AI is no longer an experiment. It drives strategic business decisions. While technology leaders focus on adoption, HR is often left out of conversations about how to use AI strategically. But HR is essential to shaping the culture, coaching future leaders, and ensuring that high-touch work is human-driven, including ensuring that AI insights meet the real needs of employees.
According to SHRM, only 26% of HR professionals surveyed are involved in managing AI implementation. However, two-thirds believe HR should play a bigger role in assessing readiness and defining goals.
Why the cold shoulder about AI?
Companies often treat AI as a technology deployment led by the CIO with oversight from the finance department. But transformation is more than just implementation. It’s about aligning strategy, culture and people.
That means asking:
- What use cases for AI support our business strategy?
- How can we share the vision at all levels?
- How will the implementation impact employees?
- What skills do employees need and how do they develop them?
- Will your role change? If so, how?
- How can we measure performance in an AI-informed way, through continuous enablement rather than retrospective reviews?
Without an HR department, these questions will remain unanswered. According to Gartner, 62% of CEOs believe AI will define the next era of business, but only 21% of CIOs say their organizations are prioritizing reducing the impact of AI on their employees.
See also: Looking to accelerate your AI adoption? Don’t miss out on this talent pool with a huge appetite for technology
HR leaders understand how new tools like AI will impact workforce dynamics, for better or worse. Employee insights can be used to align talent strategies with both a company's reputation as an employer of choice and broader business objectives.
Compared to IT leaders, HR departments have the workforce insights needed to align AI with both culture and business goals. Rather than maintaining outdated annual reviews, HR departments can incorporate AI into modern performance support systems. This system fosters trust and fairness through ongoing goals, regular feedback, and evaluation.
AI accelerates feedback, recognition, and goal alignment. But without HR oversight, companies risk reinforcing outdated annual review cycles instead of enabling ongoing and fair conversations that actually improve outcomes and reflect an AI + human workforce. Eliminating HR also compromises recruitment and communication, leading to workforce imbalances and competitive disadvantage. The future is not “AI vs. humans”. Because HR guides partnerships, technology enhances what makes us human.
HR involvement may facilitate tool use
As AI tools increase in adoption and become more integrated into our professional and personal lives, resistance and fear towards them is becoming less of a concern. However, employees are often not leveraging AI as much as their employers think they should. While executives view AI as strategic, staff may be less aligned and more hesitant. HR is here to bridge the gap between leaders' vision and employees' actual use of AI.
HR plays a critical role in communication, hands-on training, and AI support to ensure employees are aligned with management’s strategic vision for an AI-powered workforce.
The most significant risks occur when AI adoption is fragmented, inequitable, and misaligned with management's employee priorities. Without HR, you run the risk of:
- No support for readiness assessment or changes
- reskilling delay
- Outcome-based performance evaluation where AI’s role is unclear
- Weak governance and reactive ethical responses
If HR is not at the center of AI adoption, organizations risk undermining employee trust and long-term investment value.
HR as guardian of ethical AI in the workplace
In addition to driving adoption, HR also plays a key role in the ethical use of AI. Human resources leaders manage the intersection of work, people, and company values and identity. These are ideal for ensuring that trust and fairness in AI deployments align with a company's past practices and future plans. Best practices include:
- Establishment of internal AI ethics committee
- AI-powered recommendations require explainability
- Deliver transparency to your workforce where AI can improve performance
- Evaluate AI not just for technical accuracy, but also for fairness and impact on employees
AI in hiring, promotion, and performance appraisal will impact real-world careers and lives. The role of HR has therefore become non-negotiable, requiring these processes to remain transparent, fair and human-driven. Without oversight, AI can reinforce bias and undermine trust. When HR takes center stage, AI becomes a tool of enablement rather than exclusion. HR can ensure fairness by:
- Define clear boundaries: AI can inform decision-making (suggesting candidates, summarizing feedback, etc.), but managers lead the conversation and final call.
- Ask vendors for explainability – how the model arrives at recommendations.
- Continuously test for bias across race, gender, age, and other categories.
- Train leaders to use AI insights as input for performance reviews and talent conversations. This is an enhancement, not an abandonment.
- Establish a review board of HR, IT, and DEI leaders to evaluate employment-related AI systems.
Framed this way, AI does not replace human judgment. Enhance ongoing performance practices by providing managers with richer insight into ongoing goals, feedback, and recognition. When executed properly, AI supports transparency and trust, which are the foundations of true performance.
CHRO: Coaching culture, strategy, and AI together
Are CHROs ready to take on a larger role in the adoption and use of AI? They are the perfect choice for the job. Their role is at the intersection of culture, people, and strategy. When HR leads AI adoption with a view to delivering continuous performance, technology becomes a tool that enhances rather than undermines trust, fairness, and collaboration. It's an opportunity for CHROs to ensure AI performance improves by putting people at the center.
