There’s certainly no shortage of scary talk about what AI is going to do to HR.

Jobs will disappear. HR teams will get smaller. Recruiting and HR administration will become increasingly automated. Technology will handle work that once required entire teams of people.

Some of this will happen.

But this isn’t the first time HR has gone through a major technological disruption. Go back to the late 1990s, when the internet started changing how companies recruited, communicated with employees, administered benefits and managed HR information.

I remember plenty of doomsday predictions then about what technology would eliminate. And it did eliminate some things.

Job boards and ATS systems changed recruiting. Employee self-service changed HR administration. Information that once lived in filing cabinets and HR offices suddenly became accessible online. Entire processes became faster and required fewer people to administer them.

HR didn’t disappear.

It adapted.

And as more of the transactional work became automated, expectations of HR leaders actually increased.

I think we may be at the beginning of another version of that transition.

AI Will Change the Work

There are parts of HR that AI can already do faster than people. It can summarize information, draft communications, analyze data, answer employee questions and automate pieces of recruiting, benefits, payroll and HR operations.

Those capabilities are going to improve quickly.

That means some work currently performed by HR professionals will require fewer people. Some jobs will change substantially. Some will probably disappear.

But reducing the number of people required to complete a process isn’t the same thing as reducing the importance of the function.

AI may reduce the amount of transactional HR work companies need. It will simultaneously increase the value of sophisticated HR leadership.

AI can analyze a workforce, identify patterns and model scenarios. But someone still has to decide what to do with that information.

What work should be automated and what shouldn’t? Which jobs should be redesigned? What talent will the company need two or three years from now? Where should the company build capability internally and where should it hire? How much organizational disruption can the business absorb?

Most HR processes and decisions still require judgment and a pretty sophisticated understanding of the business.

AI can make the information better and the process faster.

It doesn’t make the decision.

The HR Team May Get Smaller While the HR Leadership Job Gets Bigger

This is where I think some of the current conversation about AI and HR misses the bigger picture.

It’s entirely possible that companies will operate with smaller HR organizations. Technology has been pushing HR in that direction for years, and AI will accelerate it.

But a smaller HR organization doesn’t necessarily mean a less important HR function.

In fact, it could mean the opposite.

If fewer people are handling transactional work, the people who remain have to operate at a higher level. HR leaders will need to understand technology, workforce economics, organizational design, talent, change management and, most importantly, the business itself.

The CHRO will also have to help the CEO and leadership team answer much bigger questions about AI: Where can it create productivity? What work will we no longer need people to perform? What new capabilities will we need? How should jobs and organizations be redesigned? And how do we make those changes without disrupting the business?

That’s not really an AI conversation.

It’s a workforce planning conversation.

And it puts sophisticated HR leadership right in the middle of it.

The Bar for HR Leadership Is Going Up

I don’t think the most interesting question is whether AI will eliminate HR jobs.

It will eliminate some. It will change many others.

The more interesting question is what kind of HR leadership becomes more valuable as that happens.

Transactional work becomes easier to automate. Judgment, business acumen, organizational understanding and the ability to lead through change become much harder to replace.

We saw a version of this when the internet transformed HR more than 25 years ago. HR adapted, and the expectations placed on its leaders increased.

This transition will probably happen faster.

AI will make some HR work less valuable.

It will also make really good HR leadership more valuable than ever.

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