Technology is advancing at a blistering pace, but adoption is lagging behind. Underwhelming pilots and anxiety over job loss are slowing progress. It doesn’t have to be this way. And HR is the function that can unleash this capability to transform organizations.
AI can accelerate tasks as well as performing tasks that humans never could. It also enables humans to do things in ways they never could do on their own. While many focus on the technical aspects of what’s capable, for an organization to benefit, those tasks much fit into a larger organizational whole where both employees and companies gain value from its adoption. And organizing work to maximize the value of human potential is exactly where HR’s expertise lays.
HR functions need to take the lead in five key areas to position their organizations for an AI-enabled future:
- Integrate AI into workflows as a partner, not a competitor
- Embrace skills to navigate rapidly changing work demands
- Step into a true strategic partner role focused on workforce performance and not just process efficiency
- Solve for where and how work gets done without getting caught up in where people happen to be sitting
- Embrace intelligent employee listening to understand and leverage insights from across the entire workforce
Taken together, these form a backbone of an evolving organization – one that is agile, responsive and smart.
1. Integrate AI into workflows as a partner
Over the longterm, the question will not be whether companies use AI. The question will be which companies win the race to use AI to increase effiency, reduce costs and rethink work. The productivity gains of AI have already proven to be substantial for effective projects driving up to 60 percent performance gains (McKinsey & Company, 2025). We are also seeing augmentation strategies come into play as AI enables work that wasn’t previously possible.
Yet, alongside the success stories and hype are emerging stories of failed implementations and disappointing results. The catch is that scaling AI is a people problem, not a technology one. We need to reinvent work processes, redesign jobs, reimagine manager roles, and design new governance strategies. Real transformation doesn’t come from doing the same things marginally faster – it comes from radically transforming work in ways that deliver competitive advantage. It is not enough to promise to “keep humans in the loop” when implementing AI. Companies must clearly define what it is that these humans in the loop will be doing in the future and call out how it will be different from what they are doing now.
2. Embrace skills to navigate rapidly changing demands
Technology will never eliminate the need for employees to perform job roles at some level, but it will radically change the skills employees need to be effective in their roles. Skill evolution is moving at a head-spinning pace, with Lightcast (2025) reporting that some roles are experiencing up to 75% churn in needed skills. The World Economic Forum (2025) projects a net gain of 78 million jobs globally by 2030, all of which will require reskilling.
In a context like that, job descriptions can become functionally meaningless.
Remaining competitive with that level of dynamism calls for new approaches that go beyond traditional job-based workforce planning and hierarchical organizational designs. Flexible skill architectures and continuous learning are becoming essential to remaining relevant as an organization. Transitioning to a skills-based HR system requires embedding skills as the foundation of every talent decision - rearchitecting roles, rewards, learning, and careers.Organizations also need to focus on those skills where humans outperform machings – things like empathy, caring, and collaboration, emphasizing those in selection, development and performance systems. Organizations must also put far more emphasis on supporting workforce
agility – the ability to respond, adapt and thrive in change – as a top skill needed by employees throughout the company (Baylor University, 2025). The organizations that can make this transition – building their HR systems around skills, and building capability around anticipating and acting on shifts – will outcompete in the marketplace.
3. Step into a true strategic partner role
Traditionally, HR was an operational discipline focused on process efficiency, risk management and cost control. To thrive in the future, organizations need HR that can orchestrate change, build workforce skills, and enable positive employee experiences (McKinsey & Company, 2025b). HR must become the architects of future-ready organizations. The confluence of AI, evolving skills, and human potential requires vision and courageous leadership.
HR has long aspired to a true “seat at the table.” In the age of intelligence, HR functions will be make-or-break as organizations seek to remake their workforces to incorporate AI as well as supporting uniquely human skills. Older command-and-control methods are unlikely to deliver the innovation, speed and competitive advantage organizations need, and HR is the key to unlocking the new “superworker” integrated workforces (Bersin, 2025).
Doing this means HR needs to lean into technical savvy and business acumen, as well as people expertise. Rebuilding processes to prioritize those things which are feasible and aligned with strategy. And having the leadership courage and confidence to challenge the business when it is losing sight of the impact its actions will have on the workforce. We cannot be certain what the future of work will look like, but we can be certain it will always involve people working together to achieve mutually supportive goals. People are the one constant ins a changing world, and the more technology changes how we work the more those organizations with bold, savvy HR will have a competitive advantage.
