Does AI have a place in foodservice HR? 2017-06-19

According to the Wall Street Journal, new artificial intelligence technologies are designed to assist HR each step of the way, from recruitment to retention. They scour the internet for suitable job candidates; they take new employees through the onboarding process; they answer benefits questions; and they even scan employee correspondence for signs of unhappiness or counterproductivity. But do they make sense for foodservice operators?

“Anything that can help technology-wise, why not?” says David Hill, director of dining hall operations at the University of New Hampshire. “It takes a lot of manpower to manage the recruitment and retention process.”

Training employees, for instance, can get haphazard when an operation is pressed to get a new cook out on the line; sometimes critical skills are missed. “[A bot] could keep you on track,” he says.

UNH Dining doesn’t currently employ artificial technology, but Hill says it’s certainly possible in the future. Still, he’s a little less sure about using intelligence to spy. “It could have some value,” he says, to know whether employees are unhappy—but they likely would not appreciate it.
—A.M.