We at HOOLOOVOO have always been what they call a people-first company. When we decided to focus on AI, it meant helping our clients use it to improve their operations, and also implementing AI internally, in all our departments. That included HR (we shared some tips here - link), so we asked Tanja, our Head of HR, to tell us more about it - how's it going, being AI-first in a people-first HOOLOOVOO…

Let's start with people.  HOOLOOVOO has this concept of “HR friends”, where human resources professionals are at the same time partners of business with skills and authorities, and empathic friends, building relationships based on openness, trust, respect, support… A lot to balance there, right?

HOOLOOVOO never wanted to become a typical company, regardless of our growth and how many of us there are. People first, that's an important part of the idea. Of course, HR plays an important part. Whatever we do, we always deal with a particular person, not just an employee or a position. We seek to understand the individual, so we can help people and teams give their best and feel great about it, both being equally important. And we don't want to do anything “pro forma”. 

At the same time, we are a business after all. Some things need to be done, and to be done for all of us, efficiently. The result is, we have more exceptions than rules. It was never going to be simple and easy, but it pays off. Not only subjectively. Since our founding, retention has been fluctuating around 90% — at times, with numbers amazing for the industry — and only a couple of years when it was slightly below 80%. Job satisfaction metrics are there, too. Clients are consistently happy with the delivery, with the quality we provide. Both our people and our partners see HOOLOOVOO as a long-term thing. All that, as a package, is what, why and how we are. So there's that. 

Tanja, OUR HEAD OF HR

AI can save time for important things where people still rule. 

Then, AI came along, your team included. Has anything changed?

Funny thing, when we first started thinking about where AI could help us, we got several ideas to improve processes where we didn't even need AI. At that time, our Martina was analysing the exit interviews. Basically a qualitative analysis. We don't have too many of these interviews, they are highly personalized, so the insights we get are hard to fit into any categories. We used our AI tool HAIP, specifically an HR assistant made by our CTO Luka, and it helped us sort it out real nice, save some time. Assistants for other processes, like onboarding assistant, we use it in some parts of the job. For certain important things, people still rule.

Here's a graph. We love making them up. 

So much talk about AI taking over jobs. Any insights from the HR community or your team, have people felt endangered?

Nobody in our team ever felt like that. For some things, human contact itself is crucial or extremely valuable, therapeutic if you will. I believe no one serious, anywhere in HR, fears that AI will really replace us. If we use technology to help us save some time we usually spend on repetitive, tedious tasks, and we use it for real contact with people, on more important matters, that's great, isn't it? It's already happening. We are working towards making the most of it.