Future of Work’s (IFOW) Case for importance: Understanding the impacts of technology adoption on good work. 

Recruitment and workforce planning 

CIPD guide: Recruitment: An introduction 

CIPD guide: Strategic workforce planning 

CIPD podcast: The many merits of workforce planning 

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