How HR Can Use AI tools and Data to Deliver Strong HR Communications

As HR leaders take on greater responsibility for shaping strategy and culture, the ability to communicate clearly across an entire organization has become a defining skill — 50% of CEOs and CFOs cite clear communication as a key contributor to the CEO-CHRO partnership. Regardless of who you’re communicating with, getting the message right matters and increasingly, AI is helping HR teams do exactly that.

Across the 16 HRX practices from recruitment and compliance to talent management and leadership development — AI is increasingly augmenting the HR function. To demonstrate how HR professionals are putting AI into practice, SHRM reached out to HR leaders to share their experiences. This installment of our AI Use Case series explores how one HR executive is using AI to sharpen internal HR communications today while laying the groundwork for a more ambitious pilot tomorrow. 

Building the Foundation First

Before deploying AI across individual functions, Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota started with strategy. The organization's executive team partnered with an AI consulting firm and ran a series of AI workshops with senior leaders. These were not meant to chase quick wins, but to answer a bigger question: How should the organization govern this technology?

For Jinah Chernivec, chief human resources and risk officer at Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota, that groundwork is what makes responsible adoption possible.

"Really what we've tried to establish is what the governance model is going to look like," Chernivec said. "What are some of the decision points going to look like? What's centralized and what's decentralized to functional areas or departments?”

Out of that work came a plan to launch pilot cases across the organization — controlled initiatives where teams can test AI applications and learn before scaling. HR, it turns out, already had a head start.

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The AI Use Case: Drafting Routine HR Communications

One of the clearest early wins for Chernivec's team has been internal communication. HR professionals are often subject matter experts translating complex information — benefits changes, policy updates, strategic initiatives — for an audience that doesn't share their expertise. That gap is where messages break down.

"It's subject matter experts trying to communicate something to non-subject-matter experts, and the message can get lost," Chernivec said.

To close that gap, her team uses an AI-generation tool, Microsoft Copilot, as a starting point for drafting communications. The goal is simple, clear messaging that lands with the broader organization. But the tool doesn't operate alone. The organization created a dedicated HR communications role that sits within its employee insights team, part of a larger employee experience function.

That placement is intentional. Rather than writing in a vacuum, the communications specialist draws on employee insights data — including survey trends across recent quarters — to shape how HR communicates important messages.

"We want them to use data from our employee insights to help inform how we communicate important messages to the broader organization," Chernivec said. The specialist might review "where are we missing the mark" across specific areas, then use that data to inform how the team frames HR initiatives.

AI kick-starts the draft. The communications expert applies judgment, context, and voice. Chernivec describes it as a collaborative effort — one that pairs the specialist's experience with a "pro forma way to respond or communicate to something."

She uses the same approach in her own strategic work, relying on AI to pull together research on trends and data across the HR space.

"It saves a lot of time," she said. "I'm not having to go look around and pull all the research."

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What Worked

The biggest advantage has been speed without sacrificing clarity. Instead of starting every message from a blank page, Chernivec's team begins with a solid draft and refines from there.

The results show up in a few key ways:

• Clearer messaging. Using AI to draft communications helps translate expert-level detail into language the whole organization can understand.
• Data-informed communication. Because the communications role sits on the insights team, messaging is shaped by real employee feedback rather than assumptions.
• Time savings on research. AI accelerates the front end of strategy work, freeing Chernivec to focus on interpretation and direction.

Crucially, none of this happens without human oversight. "It doesn't mean it's just, here it is, and it's off the shelf," Chernivec said. The human in the loop remains essential.

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Risks to be Aware of When Using AI to Support HR Communications

One of the risks of implementing generative AI tools to support communications is using shortcuts, like missing clear mistakes or failing to edit for tone. 

“There is an increasing sensitivity to reading AI-generated work,” said Kenny Pyle HR technology lead analyst at SHRM. “People crave genuine communication and are picking up on AI tone faster than models can adapt.”

To support authentic communication, Chernivec’s team updated their communications standard operating procedure (SOP) to use AI-generated communications as first drafts rather than final copy for distribution. 

Pyle encourages HR teams to lean into its “humanistic core” and ensure messages are coming from their team, not the tool. As Chernivec’s team demonstrates, AI can kick off the outline or even the first draft, but humans need to be on the front line between generation and distribution of communications. 

Chernivec also noted the challenge of change management. Centralizing messaging meant bringing together HR, marketing, and communications, requiring a significant adjustment for both teams. “This shift required the adoption of new roles, processes, and decision-making structures to support a more streamlined and consistent communications strategy,” Chernivec said.

Building Toward New Use Cases

Chernivec is clear that AI enhances her team's work rather than replacing it. The communications specialist's experience, the insight team's data, and HR's strategic perspective remain the foundation. AI simply removes friction from the process.

That philosophy shapes how the organization approaches further adoption of AI tools. Chernivec hopes to launch a pilot that would introduce AI agents into its HR service desk — the frontline helpdesk where specialists currently field employee questions and requests.

"We really want to change our HR service desk … to take off some of that frontline work that our service desk specialists have been doing," Chernivec said.

It would be a significant leap. The organization isn't yet using agents in roles that involve direct human interaction, which is exactly why the governance work comes first.

The vision pairs two complementary use cases: broad, proactive HR messaging on one side, and responsive, request-specific support on the other. Together, they point toward an HR function that communicates with both scale and precision.

Advice for HR Leaders

For HR professionals looking to put AI to work in communications and beyond, Chernivec's experience offers several lessons:

• Start with governance. Decide what's centralized and what's decentralized, and define your decision points before rolling AI out broadly.
• Use AI as a starting point, not the finished product. Let it kick-start drafts, then apply human expertise to refine tone, accuracy, and context.
• Keep a human in the loop. Pair AI output with a skilled communications professional who owns the final message.
• Connect communications to data. Ground your messaging in employee insights so the communication addresses what people actually care about.
• Pilot before you scale. Test ambitious applications — like AI agents on the service desk — in controlled environments before expanding.

For Chernivec, the greatest value of AI is helping HR communicate with the clarity the whole organization deserves while keeping human judgment firmly at the center of every message.