AI is rapidly reshaping how companies operate. Executives must act now or risk falling dangerously behind. Beyond customer-facing or productivity gains, a deeper shift is underway: the reinvention of work and the organisation itself, including HR’s role in how people are recruited, deployed and developed within the organisation.

Far from a support function, HR now has the mandate to design and continually adapt the business for an AI-enabled future. For chief HR officers (CHROs), the real challenge is leading the organisation through cultural change, accelerated learning, team redesign and new governance.

Below, we outline four imperatives for CHROs to drive this shift. With the right approach, HR can become the architects of a new kind of organisation – one where humans and AI work together, responsibly and creatively.

1. HR’s core activities will be transformed

AI is reshaping HR’s core responsibilities by enriching them with new insights, speed and scale. Take recruiting. Generative AI (GenAI) can now assist in everything from crafting job descriptions and parsing resumes to creating personalised outreach messages and optimising employer branding. According to a LinkedIn report, companies are already seeing up to 20 percent time savings per recruiter by automating the early stages of sourcing and screening.

Then there’s AI’s impact on internal mobility and workforce planning. A World Economic Forum report forecasts that 40 percent of skills required on the job are set to change by 2030. Tools powered by large language models and organisational data can help identify skill adjacencies, suggest career paths and match employees with new roles or projects.

AI is also transforming learning and development by making it more personalised, dynamic and embedded into the flow of work. Modern learning experience platforms such as EdCast and Degreed are using AI to curate individualised learning paths. In tandem, firms are deploying on-demand microlearning agents or AI copilots that act as real-time learning companions. Together, these innovations create a responsive learning ecosystem that evolves with the needs of the workforce and supports scalable, self-directed development.

In performance management, AI facilitates more continuous and objective evaluation. Sentiment analysis, feedback loops and behavioural signals (e.g. collaboration data and project timelines) can provide early indicators of burnout, disengagement or untapped potential. This shift supports a more humane and data-informed approach to performance.

2. HR is an AI enabler for the rest of the organisation

Beyond transforming HR’s own operating model, the broader and arguably more important impact of AI lies in how HR can drive its organisation-wide adoption. In most companies, every function, from marketing to operations, is experimenting with AI tools. But tools alone do not drive transformation. People do. 

Research demonstrates that AI tools can increase individual productivity by 14 to 35 percent, but only when workers receive targeted training and workflows are redesigned for effective AI integration. Executive training on what AI means for business is essential, with demand surging across company-specific and open programmes, such as the AI for Business course one of us directs at INSEAD. Without this, adoption lags and much of the potential value remains untapped. Success hinges on capability-building, trust and behaviour change – territory where HR is central.

Microsoft’s 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report reveals that while 75 percent of knowledge workers are using GenAI, 60 percent say they lack the right training to do so effectively. Meanwhile, 79 percent of leaders expect employees to develop AI capabilities on their own. To bridge this gap, HR should formalise and scale AI-related upskilling programmes, especially at the leadership level, which is one of the fastest accelerators of AI enterprise adoption.

The same Microsoft study found that 52 percent of employees are reluctant to admit they’re using AI at work, often fearing that doing so may signal their job is automatable. HR must tackle this fear head-on by clarifying that AI is meant to augment, not replace, human efforts. Indeed, research shows that the organisations extracting the greatest performance gains from AI are those that deliberately design work for human-AI complementarity. 

3. AI is redefining culture, capabilities and the shape of work

CHROs must design adaptive work systems that allow both humans and machines to thrive. Organisations should move away from static role definitions towards dynamic skills-based architectures. Rather than matching people to jobs, HR will increasingly match people to problems, projects and missions, adapting in real time to shifting market conditions and technological capabilities.

The aforementioned Microsoft report anticipates that companies will evolve from using traditional organisational charts to “work charts”: team structures built around AI-human collaboration. In this environment, AI agents may autonomously perform data gathering, first drafts and monitoring tasks, while humans focus on judgment, creativity and relational work. These AI co-workers will be directly embedded into collaborative platforms, capable of partnering with humans to solve complex tasks.

This transformation demands a cultural pivot. Trust and safety must be preserved while encouraging employees to take calculated risks with new tools. Managers’ training must now include how to lead hybrid human-AI teams, assessing performance with new indicators and fostering curiosity about AI.

HR should rethink advancement frameworks, job levelling and role evolution in the context of augmented roles. For example, how should one assess the contribution of an employee who delegates half their work to AI tools but consistently delivers better outcomes? New KPIs and performance narratives can help reflect the contributions of hybrid work configurations.

Finally, not all employees will have equal access to digital literacy or emerging AI tools. HR must ensure inclusive access, monitor disparities in AI deployment and protect underrepresented groups from exclusion to avoid amplifying existing inequalities. 

4. HR must play a central role in AI governance

Although governance frameworks are typically defined at the enterprise level, HR plays a critical role in implementing them wherever people and algorithms intersect. This means making sure that AI systems used in hiring, evaluation or development align with ethical expectations. 

A recent LinkedIn report on bias in AI-powered hiring highlights the risks of automated systems that penalise candidates for irrelevant traits like accents or eye contact. HR must work with compliance, legal and data science teams to ensure that only approved systems, tested against governance standards, are deployed.

Transparency is another cornerstone. Employees and candidates need to know when and how AI is involved in decisions. HR can help operationalise governance by providing clear communication protocols, disclosures and consent mechanisms that align with both ethical and legal standards. HR is also instrumental in translating enterprise-level AI policies into guardrails – such as defining which decisions can be delegated to AI, which require human sign-off and how AI input should be documented. While HR does not unilaterally own these policies, it must ensure they are usable, understood and universally enforced.

Accountability is perhaps the most complex dimension. If an AI system produces a flawed recommendation or executes an action with unintended consequences, who is responsible? Conversely, if AI contributes to success, who receives recognition? These questions are not theoretical. They influence incentives, culture and risk exposure. HR must ensure that performance management systems reflect the new blended nature of work, where outcomes are often the product of human-AI collaboration.

From function to architect

AI is not just another wave of automation. It is a fundamental reconfiguration of how work gets done, by whom and under what rules. For HR, this shift is both an invitation and a mandate. CHROs who embrace AI can both future-proof their organisations and reposition HR as a strategic architect of transformation.

The organisations that succeed will not be those with the most advanced algorithms, but those with both AI capabilities and the most adaptive people. HR holds the key to unlocking that adaptability by equipping teams, enabling leaders and anchoring change in purpose.

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