Editorial
In conversations with dozens of HR leaders, one question surfaced repeatedly: “How can AI actually reshape our people strategy beyond recruiting automation or chatbots?” To answer that question, we ran several LinkedIn polls and spoke to several leaders wrestling with these kinds of questions.
Many sense transformation ahead but worry that critical conversations are being overlooked, especially around AI's impact on teams, managers and organizational design. Across industries, AI is already changing how people experience their work. Yet while organizations are racing to adopt AI, few have paused to consider what this shift means for the core of their People Strategy.
AI Strategy Breaks Into the C-Suite
The responses from HR leaders and executives to our LinkedIn poll around future directions for AI revealed a striking divide. HR leaders overwhelmingly believe people analytics will be the most disrupted area in the near term, with 52% naming it as their top opportunity. Executives, by contrast, pointed to performance and development, with 67% identifying it as the first area that AI will fundamentally reshape.
This gap reveals more than a difference in priority. It signals a deeper misunderstanding: while HR is preparing to use AI to gain insights, executives are expecting AI to change behaviors.
This expectation mismatch is showing up in real-world deployments. "Senior leadership and C-level executives are pushing to implement AI everywhere, without a clear strategy and without clarity on what it means operationally,” said transformation leader Ran Shaham.
It's a truth HR leaders know well: vision without design leaves people anxious and disconnected from the change narrative.
However, undisciplined AI programs bring about other effects to HR strategy. High-performing AI users report that AI makes their output more efficient, but 88% also report burnout and 77% say AI increases their workload through task fragmentation and moderation demands, according to recent research by Upwork.
“AI can recognize patterns faster than we can but it can’t tell us which patterns actually matter. That’s still a human job,” said CHRO and executive Martijn Seijsener in relation to large-scale HR and IT transformation work.
AI accelerates work, but only humans can assign meaning to it. The risk is not that AI replaces people, but that organizational culture, mentorship, collective problem-solving and collaboration get deprioritized in the pursuit of efficiency.
A Shift From 'Human-Only' to 'Human-Engaged' Work
At WorkTech NY 2025, analysts predicted that “human-first” labor will fall from 50% today to just 30% by 2030, as 70% of work becomes “human engaged,” where people work side-by-side with AI systems to complete tasks.
The trend forces a fundamental redefinition of talent models. Entry-level roles, long used to onboard and build institutional knowledge, are eroding. Without thoughtful redesign, organizations could unintentionally hollow out their talent pipeline before developing new pathways for growth. This will create a talent shortfall that could create a crisis for team engagement and continuity.
This human engaged model also disrupts the traditional relationship between employer and employee. For decades, organizations owned the output of work, while employees retained ownership over their capabilities. But AI systems are now trained on employee behaviors, decisions and workflows, effectively capturing not just what people produce, but how they think.
“We used to treat tech as something you plug in. Now, AI is more like onboarding a new team member. You don’t just deploy a team member, you integrate them," said Seijsener.
Companies are adopting a decentralized AI implementation model, embedding AI champions into functions like HR, marketing and finance, rather than centralizing decision-making under a single technical owner.
Shaham shared a vision of what that looks like in practice: “Driven by the eagerness to move fast, each unit got to choose its own AI tools, while governance was addressed at a later stage, if at all,” he said. “Freedom with structure was what made adoption possible without chaos.”
The future direction for organizational design is clear: AI strategy as distributed enablement, not centralized command. HR’s role shifts from overseeing compliance to designing human-technology collaboration and ensuring psychological safety through the transition.
Yet complex questions remain. If an employee’s process knowledge is embedded in AI models, does the organization now “own” part of their skillset? And when that employee moves on, what do they take with them?
Why CHROs May Become More Strategic Than CIOs
Industry observers have made a bold but increasingly credible prediction: as AI internalizes workflows, the CHRO will become more strategically important than the CIO.
Technology can scale insights and output, but it cannot set the norms, ethics and motivational frameworks that make those outputs meaningful and sustainable.
Additionally, as AI replaces certain functions and processes, the team structure will change and evolve. We will need to work with AI as team members. Furthermore, with the rise of fractional and gig work, contract workers will reshape our teams and collaborative norms. CHRO strategy must start to evolve to flexible teams, project collaboration tools and start with a work allocation model, where teams are formed around programs and projects, not the other way around. And still ensure trust and transparency are available to all.
That responsibility requires a shift in mindset. Instead of asking, “How can AI get more from people?” forward-looking People Strategy leaders must ask, “How can AI help people work better?”
Where AI Is Straining People Strategy
Across HR functions, several pressure points are emerging:
- Performance Management: AI can flag anomalies and patterns in performance, but if not handled with context, it risks creating a culture of hyper-surveillance rather than development.
- Workload and Mental Load: Employees report needing to “manage the AI” (reviewing, calibrating, editing the AI workslop), adding invisible labor not captured in productivity metrics.
- Skill Validation: If AI automates tactical tasks, employees may struggle to demonstrate their value in traditional ways. Career identity becomes harder to articulate when “the AI did part of it.”
- Knowledge Commodification: AI systems can lead to the appropriation of tacit knowledge, along with concentration of power and marginalization, as foreseeable consequences for workers when LLM-powered knowledge systems are deployed in organizations.
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The New HR Mandate
Organizations should adopt a human/ AI roadmap to navigate this new territory, drawing from process and employee journey maps, using design thinking frameworks to really understand intersections and impact:
1. Governance and Oversight Boards
Cross-functional review boards to vet AI use cases, approve permissions and trace decision pathways.
2. Transparent Decision Trails
AI recommendations, especially in hiring, mobility or performance, must generate explainable reasoning and leave space for human override.
3. Human-in-the-Loop by Design
AI should augment judgment, not replace it. High-stakes decisions must remain hybrid.
4. Reskilling and Identity Anchoring
Provide employees with explicit paths to redefine their value with AI, not in competition with it.
5. Cultural Norms and Psychological Safety
Normalize AI as a collaborator while reinforcing human discretion and ethical judgment as the ultimate authority.
The Future of People Strategy: Designing for Human Agency in an AI Workplace
The path forward is not about choosing between AI and people. It is about engineering a new relationship between the two.
Organizations that view AI as a cost-cutting mechanism will see short-term efficiency but long-term cultural erosion. Those that treat AI as a teammate — one that must be onboarded, governed, corrected and taught — will be the ones that unlock adaptive, high-trust teams capable of navigating uncertainty.
As AI shifts the balance of labor, identity and ownership, People Strategy is no longer a support function. It is the design discipline that determines whether AI drives disengagement or unleashes new forms of human contribution to work.
Editor's Note: What other challenges are people leaders grappling with today?
- Start With the System, Not the Task: A Lean Framework for HR AI Implementation — When you automate drudgery, you optimize the past. Start with purpose and system design to create space for reinvention.
- Finding Your Place in the AI-Driven Post-Skills Era — Why cultivating judgment, critique and contextual intelligence matters more than skills in an era defined by AI-driven automation.
- Why AI Hiring Discrimination Lawsuits Are About to Explode — AI is reshaping hiring — and the courtroom. Job seekers are suing over biased screening tools, and experts say a wave of lawsuits is just beginning.
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