The Human Element

The workforce is changing, expectations are rising, and HR has a critical role to play.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke recently wrote in a company-wide note that, “In a company growing 20-40% year over year, you must improve by at least that every year just to re-qualify.” And in a world where AI tools are becoming the norm, he added, “this doesn’t even sound terribly ambitious to me anymore.” Lütke also added that teams must prove AI cannot accomplish a job before a new headcount requisition is opened. 

AI is reshaping expectations across every function, and HR is no exception. HR must proactively adopt new tools, build new capabilities, and help their businesses thrive in a faster-moving, AI-powered environment.

McKinsey predicts that AI will eliminate up to 70% of employees’ administrative tasks. For HR, this means teams will have more time to focus on what really matters: human-to-human interactions, solving strategic challenges, and aligning to business outcomes.

Below we explore the foundational skills HR leaders need to thrive in the AI era and the new roles emerging as AI becomes embedded across the employee lifecycle.

What You’ll Learn In This Blog:

• A quick overview of how AI is reshaping the HR function
• Essential skills HR teams need to stay ahead
• Six emerging roles for the AI-enabled HR organization
• How to evolve your team structure to meet tomorrow’s needs

Why HR Needs to Evolve

Use of AI itself is fast becoming a foundational skill within high-performing HR organizations. While adoption is still uneven across the market, the strategic divide between early movers and slower adopters is widening, and with it, the impact on business performance.

Leading HR teams are leveraging AI to do more than automate administrative tasks. They’re using it to:

• Fully automate administrative tasks like employee support, policy administration, and case triage and routing
• Free up capacity for high-impact, human-centered work
• Deliver personalized experiences across learning, development, and communication
• Surface real-time insights from workforce data to guide decision-making and strategy
  

In short, AI is enabling HR professionals to shift from an often transactional focus to a focus on proactive and strategic alignment to driving business performance. For organizations focused on agility, growth, and employee impact, the ability to scale HR’s influence with AI is quickly becoming a competitive differentiator.

HR’s role in delivering business outcomes has never been more visible, or more vital. In leading organizations, HR is already playing a highly strategic role: influencing business decisions, shaping culture, owning talent strategy, and guiding executive decision-making. 

To continue delivering at the level the business demands, HR must continue this evolution. That means shifting from instinct-driven to insight-driven, and from reactive to proactive—especially as AI introduces new ways to scale impact, optimize the employee experience, and inform strategy with precision. 

The Mindset Shift: From Instinct to Intelligence

1. AI Fluency

Curiosity and a growth mindset are more important than ever. The ability to go beyond testing, learn, and iterate with AI tools will separate high-impact HR teams from the rest.

Today’s HR leaders need to:

• Evaluate emerging tools for considerations like ROI, effectiveness, fit, and responsibility
• Identify trends in engagement, retention, and the underlying factors shaping employee experience
• Implement AI for practical use to improve HR operations, hiring, onboarding, talent programs, and employee support
• Consider AI Agents as a component of their workforce, organizational design, and talent strategy
  

HR leaders need to understand AI-native HR technology and the benefits these new technologies will bring to the HR function. With so many new products in the market, smart technology adoption will be key, a “critical skill is the ability to assess, trial and adopt new technologies.” 

2. Employee Experience Design — Now With AI

Top HR teams are already using AI to:

• Intelligently organize their workforce and organization design
• Better understand the skills their organization has and needs
• Optimize job descriptions for clarity and alignment with the skills and behaviors that drive business success
• Personalize employee journeys with dynamic content and nudges
• Use sentiment, theme, and topic analysis to detect early signs of disengagement and their root causes
  

Research from SHRM shows that successful organizations are using “AI to identify potential high-performing employees using profiles based on past successful employees.” That leaves HR with the task of developing effective ways to encourage long-term employee loyalty.

Designing a positive employee experience and candidate experience by embracing, “people analytics, the science of using data on employee performance, skills, engagement, and sentiment to predict and shape the future of the workforce” will be crucial. For example, HR leaders need to use AI to optimize job postings for inclusivity and detect biases in hiring to promote fair decision-making.

