In the world of HR, people always come first—but that doesn’t mean technology can’t play a significant role in improving how things run behind the scenes. Sabrina Baker, CEO of Acacia HR Solutions, has found a way to strike the perfect balance between AI and human-centered HR. We sat down with her to talk about how AI is reshaping her business and how tools like Meetgeek are making a big difference in her meetings.
How has AI changed the way you run your business? Like all businesses, we have spent a good amount of time thinking about ways to incorporate AI into our business practices. Like many we have used services like ChatGPT to handle basic tasks such as creating communication, brainstorming, creating content outlines and more. I don’t know that it has changed the way we run the business, but it has certainly improved efficiency in many areas.
Q: Could you share a specific example of how AI has improved efficiency or productivity in your day-to-day operations? From transactional HR tasks to strategic, we have used AI to increase efficiency in a few areas. We write/review many handbooks throughout the year. AI has helped us to review the handbook for readability, grammar and help us to put it in the voice of the client. Same with job descriptions, offer letters and other similar tasks.
On the more strategic front, AI helps us create training outlines for both employee and leadership development. It helps us summarize information or ensure we are being as clear and concise as we can which is crucial to communication.
Q: HR is often thought of as a “people-first” industry. How do you balance the use of AI with maintaining that human touch?
It’s important to remember that AI is a tool, not a complete solution. Even though we may run things through AI, we are always reviewing what the tool gives us. I heard someone say AI can’t think for you. It can create, but it can’t make that creation as human as we can. So while we may use it for communication, we are always reviewing and refining what it shares to ensure we keep that human touch.
Q: I understand you use Meetgeek for your meetings. How did you discover it, and what made you decide to integrate it into your workflow?
Meetgeek has been a game changer for us. I actually discovered it through a client who uses it. We had a call and his MeetGeek joined. After the meeting I received the notes from the system and immediately started thinking about how it could help our business.
Q: For those who aren’t familiar, what does Meetgeek do? And how has it enhanced your team’s meeting experience?
MeetGeek is an AI note taking tool that joins your meetings and summarizes them. It then sends out that summary to everyone on the meeting invite. Because we work with many different clients, before MG we would take notes during calls and then keep the notes straight between clients and juggling to do lists. Now we can just focus in the meeting. We do not have to take notes because the tool is doing it for us. For those who can’t make the meeting, the notes help ensure they are caught up on everything covered they may have missed.
We love it especially for recruiting. Allowing our HR team to have summarized notes from a pre-screen that we can share with hiring managers helps to give them a more complete picture of the candidate. It also saves us time from having to type up notes or answers during the interview.
Overall it has saved us so much time and we have found it’s summary to be very thorough and accurate.
Q: Are there any unexpected benefits you’ve seen from using Meetgeek, especially in terms of collaboration or documentation?
Yes, this may be my favorite discovery - it’s ability to keep context even when the employee participants may switch in and out of languages. We have two employees on a team who speak Spanish. They switch from English to Spanish quite a bit during their conversations. While we don’t think MG is exactly translating the Spanish, it doesn't lose the context of what they are saying and still produces notes that are accurate. That really impressed us.
The other feature is that teams can share notes which is really helpful when we have someone who has to jump into an account they usually don’t work with. I as CEO can see all notes and while we haven’t done this yet, can see us using this for training and development opportunities in the future.
Q: How do you see AI tools like Meetgeek evolving in the future? Any features or developments you’re particularly excited about?
I’m not sure how exactly they will evolve, only that they definitely will. This technology is certainly moving faster than others we have seen so I have no doubt that it will only continue to be enhanced.
Q: For business owners or HR leaders who are hesitant to adopt AI, what advice would you give them?
You can always test without commitment. In fact, that is how we adopt all technology. One of our employees will do the free trial, test it for an appropriate amount of time and then decide if it should be adopted or not. I don’t want to roll anything out we haven’t tested yet to be sure that it really does what we think it will and, because we are HR, it isn’t sharing anything it shouldn’t be.
Q: Finally, what’s next for you? Any new AI innovations you’re excited to explore in the HR space?
I am currently thinking about how we can use AI in a helpdesk kind of situation for employees in our client organizations. It’s a bit unique for us in the way we are set up but I can see real opportunity. Outside of that I am more of an opportunist when it comes to technology. As things come up that look interesting, we will explore and see if it can be a viable solution for us.
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