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As the “AI future” becomes the present, what work is, and how we perform it, is changing across every role.
Heads of HR, CHROs, and chief people officers have always sat at the helm of change management. People leaders are critical to optimizing the value of an organization’s employees and teams. Yet too often, operational tasks like HR paperwork and compliance silo people leaders. People leaders themselves often lament that they don’t have a “seat at the table” in executive decision-making.
As enterprises go through their AI transformation, a people leader’s mindset and perception need to shift dramatically. People leaders are, and organizations need to treat them as, enablers of change, drivers of workforce transformation, and architects of an organization’s future of work.
HR and people leaders must adopt the mindset of a “Chief Change Officer” in the era of AI.
Change Isn’t New to People Leaders
Change is nothing new to HR and people professionals.
Digital transformation — the process of moving from analog, manual workflows to paperless ones — was the first wave of major change in the last few decades. HR teams made this transformation possible by redesigning roles, skills, and performance management to facilitate the shift.
COVID-19 created another significant moment of change. The pandemic caused organizations to almost instantly move to virtual workplaces. HR teams had to facilitate that shift in practice with new policies, while also sustaining engagement, culture, and productivity while teams were separated. In many ways, today’s workplaces still operate in the shadow of those decisions.
Now, AI transformation presents the next watershed moment. Enterprises grapple with determining where and how they should embed AI in work, and what the new role of humans will be.
Like every wave of change, HR leaders will be the ones to put it into practice — helping teams understand the vision and adapt their work at scale. According to Gartner, 26% of people leaders already operate under an “AI-first” HR model. The year 2026 will only see that percentage grow.
Adopt “Change” in Your Role
Even if people leaders’ titles don’t include the word “change,” they should view themselves as strategic drivers of change. In practice, this means moving beyond daily tasks in favor of the big picture. This means connecting meaningfully to the big picture strategy and pulling up their own seat to the table.
1. Move Beyond Daily Tasks
HR work is broad and vast. From processes and paperwork, it includes everything from managing payroll to compliance audits and internal requests. Though these operations are vital to any organization, people leaders must also ensure that they are thinking in terms of business outcomes. How can HR teams automate processes or offload operational strain to allow the HR team to look beyond the operational and towards the strategic matters of the business? How can leaders better organize and align talent to business goals? How can internal systems allow teams to be more agile?
2. Value Teams as a Resource
People are normally an organization’s largest investment. If organizations view them strategically, they should also be a key differentiator from the competition due to the unique composition of each organization’s workforce. Therefore, organizations should treat talent as their most valuable resource rather than a cost center. HR and People leaders’ work is what retains, recruits, and deploys top talent; that work is key to enacting enterprise strategy.
3. Drive Executive-Level Strategy
Because our work has such a direct impact on business, HR and People leaders need to act like the partners in transformation that they truly are. Leaders need to proactively have a perspective on how to set up their people for success in AI transformation, asking: What skills do we need, how do roles need to shift, what is the upskilling plan, and how do we both manage and measure change? People leaders are uniquely equipped to answer and act on those questions. They need to be in the executive-level conversations in order to do that.
People Leaders Must Drive the Change
AI transformation forces a moment of change in all organizations, across all industries. Technologies, teams, and systems of work are shifting. To match the pace and scale of this change, HR and People leaders must embrace the role of “Chief Change Officer.” After all, one constant HR and People leaders can rely on in this fluid work environment we’re in is change. By positioning themselves as leaders of that change, HR and People leaders will demonstrate the credibility and impact their organizations need to navigate not only the current, but also future horizons.
Lauren Tropeano is the chief people officer at Docebo and previously led global people teams at Skillshare, DraftKings, Cogito, and Dell/EMC.
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