Harnessing the power of AI in inclusive hiring

The pandemic sparked structural changes in how we work. Overnight, designated office spaces became optional, imbuing workers with new freedoms and flexibilities. Millions reevaluated their careers. Half of all employees surveyed in a 2021 US Catalyst/CNBC poll said they intended to make changes – triggering what was dubbed the “Great Resignation.” At the same time, technology took on a transformative role. Not only were in-person conversations digitized on private Slack channels and video conferencing platforms, but leaps forward in generative AI turned bots into assistants, trainers and even therapists. Against this backdrop, cultures need to change or risk hemorrhaging talent. Half of HR decision-makers in the UK say employee retention is now their biggest challenge, according to a 2024 Ciphr survey.

If RTO mandates aren’t the answer, how do HR teams go about creating cultures in this “new normal” with inclusion, connection, purpose and well-being baked in? And how heavily should they lean on the technology now central to our work lives to do so?

Wenn RTO-Vorgaben keine Lösung sind, um Fachkräfte an das eigene Unternehmen zu binden, wie können Personalabteilungen dann in dieser neuen Normalität eine Kultur schaffen, die Inklusion und Verbundenheit fördert? Und inwieweit sollten sie sich dabei auf Technologien stützen, die aus unserem Arbeitsleben mittlerweile nicht mehr wegzudenken sind?

Culture starts before a person joins the organization, says Eric Stutzman, CEO at the Achieve Centre for Leadership and co-author of The Culture Question. “The hiring process tells you what a company’s true values are,” he says. “If you say you value joy as a company, but the interview process is painful and dragged out, then you don’t.” From the language used in a job advert to the efficiency of the interview process, each touchpoint is a reflection of the organization’s culture.

Inclusive hiring is a major piece of the puzzle, believes Ruchika Malhotra, author of Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work. “You want to create a workplace where everyone feels like they belong and they can feel safe to speak up and take risks,” she says. “That can only happen when managers and leaders understand and fully appreciate what it means to manage and lead a diverse workforce, to include people who have historically been left out, and to make sure that you create a culture where everyone feels like they can belong.”

For Malhotra that begins by designing hiring practices that do away with tropes like “culture fit” – shorthand for sifting out difference. “We are hardwired to seek out people who remind us of us and who make us feel most comfortable and validated in our own identities,” she points out. “As a result, we often sift out people who are perfectly qualified just because they don’t ‘fit’ race, gender or other identity boxes. Our biases, our prejudices or ‘gut feel’ all come into those decisions because we’re people.” Instead, she encourages HR teams to adopt a “culture add” mindset, actively seeking out candidates who bring diverse perspectives and skills, as well disrupting subconscious biases.

Another cross-generational priority found in the workplace is purpose, making it another cornerstone of any thriving culture. One-fifth of workers have said they’ve considered quitting a job they didn’t find meaningful enough, according to a recent poll by recruitment firm Adecco – and three-quarters of large employers agree that purpose is strongly connected to staff retention. Old employer-employee dynamics, in which reciprocal loyalty created a sense of shared purpose, have been eroded, believes Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD. In their place, employers need to provide fulfillment in new ways.

For Petriglieri, this should be via the creation of a culture of lifelong learning. “There’s an understanding that the less loyalty you offer, the more you must promise learning because people need to feel they are still looked after,” he says. Different learning models provide different benefits. Perhaps the most common is instrumental learning, which refers to a defined competency model against which you assess teams and identify gaps. “You provide them opportunities for deliberate practice, which allow them to close the gap between their current state and the desirable standard you set.”

Over-index on instrumental learning though and you risk a culture that becomes “too stuck, too ossified around the norm,” he warns. Which is why a second mode, humanistic learning, encourages teams to diverge their skills from the norm. “There is constant invitation to discover or develop alternative ways of seeing the world. It’s learning that doesn’t foster incorporation. Instead, the primary goal is individuation.”

A growing suite of app-based tools  reflects these changing attitudes around the commercial and ethical benefits of workplace well-being. In early 2025, for example, UK-based employee portal Unum launched a new app-based service that connects both employees and their families with access to medical support at the touch of a button, including up to eight consultations a year with mental health experts. Organizations that embed mental health-specific platforms like Wysa meanwhile can provide employees with 24/7 access to therapeutic AI chatbots. The tech platform, which directs users to crisis hotlines where appropriate, says its solution can significantly alleviate the symptoms of depression and anxiety by up to 40% using AI-based services alone.

Many mental health apps provide care via a larger hub that bundles various tools and resources, often including an AI chatbot to steer employees to explore the benefits available to them, as well as employer dashboards on the backend. It’s part of a swathe of innovations leveraging technology to deliver culture add services to employees and employers at scale in a newly digitized landscape – be it AI recruiters analyzing for “culture fit,” technological platforms designed to facilitate in-work learning, such as Google’s peer-to-peer learning (g2g), the AT&T Future Ready Initiative and the Adobe Kickbox  program, or therapeutic platforms like Wysa.