The narrative surrounding AI in HR Strategy has shifted. We have moved past the initial waves of existential anxiety—”Will robots replace us?”—into a far more nuanced, albeit complex, operational reality. For Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs), the challenge is no longer just about procuring technology; it is about steering organizational identity through a period of profound cognitive decoupling.
At a recent executive panel at the Horizon Summit, CHROs from diverse industries—ranging from global logistics to digital delivery platforms—dissected the friction between automation and human connection. The consensus? The integration of AI is not a linear path to efficiency, but a series of strategic trade-offs that demand a reimagining of leadership itself.
The Cognitive Trade-Off: Drudgery vs. Critical Thought
One of the central tensions facing modern HR leaders is the fear that generative AI might erode human creativity and critical thinking. The concern is that by delegating problem-solving to algorithms, we risk creating a workforce that has forgotten how to question assumptions.
However, pragmatic leadership suggests a different framing. Rather than “dumbing down” the workforce, AI offers an opportunity to strip away what Ana Mitrasevic, Chief People and Sustainability Officer at Delivery Hero, terms “dumb tasks”. The argument is that human intelligence is currently being squandered on administrative drudgery.
“What makes humans dumb is doing dumb tasks,” Mitrasevic noted, emphasizing that the removal of low-value friction is a ‘hello moment’ for organizational culture. By automating the mundane, organizations ostensibly free up capacity for culture and connection.
Yet, the risk of “delegated thinking” remains real. Armand Sohet, CHRO at AkzoNobel, warned that while AI acts as a powerful lever for judgment, it cannot replace the foundational work required to generate insight. “Show me the work,” Sohet advises his teams. “You need to think… do not delegate your thinking”. The successful HR function of the future will use AI to challenge outputs and sharpen judgment, not merely to generate content.
The Great Inversion: Why Soft Skills May Be Automatable First
Perhaps the most contrarian insight to emerge from the summit challenges the prevailing wisdom that “hard skills” will be automated first, leaving “soft skills” as the exclusive domain of humans.
Sohet argued that soft skills might actually be compressed by AI faster than hard skills. The logic is rooted in the current state of enterprise infrastructure. Hard skills—payroll, processing, technical compliance—are often embedded in legacy ERP systems and shared service centers that are notoriously bureaucratic and difficult to unravel.
Conversely, soft skills—such as coaching, conflict resolution, and communication—are text-based and pattern-oriented. Today, a manager can query an AI coach for a script to handle a difficult conversation and receive an output that arguably rivals the advice of an average HR business partner.
“This is happening right now,” Sohet observed. If AI can simulate empathy and structure delicate dialogue more effectively than an untrained human, HR leaders must radically rethink their value proposition. If the “human touch” can be synthesized, the role of HR must evolve from providing scripts to providing deep, unscripted contextual wisdom.
The Productivity Paradox: A Lesson from History
History suggests that technology rarely reduces headcount in the linear fashion predicted by economists. In the 1990s, the advent of the personal computer promised to revolutionize HR ratios. The same promise was made with the arrival of ERPs in the 2000s.
Yet, as the panel noted, we have not seen the predicted decimation of the HR function. Instead, the ratio of HR professionals to employees has shifted from 1:90 to roughly 1:60 today. Why? Because as technology handles administrative load, the organization’s demand for complexity, compliance, and strategic support increases.
“Leadership eats technology for breakfast,” Sohet remarked. The decision to reduce headcount is a leadership choice, not a technological inevitability. AI will likely follow the same trajectory: it will not empty the HR department, but it will raise the bar for the complexity of problems that HR is expected to solve.
Operationalizing AI: From Safety to Salary Ranges
For organizations moving from theory to practice, the “trial and error” method is proving superior to long-term strategic roadmapping. The speed of AI evolution renders annual planning cycles obsolete.
Real-Time Rewards and Data At Delivery Hero, the Total Rewards function—traditionally a slow-moving beast dependent on annual salary surveys—is being disrupted. Mitrasevic highlighted the use of AI to access real-time market data, allowing the company to adjust salary ranges dynamically rather than waiting for outdated benchmarks. This agility allows for precision in compensation strategy, such as adjusting comp-ratios for software engineers based on immediate market cooling or heating.
Safety as the Killer App For industrial and operational environments, the “human factor” is literal. Chris Rayner, Chief People Officer at Swissport, emphasized AI’s role in physical safety for frontline workers. Beyond efficiency, AI is being deployed to predict hazards—from driving speeds to equipment failures—before they result in injury. In this context, AI is not replacing the human; it is acting as a guardian, a use case that garners high trust and adoption among the workforce.
Executive Implications
For the C-Suite and Board, the insights from the panel suggest three immediate shifts in governance and strategy:
- Democratize the Pilot Phase: Adoption requires curiosity, not just top-down mandates. Organizations should encourage distinct teams to trial different tools and “play back” their findings to the group. The tool does not choose the function; the function must choose the tool.
- Re-evaluate the “Soft Skill” Moat: Do not assume that coaching and culture are safe from automation. Invest in leadership capabilities that go beyond scripted interactions—focus on complex judgment, ethical reasoning, and crisis management, which AI cannot yet replicate reliably.
- Focus on Ratio, Not Headcount: Resist the temptation to build an AI business case solely on Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) reduction. History shows these reductions rarely materialize as expected. Focus instead on the capacity created—what strategic problems can your team now solve that they were previously too busy to address?
Summit it up, as we look toward 2026, the successful integration of AI in HR will not be defined by the sophistication of the technology, but by the resilience of the culture into which it is introduced. Technology remains, as the old adage goes, “a useful servant but a dangerous master”.
The task for CHROs is to ensure that as we hand over the “dumb tasks” to the machines, we are rigorously upskilling our people to handle the smart ones. The future belongs to organizations that can leverage AI to make their people not just faster, but more deeply human.
To further deep dive into AI in HR Strategy with particular focus on how to bring AI to both HR and organization journey while manage change successfully along the way, the conversation continues at the HR World Summit in Porto.
You may watch the entire panel discussion:
