Will AI replace HR?
If you work in HR, you’ve probably experienced some anxiety over recent headlines:
Amazon announces 15% HR layoffs to “improve efficiencies” with AI
IBM replaces 94% of HR tasks with AI
A talent executive takes to LinkedIn to warn that the HR title is becoming obsolete
The fear is real, making it natural for HR professionals to wonder: Am I next?
According to the global employment firm Globalization Partners’ “AI at Work Report,” based on a survey of 2,850 executives, about three-quarters said AI was critical to their companies’ success, while 9 in 10 are aggressively scaling AI initiatives.
The twist: just 3% would trust AI to make any decision without human oversight. Half of executives don’t fully trust AI with financial decisions, 22% worry about the quality of its data, and 20% question whether AI outputs are trustworthy.
Translation? The robots don’t look to be taking over anytime soon. But they are forcing a reckoning.
Four in five HR professionals in the U.S. see AI as critical to their companies’ success, a greater share than that of business leaders overall. Even more telling, 74% of HR people believe their own departments are ahead of other areas of the company insofar as AI adoption, suggesting that HR — the function that’s supposedly in the hotseat — is leading the AI revolution.
“The most forward-thinking HR leaders aren’t asking if AI will replace them; they’re asking, ‘What can AI handle so I can finally do the work that actually matters?,’” said Nicole Sahin, CEO of Globalization Partners.
Nearly half of HR people say AI enhances talent management — not by replacing human judgment but by handling grunt work like creating training programs, managing documentation and generating offer letters. That puts them in a better position to run what only humans can do: building culture, developing leaders, and having conversations requiring empathy, context and wisdom.
Despite the scary headlines, just 16% of company leaders say they’re automating aggressively enough to make human roles optional, according to the report. Meanwhile, 11% are doubling down on human talent as their differentiator. Higher-ups see AI’s biggest advantages in tasks like automating compliance, summarizing data and handling routine tasks — mirroring how HR sees them. Among the functions missing from that list: HR-centric ones like strategic workforce planning, change management, conflict resolution, executive coaching and culture building.
“AI can’t read a room. It can’t sense when a high performer is about to quit. It can’t tell a CEO their leadership style is destroying culture,” Sahin said. “Those capabilities? Still exclusively human.”
Nearly 7 in 10 executives say they would rather use AI and be 50% more productive, even if it means reducing headcount. Yet organizations cutting HR staff aren’t eliminating HR functions; rather, they’re getting rid of transactional, administrative work AI can handle.
What remains — and what’s growing, according to the report — is the need for strategic leadership in the HR department, encompassing designing AI governance frameworks, managing digital transformation’s human side and navigating ethical questions when efficiency conflicts with values.
Nine in 10 business leaders agree that people only using platforms like ChatGPT for basic queries are missing AI’s full potential, with the report noting that the next wave will have AI agents handling complex workflows with minimal supervision.
Bottom line: HR professionals who position themselves as strategists determining how AI systems should operate in the company would seem to have the upper hand. “The HR professionals who will be indispensable are the ones developing judgment, not just skills,” as Sahin put it. “Skills become automated. Judgment becomes more valuable.”