'It's working beyond what we could have imagined,' says Chris Walsh on automating data flows and reporting, freeing up time for more strategic HR work
In the midst of uncertainty in a business largely dependent on the automotive industry, human resources director of Select Finishing’s Chris Walsh is optimizing the moment.
With employees spread across six plants in Ontario and one in Michigan, the company’s focus is less on growth and more on holding steady until the tides turn — for Walsh, that’s meant putting a hold on long-term strategic planning.
“It's very difficult to plan and budget out for strategic roles, or to really sit back and say, 'Let's bring on this role, or these roles' because there is just that little bit of fear,” Walsh says, explaining that since he reports directly to owner-operators, his strategy must be more considered.
In the meantime, Walsh has shifted focus away from recruitment to other areas, grabbing the moment to lead his team in a concerted effort to wrangle new technologies into time and cost saving tools.
“It does provide us with some open bandwidth,” he says.
“We’ve spent a lot of this time really digging in. I’ve been helping the team to incorporate technology into their workflow, to really sit down and spend more time with the team hands on, improving our HRIS software.”
HR’s ‘crash course’ with AI and automation
Rather than seeing the shift away from strategic recruitment as a setback, Walsh has used the slower pace of hiring to focus on technological integration within his company’s HR processes, “this crash course that everyone is on … with automation, artificial intelligence," he says.
This focus on technology has allowed the HR team to streamline core HR functions, such as payroll and performance management, with a unified deployment across all locations last year.
Walsh sees the intersection of technology and HR as inevitable and necessary.
“There’s just such a great opportunity to help the team learn,” he says.
“Essentially, I now have at my fingertips what maybe 10 years ago would have had the overhead of an entire department. What does that mean for the future of work?”
Learning vibe coding and building new tools
Walsh’s approach to AI is hands-on and experimental, he explains, reflecting a willingness to learn by doing and to embrace new tools even without formal training. Particularly, he has used 'vibe coding' to experiment and design apps and programs, in-house.
As he sees it, with the rate at which technology is advancing, self-taught is the only way to keep on the leading edge.
“Two years ago, I didn’t have any background in code. I still don’t know how to code, but I’m writing code,” Walsh says, noting that this openness to experimentation has enabled him to push the boundaries of what a small HR team can accomplish, particularly when it comes to data management and automation. “I’m doing things that I don’t know how to do – but I do know how to do because I know how to ask for it.”
Vibe coding is a method of using AI conversational tools to generate code and automate tasks that previously could only be done by software engineers or programmers. When asked if the vibe code experiment is working for his team, Walsh’s answer is unequivocal: “Is it ever.”
Through vibe coding, his team has been able to solve many problems that previously would have required extensive consultation, with IT or third parties. For example, they’ve been able to automate data flows and reporting, freeing up time for more strategic HR work and enabling real-time insights into workforce metrics.
“It’s working beyond what we could have imagined,” Walsh says.
“I’m building databases in SQL. I’m creating API links from our HRIS software … I’ve been able to create a straight-up external database with zero IT help.”
The future of HR: technology and curiosity
For Walsh, curiosity is at the heart of his journey into AI and vibe coding, which for him is the same as his journey into HR.
His perspective is informed by his own career path, which began with a series of progressively more senior HR roles in manufacturing; his early experience working on the production floor gave him a deep understanding of frontline work and the importance of building relationships across all levels of an organization, he says.
“From an HR professional’s perspective, the best thing that ever happened to me was cutting my teeth in an HR role with my office smack dab in the production supervisor’s office.”
Comparing this early experiences to being “in the middle of the lion’s den”, Walsh got a front-row seat observing on-the-floor interactions between employees and their supervisors: “It immediately gave me a very tangible picture of the nature of work at the frontline level, where the work is getting done.”
This insight into relationships and addressing pain points of employees informs his approach to training staff on the technology he is purporting – for Walsh and his team, that means letting employees lead and getting specific.
“I'll have a conversation, and I will ask them, ‘What's the hardest thing you've got going on, what's something that consumes a lot of your time? … let's hone in on something very specific,'” Walsh says.
“When you show them how AI can reduce or even eliminate some of that work, you don't have to do much to sell that to them after that, because most people see that, and they get quite excited.”
