HR leaders urged to rethink AI, embrace change agility
FLORIDA, UNITED STATES — HR leaders are being called to reshape their approach to technology and transformation fundamentally. At the HR Executive Strategy Summit, experts warned that outdated mindsets are hindering progress and that success hinges on integrating humans with machines and fostering continuous adaptability.
“Transformation is not about tech; it’s about becoming,” Jason Averbook, senior partner at Mercer, told a crowd of nearly 100 in the summit.
Human-machine collaboration drives workforce success
The common anxiety that AI will replace humans is a tactical error that will ultimately lead to poor staffing policies.
Specialists claim that the talent ecosystem of the future is neither human nor machine, but a combined approach of human and machine, in which technology can enhance human abilities, rather than replace them.
“The workforce of the future isn’t human or machine—it’s human with machine,” Averbook stressed.
This demands a paradigm change in the current HR role that is not about counting workers or enhancing engagement, but rather about sailing and mediating this new type of human-machine teaming.
This integration demands a clear-eyed assessment of the unique strengths of both people and technology. HR must first understand what humans do best and what machines do best, then strategically envision how these combined capabilities fit into broader business architecture.
In this way, AI has an opportunity to achieve its purpose by raising the human capital rather than eliminating jobs, which will make HR a crucial strategic driver of creating the supercharged human resource of the future.
Success hinges on digital mindset, not tech alone
One of the greatest obstacles to change is that HR considers technology as a beginning and a silver bullet, which is a symptom of the absence of a real digital mindset.
It is not about what kind of technology is employed, but how an organization thinks and functions in a time where technology is hoarding nothing and, in fact, it accelerates teams to fail fast and stuff and run experiments; it requires teamwork to swiftly transform the implementation process, which hinges on long, inflexible implementation cycles.
Kathi Enderes, The Josh Bersin Co.’s Senior Vice President (SVP) and a global industry analyst, notes that the traditional concept of “change management” is outdated and insufficient for modern, continuous transformations like AI, and that organizations must instead foster a culture of constant adaptability, or “change agility,” where people and readiness are central to success.
“What’s in the middle?” Enderes asked. “It’s the people, the culture, the readiness,” she said.
In this era of transformation, the clear message from the summit is to embrace a culture of ‘changefulness,’ fundamentally re-engineering their organizations around the enduring strengths of people augmented by machines.
