UAB Human Resources has been among the first to test-drive Microsoft’s agents in Teams, which are conversational, customizable AI assistants that can help summarize information and automate tasks.
Rahul Thadani, assistant vice president for HR Systems Operations, created two agents for internal use in the HR office: an HR Bot which answers common questions related to HR functions, policies, and procedures and the “HR Benni Bot,” which answers questions related to the updates to benefits during the open enrollment period.
Janet May, chief human resources officer for UAB, said AI tools are augmenting the department’s services.
“Human Resources’ focus has been to use AI such as AI agents to enhance the services we provide and not replace those services with an AI agent,” she said. “Human Resources at its core involves a great amount of employee and community personal interactions which cannot be replaced with AI agents.”
Thadani said the agents are especially helpful for new HR employees, to get them up to speed on internal policies and procedures. He added that setup was fairly easy.
Each agent can be locked down to certain sources for information. For example, the HR Bot pulls answers from the UAB HR policies, HR knowledge articles and the employee and faculty handbooks.
The reaction to the agents has overall been positive, but HR makes sure to keep a human in the loop for expert oversight, as the agents have sometimes returned incorrect information.
“The incorrect answers have also helped us realize that while many of our web sites and articles are contextually understandable for humans, they will need to be updated for AI bots by adding contextual references to each of the articles,” Thadani said.
Thadani said he recommends other departments consider deploying agents for their teams “with a caveat — for functions where the risk of getting it wrong are low.”
To make the most of Microsoft’s agents — including to create them — you need a Copilot 365 license, although those without a license can still use agents that are shared with them.
In May, UAB HR is partnering with UAB IT to offer training on Copilot agents, with an introduction to agents, how to use existing agents and how to develop agents with Copilot.
UAB HR provides a number of opportunities to train on AI tools. Check out Learning and Development’s calendar of upcoming events as well as recorded sessions of previous AI@Work events.