Which HR processes today benefit most from the use of artificial intelligence? Where is the line between what can be delegated to AI and what must remain the responsibility of an HR professional or manager? Mariia Noga, an expert in human resources management, organizational development, leadership, and management, explains.
Mariia lives in the U.S. Since August 2024, she has been working as an HR Business Partner at Samsung. Previously, from 2017 to 2024, she worked at Star, a global technology and consulting company that combines strategy, design, and engineering to build and scale digital products. The expert supports teams and managers, working on employee experience, performance, engagement, leadership development, and internal HR processes.
One of the key areas of her work is regular engagement with teams and managers, analyzing challenges and sentiment within teams, and developing practical solutions together with the business. Among her biggest strengths, the expert highlights her ability to build trusted partnerships, work across a wide range of different teams, and create HR solutions that genuinely help managers better understand people and respond to problems more quickly.
The Impact of AI on HR Work
In the expert’s view, AI is gradually shifting HR’s role from operational to more analytical and strategic. The processes that benefit most from AI today are those where HR deals with large volumes of information: analyzing employee feedback, engagement surveys, preparing communications, creating training materials, knowledge management, and initial analysis of HR data. A significant portion of the time previously spent drafting text, structuring information, analyzing comments, or building document templates can now be substantially reduced with the help of AI.
“I use artificial intelligence primarily as a tool that helps structure and analyze information faster. For example, when working with qualitative employee feedback, a large number of comments can contain recurring themes that are difficult to systematize quickly by hand. AI can be used for an initial grouping of comments by topic — for instance, communication, workload, manager support, career development — and for identifying recurring patterns. I use AI to organize large volumes of information, summarize themes in feedback, and prepare templates for communications, slides, recommendations, or materials for managers. And I can focus on what AI isn’t capable of: conversations with managers, analyzing the root causes of problems, coaching, working on employee experience, and developing solutions for specific teams,” Mariia says.
One useful tool in her practice has been a chatbot implemented in Slack. It helped send reminders to teams, duplicated important communications across different channels, provided structured information on policies and events, and even helped with team-building activities and birthdays.
For Noga, the main shift brought about by AI tools is that HR can spend less time on mechanical work with information and more time on interpreting it and shaping business decisions. That said, the expert is convinced that the human role remains critical. Context still needs to be verified, and meaningful signals need to be identified and cross-referenced with other data. Ultimately, it is up to people to determine what recommendations can be given to a manager or the business. “My professional conclusion is that the greatest value of AI in HR isn’t replacing the HR function — it’s removing part of the manual workload and giving HR more capacity to focus on analysis, data, and working with people,” the expert concludes.
AI can be trusted with automating routine tasks: structuring reports, creating templates, drafting policy templates, building slides and presentations, sourcing images, and so on. But decisions that directly affect a person’s career, compensation, performance, or termination must remain the responsibility of HR and the manager.
Mariia gives an example involving an underperforming employee. In such a case, AI can analyze performance data, feedback, and goal history, and suggest possible next steps: additional coaching, a performance improvement plan, or a role change. However, the final decision cannot be made based on that analysis alone.
“In my practice, situations like this have always required context that isn’t captured in the data: were the goals realistic, did the person receive adequate support from their manager, were there changes within the team, personal circumstances, or issues within the management itself. So I see AI’s role as a tool that helps get a clearer picture faster and prepare options, but the responsibility for the decision has to remain with a person — especially where empathy, ethical judgment, understanding of context, and accountability for consequences are required,” Noga explains.
The Risks of Using Artificial Intelligence
Mariia is convinced that it’s dangerous to fully automate decisions that directly affect a person’s career: hiring, promotion, performance evaluation, compensation, disciplinary actions, and termination.
AI can help prepare recommendations based on legislation and company policy, but it doesn’t always see every factor.
“That’s why I believe AI should only be a supporting tool in these kinds of decisions. The final judgment should remain with the manager and HR, who can verify the data, ask additional questions, assess the risks, and take responsibility for the consequences of the decision. To support this, I conduct calibration sessions with leaders to review performance evaluation results and validate the outcomes,” the expert explains.
Another risk Noga sees in the use of artificial intelligence is inadequate data privacy protection. Drawing on her own experience, she notes that one company where she worked addressed this by implementing an internal copilot deployed within the company’s own infrastructure, with access to sensitive information governed by an NDA policy. Unlike a public AI service, the internal copilot did not share company information externally.
“I see that today it’s no longer enough to simply know HR processes well or have strong people skills. The ability to work with digital tools and analyze information quickly, without losing the human element, is becoming increasingly important. In other words, the requirements are essentially shifting from ‘knowing the process’ to ‘knowing how to use data and technology correctly, while still leaving the quality of the final decision to a human,'” Mariia Noga concludes.
