How AI will transform the HR landscape

By 2030, the entire baby boomer generation will have reached the age of 65 or older, while Generation Z, born after 1997, will make up 30 percent of the workforce. Alongside this demographic shift, transformative technological advances – notably the rapid rise of AI – are already reshaping the world of work.

In a discussion at Workday Rising EMEA in Barcelona, HR leaders explained how these changes will impact organisations’ most valuable assets – their people.

They also explored the key challenges and opportunities ahead for HR, as well as how leaders can recognise AI’s potential and prepare their employees for an AI-enabled future.

Here are six key insights from the discussion:

1. AI can elevate and simplify the employee experience to meet changing expectations: “People are expecting the same experience in a company that they see in the broader world – they’re expecting Uber and Amazon-like experiences,” explains Cyril Zaidan, Head of Digital Employee Experience at Sanofi, a global healthcare and pharmaceutical company. “Big companies with heavy processes and a lot of tools for daily tasks need to simplify to deliver a great experience.”
2. AI can drive better people decisions that create real results: “We’ve seen the size of people analytics teams grow by 43 percent since 2020,” notes David Green, Director of global professional services firm, Insight222. “And we’re seeing organisations create value out of people analytics, whether that’s commercial outcomes, workforce experiences, building an analytics culture across an organisation and even societal benefits.”
3. AI can save HR leaders time that can be redirected to higher-value work: ”You're going to see things like AI being able to create job descriptions: in the past, people spent hours and hours doing that, and now we have the ability to use large language models,” says Rich Bye, Vice President of Workforce and Payroll Product Strategy at Workday.
4. AI can help create balance, meaning and satisfaction among employees: “There’s an opportunity for AI to be incredibly impactful not just for the business, but for the people, by giving them better day-to-day lives without the stress of so much manual effort,” explains Pete Tiliakos, Principal Analyst, Advisor and Managing Partner at 3Sixty Insights, a research, advisory and consulting firm.
5. HR should have a seat at the table in balancing AI’s potential positives with its potential risks: “AI can come up with a lot of solutions but there are also a lot of downsides,” says Raimond Rovers, Partner at Deloitte Consulting. “HR has a role to play to make sure everyone understands the value AI can bring and also make sure it’s not used in the wrong way.” 
6. To manage through extraordinary change, leaders need to listen more than ever: As the role of AI evolves, “HR will have to be very flexible and understand how to adapt in ways they probably haven’t had to do before,” says Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer and Managing Partner at Sapient Insights Group, a research and advisory firm. “Make sure you’re listening to your employees and building in change management. You need to be able to understand what change is taking place, manage it and then figure out how to be a part of it.”

To explore these insights further, watch the full recording from the discussion at Workday Rising EMEA.