Use Zoom's AI to Transcribe HR Meetings

What This Does

Zoom's AI automatically transcribes your meetings and generates a summary with key points and action items, so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes.

Before You Start

• You have Zoom installed and use it for HR meetings, interviews, or investigations
• Your Zoom account is on an eligible paid Zoom Workplace plan (Business, Business+, or Enterprise)
• You're logged into Zoom as the account admin or have meeting summaries enabled by your admin

Steps

1. Turn on meeting summaries for your account

Sign in at zoom.us and click Settings in the left menu. Look for the meeting summary controls in the AI section and turn on automatic meeting summaries. Zoom used to call these features "AI Companion" and dropped that name in 2026, so older help articles and colleagues may still use the old term.

What you should see: The meeting summary setting switched on for your meetings. Troubleshooting: If you don't see any AI settings, your plan may not include them, or your admin needs to enable them at the account level.

2. Start a meeting and start the summary

Join or start your Zoom meeting. Look for the AI icon in the meeting toolbar (it looks like a small star/sparkle icon). Hover over it, select the Meeting summary checkbox, then click Start Zoom AI.

What you should see: A notification appears to all participants that AI is generating a summary. The icon turns active/highlighted. Troubleshooting: If participants object to the recording, you can disable it. summaries require recording to be enabled in most configurations.

3. Conduct your meeting as normal

You don't need to do anything special. Have your interview, investigation conversation, or HR meeting as you normally would. Zoom is capturing everything in the background.

4. End the meeting and retrieve the summary

After ending the meeting, Zoom sends you an email within 2-5 minutes with: a meeting summary, key topics discussed, and action items identified.

What you should see: An email from Zoom with "Meeting Summary" in the subject line. The summary will be 3-10 paragraphs organized by topic.

5. Save and use the summary

Copy the summary into your HR notes system, case file, or HRIS documentation. For investigations, save the AI summary alongside your manual notes as supplemental documentation.

Real Example

Scenario: You're conducting a 45-minute employee complaint investigation interview with a witness.

What you do: Start the meeting summary before the interview begins. Conduct the interview normally, asking questions, taking brief notes on key points.

What you get: After the meeting, an AI-generated summary covering: the main topics discussed, key statements made by the witness, and action items you mentioned (like "follow up with HR manager by Friday").

Time saved: 30-40 minutes of post-meeting note organization.

Tips

• Always inform participants at the start of the meeting that it's being summarized. required under most state recording laws
• For sensitive investigations, confirm with your legal counsel whether AI-generated summaries should be included in the official case file
• Use the transcript (available separately) when you need verbatim quotes; use the summary when you need a quick overview to share with a manager

Tool interfaces change, if a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.