13 Ways HR Leaders Are Using Tech To Make Human-Centered Decisions

Forbes

01-07-2025

At a time when human resources teams are flooded with data and new tools, adding technology to your tech stack is easy. The real challenge is applying it with empathy and using it not just to automate tasks, but to enhance the human experience.
Smart HR leaders are using modern tech to help them uncover hidden patterns, gather and analyze feedback at scale and personalize decisions that affect people's lives and careers. To that end, 13 members of Forbes Human Resources Council share how they're blending tech with the human touch to make smarter, more people-first decisions in their organizations.
1. Provide Support To Improve The Human Experience
We're always focused on supporting our leaders and care providers to improve their experience. Beyond traditional technologies such as performance management, engagement surveys and learning, we are implementing AI for things including people data and insights to enable real-time decisions. Data and insights are essential to the business, and technology at scale is key. - Nakesha Lopez, Advocate Health
2. Understand How Colleagues Interact With Content
Technology that provides feedback on how colleagues interact with content provides great insight as to what content resonates within an organization. By understanding open rates, click rates and time spent on content, we can learn what messaging is meaningful to our colleagues as we lead. - Dave Barnett, DeVry University
3. Make Better Leave And Accommodations Decisions
HR teams leverage leave management platforms to make better leave and accommodations decisions while the tech does the heavy lifting. By automating calculations, tracking and forms, technology gives HR the time and clarity to focus on what humans do best: make nuanced decisions, provide compliance reviews and real support when employees need it most. - Seth Turner, AbsenceSoft
4. Detect Sentiment Patterns
We're using advanced analytics, sentiment analysis tools and employee listening platforms. Rather than relying solely on numerical data, we've incorporated AI-driven analytics to detect subtle patterns in employee sentiment, engagement and feedback to identify emerging trends, pinpoint potential issues and make informed decisions grounded in empathy, psychological safety and employee well-being. - Britton Bloch, Navy Federal
5. Identify Innate Skills
We use technology backed by scientific insights to better understand people's innate skills and abilities to help inform decision-making. That approach makes it possible to see people for who they really are, with the aid of solutions built to accelerate processes like hiring. - Caitlin MacGregor, Plum
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6. Bring Strengths Profiles Into Digital Workflows
We combine technology with personalized insight to bring a human lens to decision-making. By integrating strengths profiles into digital workflows, we help leaders look beyond metrics to understand what truly drives each person. This leads to better decisions about team building, development and engagement, aligning business outcomes with individual potential. - Jaka Lindic, e2grow
7. Translate Invisible Labor And Equity Gaps Into Better Policy
We use technology to surface what performance reviews often miss: invisible labor, capacity strain and equity gaps. But data alone isn't wisdom. We translate patterns into policies that restore balance and fuel trust. When tech is led by strategy—not novelty—it becomes a mirror, not a mask. That's how we make better decisions without losing sight of people. - Apryl Evans, USA for UNHCR
8. Validate Ideas With AI-Sourced Research
Using AI as a quasi-AI prompt engineer allows you to obtain backup material quickly and efficiently as a supplement to your thought leadership, rather than leaning on AI to think for you. In addition, AI is a tool to provide peer-reviewed studies on an idea you may have. This leads to validation of your thesis through external third parties while providing differentiation from your peers. - John Pierce, John Pierce Consulting
9. Run Pay Equity Analysis With A Human-Centered Lens
Using pay equity software to run organization-wide pay gap analyses helps us to identify focus groups and recommend objective criteria-based adjustments. Technology lightens our analysis load, allowing us to focus on addressing suspected individual pay issues with transparent communication and refining our pay strategy through a fair, human-centered lens. - Hayley Bakker, beqom
10. Build AI Agents From Real User Feedback
We build AI agents that help us figure out our clients' pain points for both hiring managers and candidates. We even check what might annoy them when they use our platform. The personas we use in our AI agents are based on real feedback, not guesswork: We interview restaurant owners, hiring managers and job seekers to create detailed profiles and track preferences in topics, tone and more. - Milos Eric, OysterLink
11. Look At Your Data Holistically To Tell A Story
We leverage tech like total rewards software, engagement survey software and analytics tools that marry the data together to tell a story. This allows our HR staff to surface real-time data, then layer in more meaningful context from employee feedback and manager insights. It's about using tools to inform, not replace, human judgment so decisions are data-backed and people-first. - Stephanie Manzelli, Employ Inc.
12. Personalize Employee Development
At my digital banking company, we use AI to analyze survey sentiment and better understand employee experiences at scale. This allows us to focus more on strategy, combining data and human insights to guide our decisions. Technology also helps personalize development, supporting individual growth in today's transitional work environment. - Julie Hoagland, Alkami
13. Amplify Human Judgment So People Can Focus On What Matters
I use AI not to replace human judgment, but to amplify it. It cuts through the noise, surfaces what matters and lets HR and managers focus on the moments that drive real impact for both our people and the business. - Jamie Aitken, Betterworks