More than half of HR leaders surveyed in Singapore and Malaysia share concerns about the ethical use of AI

The top concern was centred around employee privacy in both Singapore (37%) and Malaysia (42%).

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), 65% of HR leaders surveyed in Singapore have expressed concerned about the ethical use of AI in their HR practices. Despite the qualms, 98% said their HR systems already leverage AI, and 83% agreed that AI can save them time and facilitate their job.

Meanwhile, 55% of Malaysian HR leaders shared the same concerns about the ethical use — a similar 99% say their HR systems already leverage AI, and 82% agreed AI can save them time and facilitate their job.

The recent SuperHuman: AI adoption, shaping the future of HR report by Employment Hero delved into the sentiments towards the use of AI across HR leaders in Singapore and Malaysia.

At the time of being surveyed, the biggest use case for AI tools in Singapore was identifying and reporting on employee data trends (47%). About 51% of HR managers and 56% of HR leaders working in enterprise organisations (501+ employees) said AI use is centred on identifying and reporting on employee data trends.

Other aspects in which the respondents use AI include:

• creating HR content (40%),
• automating tasks with AI models (36%),
• monitoring compliance (36%), and
• summarising content (36%). 

Finally, almost half (49%) of owners/executive leadership team members said they focused their use of AI on summarising content such as top job applicants for a role.

Looking at Malaysia, HR professionals in the country largely used AI to monitor and assess employee performance (46%), compared to the other markets surveyed (Singapore, UK, Australia, and New Zealand), all of which came between 31-34%.

Shared sentiments

There is a shared sentiment that AI can help save time and make their job easier across amongst leaders in both Singapore (83%) and Malaysia (82%). 

On this trajectory, 80% of Singaporean HR leaders predicted their use of AI to increase a year or two from now, with just under half in this group (46%) saying it will increase significantly. For 34%, AI use will increase slightly.

Breaking it down, non-managing and junior employees were 436% more likely to be unsure. On the other hand, 64% of owners, C-suite or executive leadership believe it will increase significantly (this group was 37% more likely than than average).

The most considerable AI push is likely to happen in large businesses (200-500 employees), with 73% of this group saying their use will increase significantly — this is likely in line with bigger budgets, more access to expertise, and senior talent.

Despite this trend moving forward, some notable concerns still stand regarding ethical use in the workplace:

• On top of the 55% of HR leaders in Malaysia concerned about the ethical implications of AI, 48% harbour concerns about the potential risk of job loss.
• Understandably, the increase in AI use across the workplace has also made many reconsider their own role. 

That said, many HR leaders still look to prioritise soft skills. Particularly, 48% of respondents in Singapore believe soft skills such as critical thinking will be required by HR professionals to be AI-ready. Soft skills were 10% points ahead of the rest of the pack – the widest gap in the whole survey. 

After soft skills, 37% noted programming or coding as the next most required skill. Managers were 21% more likely to cite privacy, data security, or cybersecurity, while 43% of those working in mid-sized organisations also cited this as a critical skill gap.

Lastly, 48% of HR leaders in the business servicing industry cited deep expertise in employee experience, HR and payroll as the top skill required to be AI-ready

The HR power couple: Performance and data

In Malaysia, performance management was top-of-mind for HR leaders, with 36% stating it was where they expected AI to have the most impact. This was closely followed by training and development (33%).

As the study suggests, this pairing perhaps showcases how leaders are hoping AI will have a positive impact on their overall team growth.

On the other hand, amongst the least cited impacts AI could have on the HR workplace were:

• employee offboarding (6%),
• compliance and workplace safety (13%) and
• reward and recognition (14%). 

These instances perhaps show how leaders aren't yet ready to use AI for more human-centric tasks.

In Singapore, performance management (35%) also received the biggest share of responses as a key HR area HR where AI is expected to have the biggest impact. This was followed by employee self-service (32%) and workforce planning (28%).

In terms of proving return on investment (ROI), Singaporean HR professionals were pejoratively looking for savings on costs at 49% - this was 10% points higher than anything else. Contenders for the top spot were:

• 39% of HR leaders measuring their ROI through the outcome or output of AI applications, and
• 37% by the increased revenue they will bring to the business.

While HR leaders in Singapore were confident in their ability to measure the ROI of AI applications, there were still exceptions — non-managing and junior employees were 376% more likely to be unsure of how to measure ROI and HR leaders working in organisations with less than 50 employees were also 317% more likely to be unsure.

This differed from Malaysia, where 58% of respondents plan to measure the ROI of AI applications by the time saved on tasks, and 46% were looking at the accuracy and speed of the AI models adopted. 

Lead image / SuperHuman: AI adoption, shaping the future of HR report