For HR professionals, AI has moved beyond a buzzword and become a moment of inflection. Leaders are questioning how they will maintain their company’s competitive advantage at a time of rapid change.
“Talent becomes more important in a world where you can automate tasks,” said Mike Walsh, founder and CEO of Tomorrow, a global consultancy, on March 26 at SHRM Talent 2025 in Nashville. “The issue is not whether or not AI takes away certain jobs or certain tasks. ... The question is: How does this new age change the value of what we do and what it is to be good at your job?”
HR leaders will need to maintain their deep understanding of human complexity while gaining an understanding of how to apply new technology to be more productive. AI will change jobs, not destroy them. What’s most important is considering the competitive advantage your organization brings to the market.
Leaders should focus on these four things:
- Scale: Grow your business by expanding where you advertise to reach new demographics and by growing your workforce with the right hires.
- Speed: Quickly respond to new situations as they arise to meet challenges.
- Sustainability: Consider how your organization will impact the world.
- Security: Ensure you’re maintaining compliance of employee and customer data with any AI tools you use.
How to Identify High-Potential Employees
When scaling your company, focus on hiring employees who will come along with you on the journey to the future. The “reward hackers” are the employees who focus on maximizing their workload most efficiently. In the vein of working smarter, not harder, these employees may challenge you or your organization’s norms, but their ability to increase efficiency will be worth the acclimation period.
“Hire the person who thinks they can do your job in half the time with new technology,” Walsh said during his general session. “They know the job of the future is the job they destroy by finding a smarter way of doing the work.”
Lead Your Organization Toward the Future
Adapting to the future of work means accepting the culture of uncertainty we’re living in. This is a moment for HR to drive businesses forward. Post-session, Tamla Oates-Forney, CEO of SHRM Linkage, shared her thoughts on why embracing AI is critical.
“You have to embrace this moment of change because you can’t ignore it, or you’ll get left behind,” said Oates-Forney.
A few key tips from Walsh on how to move your company forward:
“Automate and elevate”: Focus on ways to reskill your existing workforce so it can continue to grow.
“Don’t work, design work”: Change your approach to working by reinventing jobs using new technology.
“Embrace uncertainty”: Use your curiosity to ask new questions, try new tools, and experiment with new approaches to work.
What’s Holding Leaders Back?
Uncertainty is a key factor for leaders who aren’t adopting AI at their organization.
“There are so many options in terms of application and how we use it. There’s a fear regarding security to embrace it fully,” Oates-Forney said. “A lot of companies as a whole are resistant to change.”
That being said, AI is just one of many tools that HR leaders have at their disposal to do their job. Post-session, Mike Aitken, executive vice president, HR professional solutions, at SHRM shared his take.
“AI is not everything. It’s another resource — optimize it. The sooner you get in there and start playing with AI, the more adaptive it’s going to be. Organizations over-index on it,” said Aitken.
Embracing the Challenge Ahead
The underlying challenge is that it’s hard to articulate the ROI from AI. Achieving employee adoption of new technology is difficult when leaders are still identifying how to quantify AI’s worth.
“Leaders need to be sharing examples of evolving to solve,” Oates-Forney said.
When leaders role model using AI, they can increase employee adoption. Organize a hackathon for your employees to test out a new AI tool or plan a working session for the leadership team to test the new technology.
When it comes to the future of work, HR leaders should remember the role they play in forging the path ahead.
“The future we live in is the future we choose to build,” Walsh said.
An organization run by AI is not a futuristic concept. Such technology is already a part of many workplaces and will continue to shape the labor market and HR. Here's how employers and employees can successfully manage generative AI and other AI-powered systems.
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