4. Solve for where work gets done
The debate over where work gets done at times has almost religious overtones – practices that are rooted firmly in belief. The mixed data story isn’t really about where work occurs – it’s about practices, such as role clarity, fairness, rituals, and trust (McKinsey & Company, 2025). As employees increasingly collaborate with machines, HR has an opportunity to thoughtfully redesign work environments that match work design to employee experience.
The benefits of people working physically together vary across different different phases of innovation and different types of work. But what is always true, regardless of the job or company, are the benefits of employees building strong, collaborative relationships. This requires focusing on human interactions, which is not the same thing as creating policies that dictate when and where people sit each day. Organizations that thoughtfully design work processes and effectively use in person time to nurture knowledge sharing and high quality interactions to spark creativity and scale solutions without over-burdening employees with in-office requirements will be the winners in the future market. (Arena, Golden, & Hines, 2022).
5. Employee Experience: From Listening Posts to Listening Systems
Technology is changing just about everything about work - the content of jobs, relationships with peers and managers, career paths, job security, company strategy and trust in leaders. Leaders need to understand how these changes are affecting employees if they wish to effectively lead them. Continuous listening strategies have been gaining traction for years, but the current pace and level of change shift this from an innovativepractice to an organizational imperative.
Leading organizations and major employee survey vendors have been incorporating natural language processing into employee listening systems, for years, but new tools and capabilities transition this from a sorting and counting exercise into true intelligence that can support responsive decision making. An industry consortium reports that 71% of leading companies are already using AI to analyze comment data and support rapid insight (IT Survey Group, 2025).
Leading organizations are able to use these new tools at scale to connect insight across the employee lifecycle, and synthesize findings between active and passive listening strategies. The ability to tie together patterns across onboarding, engagement and exit surveys with passive data like patterns of communication (chat connections, meeting invitations and email patterns) let organizations spot troublesome trends, like pockets of burnout or disengagement, earlier and make needed adjustments – leading to a workplace that works better. (Yip & Fisher, 2022).
Reinventing work
The future of work is unfolding all around us, with changes across functions, roles, structures and tools. Access to technology matters, but the courage and vision to reinvent work to meet the moment will differentiate the organizational winners from those that fall behind.
This is HR’s moment — Organizations will succeed or fail based on how well the human aspects of work evolve to take advantage of these new capabilities. HR will build not just talent strategy, but organizational identity. By embracing the 5 key imperatives aboveHR can architect a future for their organizations that is more efficient and effective, as well as more human.
A Human-Centered Call to Action for HR
This is HR’s time to lead - bringing clarity, and care in dynamic and uncertain times The human-centered call to action for HR:
Rethink roles and workflows for meaning as well asfor efficiency, Ask: What makes this work worth doing?
Build skills ecosystems that help people deliver but also grow, shift, and thrive.. Ask: Which learning strategies will fuel your employees’ growth and set them up to to thrive in the future?
Step into the conductor’s role, guiding the integration of changes across business strategy, technical innovation, and people. Ask: How can I orchestrate our unique collection of strategies, technology and teams so every note of change resonates in harmony?
Design hybrid work for real life, balancing the need for connection, trust, and purpose are blended with the human need for flexibility. Ask: What experiences will ensure our work strategies strengthen relationships and shared purpose?
Listen deeply and often, using technology that help us hear what’s said—and notice what’s unsaid. Ask: What nuanced needs and insights can we find in unstructured and ambient data?
And above all else: stay focused on the heartbeat of your people. Those closest to the work are already experimenting and finding new ways to improve work. Be curious and advocate for your people. This is the moment – HR is set up to reshape organizations and the very nature of work.
References
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Harvard Business Review. (2025). Hybrid still isn’t working. Harvard Business Review.
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McKinsey & Company. (2025a). Seizing the agentic AI advantage. McKinsey Global Institute.
McKinsey & Company. (2025b). HR monitor 2025. McKinsey & Company.
McKinsey & Company. (2025c). Creating a return-to-office policy that works. McKinsey & Company.
MIT Sloan Management Review. (2025). What the return-to-office debate misses: Employees are customers. MIT Sloan Management Review.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2025). The GenAI Divide: How organizations are navigating generative AI adoption. MIT Sloan Management Review.
Revelio Labs. (2025). How much is a skill worth? Revelio Labs.
World Economic Forum. (2025). Future of jobs report 2025. World Economic Forum.
Yip, J., & Fisher, C. M. (2022). Listening in organizations: A synthesis and future agenda. Academy of Management Annals, 16(2), 657–679.