Paychex, Inc., a leading provider of integrated human capital management software solutions for human resources, employee benefits, insurance services, and payroll, shares the results of its annual Priorities for Business Leaders survey, which highlights a diverse set of challenges America’s business owners and HR leaders are expecting to face in 2024 – and nearly all (98%) will use artificial intelligence to help solve them.
The survey shows that 64% of companies spend over 570 hours a year and at least 11 hours per week on HR administration, and annual spending for the largest business is as high as $350,000 on HR tasks such as processing payroll, administering benefits, and tracking time.
Responses from the survey of 600 U.S. business and HR leaders with five to 500 employees across industries and geographies show the top business challenges respondents identify, including rising interest rates (65%), overall inflation (63%), and threat of an economic slowdown (63%).
Additionally, the top HR challenges for organizations include risk management, such as managing workers’ compensation (56%), leadership development (54%), and attracting talent, total rewards, and offering competitive benefits and compensation (53%).
“It’s clear that the expectations of business and HR leaders continue to grow,” says Jeff Williams, vice president of enterprise and HR solutions at Paychex. “In addition to competing in a tight labor market, macroeconomic pressures like rising healthcare and other benefit costs are forcing many to rethink HR and benefits strategies.
Other key survey insights can be found below.
- Nearly all leaders (98%) expect to use AI in 2024. Approximately 85% say they are already using it, and less than 10% are concerned with AI risk. Currently, respondents are most commonly using it to automate workflow (41%), grow sales (39%), and manage business intelligence and analytics (37%).
- Some of the new ways respondents are planning to implement AI in the next 12 months are to support customer service (54), strengthen IT operations (53%), and screen resumes, tied with identifying potential candidates (52%).
- People management is also a focus for leaders, with 53% of leaders planning to optimize their benefits to attract and keep high-quality employees, which is also the top retention tactic (46%).
“Our study also found that organizations are spending more than a quarter of the average 40-hour work week on administrative HR tasks, costing them significant amounts of time and money,” says Williams. “To offset these costs, almost all respondents said they will lean on emerging technology like AI to lighten the load on them, their employees, and the bottom line.”
