Leaders in the HR department ask me about AI constantly now. Most of the time they want me to either confirm the dystopian version, where in ten years nobody has a job, or talk them out of it entirely.
I am not going to do either one.
Here is what I actually believe. Over the next five years, as AI shifts more and more into the workplace, HR is going to be responsible for reskilling. That is going to be the primary goal for people in HR.
Not hiring. Not firing. Reskilling.
And most organizations are not set up for it yet.
The problem is already in your building. You have people right now who are using AI tools to do their job. That part is happening whether or not anyone approved it. Whatever the reason why the jobs in HR departments are sad and frustrating, AI can actually make it exciting because of the reskilling and the discovery that can occur..
Then you have to think about what it means for the folks who either could not use the tool, or should not be using it based on what their role actually is.
Those are your people too. They are engaged. They are good contributors. They actively want to be in your organization and more importantly, they are interested in where this new trend’s effect will affect the department.
So the question becomes, how do you reskill them?
I want to be careful here, because this gets misread. I am not saying we should provide a crutch for those folks.
But we do need to think about what it means for them to go into different roles, or shift what they are working on, so that they are still adding the same amount of value.
You still need talent. They still need work. It’s like adding complementary to the talents that they already have.
Those two things have not stopped being true just because the tools got better.
Handing someone a course is not development.
This is where I see organizations reach for the easy answer.
Someone’s role gets disrupted, so they get assigned a course. Box checked, budget spent, problem declared solved.
It is not the same thing as developing a person in the HR department, and the gap between those two shows up later, quietly, when that person leaves.
Think about what you actually need on the other side of all this automation.
You need people who can still show up in front of your clients, your stakeholders, whoever your end users are, and really be that human experience that impacts that person to continue to buy or patronize your business.
Those types of interpersonal skills are never going to go away.
But how you develop the whole person is going to be important for your business and the longevity of your organization.
A course does not develop a whole person. People do.
Where AI adoption is actually falling short
I talk to a lot of business owners and leaders in HR deartment about where they are with this, and the tool itself is almost never the issue.
Right now they are using tons of AI in writing, communication tools, and messaging. Some are using it for retention work to the extent their HRIS allows that functionality.
Where I see folks falling short is in how they are training their team to use it.
Three versions of this come up over and over.
The first is the company with no AI policy that is actively using AI anyway.
The second is the company that has not endorsed a tool, so people are riding dirty on the side. They are emailing things to themselves and pasting the output back in.
The third is the organization genuinely using this well, but that has not thought about what it means long term to fold it in, as opposed to just rolling it out and hoping everyone can figure it out.
All three are the same underlying problem. Nobody made a decision.
For what it is worth, I use AI every day in our business. Event management, calendar management, email. I am not standing outside this.
Yes, it takes jobs. That is not the whole picture.
AI is going to take people’s jobs. Full stop.
We have already seen it. As an HR person I get the calls. Let us just outsource this. Let us figure out how we can use AI to do their job. That person left, so let us not backfill and just add tools instead.
I am not going to soften that.
But here is what happens alongside it.
People are going to be able to increase their output so much that they are going to need additional folks in their organization to supply the new demand they just created.
And there are still owners who are going to realize their business cannot function on AI alone, which means bringing in people who actively want to be in a human-facing role.
I am watching it happen right now. Sales is hiring. Benefit brokers are seeing a lot of demand. Any role where someone being in front of you is critical to the success of the business is a role people are going to continue to flock to.
The trades are the other place. AI is never going to replace HVAC, refrigeration, or construction. Those are going to continue to boom.
What leaders are hiring for now
When I ask hiring managers what they are looking for as we move into this, none of what they name is technical.
- Your ability to take initiative
- Your ability to be personable and really connect with people
- Listening skills, which are always going to be top-notch
- Your ability to have common sense and know the next best step
That last one is probably the most important of all of it.
Look at that list again. Every item on it is something a tool cannot do on your behalf.
That is not a coincidence. That is the whole shift.
If you are in HR and you are wondering what your job becomes as this accelerates, it becomes deciding who gets developed, into what, and how fast. That is a bigger job than the one most HR functions are scoped for today.
Which is exactly why it should start now, and not in the quarter you need it.
If you are building this out for your own organization, our Learning Partnership Program runs as 6, 8, or 12 sessions a year depending on what your team needs, and I am always happy to start with a conversation about where your gaps actually are: https://cwchr.com/contact/
Where is your organization on reskilling right now, honestly?
Have you started, or is it still on the list for next year? I would love to hear where people actually are with this.