3. Change Leadership with Agility

AI transformation won’t succeed without change management. The best HR leaders:

• Connect AI initiatives to business strategy
• Anticipate talent and workforce needs changing and upskill accordingly
• Build learning ecosystems that adapt over time
  

A mere 29% of organizations have taken proactive measures to train and upskill employees who work alongside AI, SHRM research finds. Yet creating personalized learning platforms that recommend courses based on skills gaps help nurture high-potential employees. Upskilling will be essential for workers to remain competitive in a job market shaped by AI, SHRM data shows, contributing to workforce development. 

4. Business Acumen Meets AI Application

‍As AI reshapes work across every function, HR’s strategic value hinges on two critical capabilities: deep understanding of the business and cross-functional AI fluency. Today’s high-performing HR teams don’t just optimize their own operations; they help every team work more efficiently. That means aligning HR strategy with macro business objectives, and recognizing where AI can drive efficiency and effectiveness across functions like sales, finance, operations, and more.

The most effective HR leaders are asking:

• What does the business need to achieve, and how can HR help get there faster?
• How can AI improve outcomes not just in HR, but across the entire organization?
  

This mindset positions HR as an enterprise-level problem solver, using AI to scale performance, uncover insights, and shape strategy at the highest level.

Emerging AI-Focused Roles in HR

As AI innovation evolves, “The breadth of expertise needed to fulfill HR’s growing portfolio of responsibilities is expanding faster than HR can handle through internal development alone.”  But, by leveraging AI, HR can transform traditional processes, drive strategic decisions, thus redefine its role.

Emerging are new roles designed with the purpose of managing AI agents. These roles will oversee the operation, performance, and development of AI functionality within organizations to ensure new AI effectively helps teams achieve their goals. Here’s what the AI-enabled HR team of the future could look like:

1. Chief Human and AI Resources Officer (CHAIRO): Leads organizations through AI adoption with a focus on human-AI collaboration, and strategies for performance and training.‍
2. AI HR Operations Manager: Implements AI-powered HR tools to optimize workflows aligned with business goals, including streamlining HR processes like recruitment, onboarding, and payroll. This role analyzes HR data to extract insights on workforce trends, performance, and engagement and translates HR data into actionable insights for leadership.‍
3. AI Talent Acquisition Specialist: Uses AI-powered recruitment tools to screen and match candidates efficiently. They implement chatbots for improved communication with candidates and overall improved candidate experience. Using AI to match job candidates with positions based on skills and experience, they improve recruitment efficiency. ‍
4. AI Employee Experience & Engagement Manager: Develops AI-driven employee-focused initiatives. They use AI sentiment analysis tools to personalize employee engagement efforts including, well-being and training efforts to improve morale. Additionally, they use AI tools to enhance collaboration and productivity in hybrid and remote workplaces and monitor engagement and productivity.
5. ‍AI Responsibility & Compliance Officer: Ensures AI-driven HR decisions are ethical, fair, and compliant with labor and privacy laws. This role monitors AI-powered recruitment tools to prevent bias and discrimination and develops guidelines and policies for their organizations to ensure responsible AI use.‍
6. AI Learning & Development Consultant: Designs and manages AI-driven training programs and learning plans for employees based on their employee performance data. This leader uses AI to identify skill gaps, recommend upskilling strategies, and implement virtual AI coaches for employee career progression, in addition to helping each employee learn how to apply AI effectively in their role.
   

How to Prepare Your Team

If you're a CHRO or people leader planning ahead, AI shouldn't just be a tool—it should be a pillar of your workforce strategy.

Start by:

• Auditing your current workflows: Where are the most repetitive or high-cost tasks?
• Identifying skills gaps: What capabilities do your team need to lead AI initiatives?
• Budgeting for transformation: Could you redirect planned headcount spend to an AI investment that scales further?

AI won’t replace HR, but HR leaders who use AI strategically can replace those who don’t.

HR is uniquely positioned to lead the organization through change and into a more intelligent, responsive, and human-centered future.

To learn more about emerging trends in AI for HR leaders, check out our additional resources.