Dayforce’s chief data officer: AI ‘is not magic’, here’s why HR needs a clear vision

Ever since November 2022, when OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot ChatGPT burst on the scene, nobody has stopped talking about AI.

In an exclusive UNLEASH interview in London this week, David Lloyd, chief data officer at Dayforce (formerly known as Ceridian) describes the excitement around the technology.

As the saying goes, ‘If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail’.

But, he continues, it is crucial to remember that AI is not new – it hasn’t just been invented.

In reality, Alan Turing coined the word ‘intelligent machinery’ 70 years ago in the 1940s, and the term AI came out of the Dartmouth Conference in 1956.

Generative AI is simply the latest iteration of the technology, but how organizations (and individuals) should think about AI shouldn’t change.

For Lloyds, organizations need to see AI as predictive, and that it is “allowing everyone to see around the corner a little bit more”; but “it is not magic”; it is not a silver bullet.

HR needs a vision for AI

Lloyd shares that, based on his conversations with Dayforce customers, the biggest challenge organizations face is “actually even having a vision for AI”.

“That scares me because if you don’t have a map, [yes,], any road will get you there, [but] some roads will take much longer, and some roads may end up in a dead end,” Lloyd notes.

It is clear that no-one wants to get left behind in this AI revolution, but the first step is to figure out how and why they want to use it.

This mirrors statements made by Avanade’s chief AI officer Florin Rotar in a recent exclusive UNLEASH interview.

HR leaders must be involved in these high-level conversations about the AI vision in organizations.

Lloyd shares that HR tech vendors, like Dayforce, will have a major impact here because “we are probably one of the first types of platforms that will bring AI into the company”.

“I’m very excited about [that] – we actually can start the ball rolling”, and support organizations in seeing the efficiency and operational gains from adopting AI in their workplaces.

Tools like Dayforce’s generative AI Co-Pilot are “where an organization gets benefits even if they themselves have not figured out” their wider AI plan – these technologies can “help them gain some understanding”.

Once companies have figured out their vision, they need to have the data that underlies it top of mind.

At the end of the day, if you have garbage data, you’re not going to get what you want,” shares Lloyd.

Companies need their data in the right format (and in one) – ultimately, they need a single source of truth, and “that’s always been the challenge for many organizations”.

One example of where AI, and the right data, is around internal mobility. Skills, not jobs, are now the currency of the workplace, but without the right tech, it is impossible to actually match people with the skills to open opportunities.

A lot of Dayforce customers are frontline, and they have shift-based workers – examples include Costa Coffee, OTG, and Spirit AeroSystems.

By leveraging AI tools like Dayforce Career Explorer and Ideal Talent Marketplace, employees can spot shifts in other locations that fit their skill set. That helps the “organization solve a problem of filing a last minute open shift” and helps “the individual find and connect them with that extra work” (and pay!).

With its recent acquisition of eloomi, Dayforce is levelling up its AI capabilities in the learning management sector.

Lloyd tells UNLEASH that eloomi is “just a great complement to where we’re going” – the company’s technologies are in synergy with “our skills capability and talent products” and will help to “really intelligently create career paths and career journeys” for  customers.

What is HR tech vendor’s responsibility around AI?

It is clear that organizations, and HR leaders, are struggling to make the most of AI in their organizations – this begs the question what can HR tech vendors, like Dayforce, do to support them.

Lloyd shares with UNLEASH that a big part of his job is talking to customers, and ensuring that Dayforce’s AI and data products are fixing their challenges.

A customer conference is actually the reason why he is over in London (from Toronto) this week and was able to meet with UNLEASH in person by the iconic Tower of London.

“There are lots of things that we could throw at HR, but we really want to understand what their critical problems are” – so, for Dayforce, front and center is making their lives simpler and really bringing value.

For instance, Dayforce provides a “continuous payroll engine”, and by adding generative AI (Dayforce Co-Pilot) on top of that, the technology flags issues that HR can pick up.

All of this means that HR teams are “dealing with exceptions rather than the rules” – not only does this make them more efficient, but it also frees them up to do more of the value-adding, people-focused parts of their jobs.

HR is “being asked to do so much more with less – if we can take the mundane, tedious work off their plate, and let them focus on that real conversation”.

This explains Lloyd’s view that AI won’t steal jobs – “I don’t think jobs will disappear”. However, he believes that AI will change parts of many people’s roles (in the same way as previous technological revolutions).

For Lloyd and Dayforce, the point of AI is to augment and improve human decision making – and doing that in a responsible way.

There’s been a lot of conversation about how vendors can help reassure HR leaders, wider organizations and employees, that any personal or sensitive data, which HR has a lot of, is being used in an ethical manner when training AI.

“We have some of the most sensitive data in the world, so we have to be held the highest possible standard” on data protection, notes Lloyd.

Lloyd is very proud of how trust and compliance is really embedded in Dayforce’s technology – all of the company’s products are built on the UK’s data protection laws, which are some of the most stringent in the world, and they are very human-first.

He shares that how Dayforce deploys AI is private: “Our models sit in our environment, they are not shared with OpenAI or others. We are very careful about that.”

Regulation will always lag behind technology – it is for everyone to be a good actor and be ethical in their use of AI in the workplace.