Always appreciate your insights, Brian. This conversation has been circulating in our field for decades...I even wrote my graduate thesis on HR becoming a true strategic business partner (and that was awhile ago!) ;/
I think what has shifted is business expectations. With AI now able to handle so much of the transactional and operational load, the expectation for HR to be data-driven, strategic, and proactively connected to the business isn't a "nice to have" anymore. It's the baseline. AI won't just make their work easier. It'll make their roles redundant.
Completely agree, and a point Tracy made in our Forum session -- HR as a cost center, the unrealized potential, etc are NOT at all new, but AI makes it more possible -- and more existential in some ways!
One problem I see over and over again in organizations is that HR doesn’t get the development needed to actually be and think strategically. Especially in small to mid-sized organizations, the HR team gets bogged down with the tactical and don’t truly know what thinking strategically looks like. Strategy is not something that just comes naturally to most people, it needs to be developed and practiced.
I have to a certain extent. Especially at the more junior levels, but I’ve seen companies getting rid of ‘expensive’ strategic HR executives for more tactical ones. I’ve also seen HR being rolled up under CFO’s which stretches that executive and the only HR items that get complete are the compliance ones. People development is typically the first to go. Tough situation for HR to be in and they typically need a true partner organization that can help elevate the people.
This…”But here’s the opportunity: as Ethan Mollick argues, HR should be R&D for organizations. These are the people who understand organizational behavior and design. With the right leadership, they could be redesigning how work happens rather than managing how policies get followed.”
Fantastic framing of HR's crossroads moment. The Slack example about engineers quitting over unresolved tickets hits hard because it quantifies what gets lost when you treat People teams as pure cost. The realchallenge is shifting from measuring HR by budget to measuring by productivity gains and attrition prevented.
it was a hard, ugly lesson to learn....and I'd agree with that challenge. Improvements in engagement, time to hire, declining attrition, internal cycles times, reductions in time spent on "admin", etc
Always appreciate your insights, Brian. This conversation has been circulating in our field for decades...I even wrote my graduate thesis on HR becoming a true strategic business partner (and that was awhile ago!) ;/
I think what has shifted is business expectations. With AI now able to handle so much of the transactional and operational load, the expectation for HR to be data-driven, strategic, and proactively connected to the business isn't a "nice to have" anymore. It's the baseline. AI won't just make their work easier. It'll make their roles redundant.
Completely agree, and a point Tracy made in our Forum session -- HR as a cost center, the unrealized potential, etc are NOT at all new, but AI makes it more possible -- and more existential in some ways!
One problem I see over and over again in organizations is that HR doesn’t get the development needed to actually be and think strategically. Especially in small to mid-sized organizations, the HR team gets bogged down with the tactical and don’t truly know what thinking strategically looks like. Strategy is not something that just comes naturally to most people, it needs to be developed and practiced.
Strong agreement and compounded the past few years in many companies by HR being disproportionately hit by layoffs. Have you seen that too?
I have to a certain extent. Especially at the more junior levels, but I’ve seen companies getting rid of ‘expensive’ strategic HR executives for more tactical ones. I’ve also seen HR being rolled up under CFO’s which stretches that executive and the only HR items that get complete are the compliance ones. People development is typically the first to go. Tough situation for HR to be in and they typically need a true partner organization that can help elevate the people.
This…”But here’s the opportunity: as Ethan Mollick argues, HR should be R&D for organizations. These are the people who understand organizational behavior and design. With the right leadership, they could be redesigning how work happens rather than managing how policies get followed.”
Fantastic framing of HR's crossroads moment. The Slack example about engineers quitting over unresolved tickets hits hard because it quantifies what gets lost when you treat People teams as pure cost. The realchallenge is shifting from measuring HR by budget to measuring by productivity gains and attrition prevented.
it was a hard, ugly lesson to learn....and I'd agree with that challenge. Improvements in engagement, time to hire, declining attrition, internal cycles times, reductions in time spent on "admin", etc