AI is changing how companies hire, train and lead, and in doing so, the role of the HR manager expands.
Today’s leading HR leaders are becoming AI strategists, helping their organizations navigate the next wave of workplace transformation.
“The old HR model was employees this way, technology that way,” explains Thomas Hutzschenreuter, professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). “But the new working model is human-AI collaboration.”
AI is a colleague Now, he says, that means “HR has a broader mandate. They not only need to understand the people and the culture, but also dig deeper into the strategy, the business and the technology itself.”
To understand how companies are navigating this change, Business Insider spoke with executives at Citizens Bank, one of the largest banks in the Northeast; Boston Consulting Group, a global consulting firm; and UiPath, an automation software testing company.
All interviews have been edited for brevity.
Susan LaMonica, human resources director at Citizbank
Susan LaMonica, CHRO, Citizens Bank. Citizens Bank
CHRO become architects of the future of work, connecting people, technology and data.
We find ourselves in the middle of many questions that relate to how we move forward as an organization, such as: What will happen to entry-level positions? What roles are emerging? And how can we retrain people in ways that prepare them to make thoughtful changes?
We need people who can learn, adapt and change quickly. Our technologists must develop their business acumen, and our business people must develop their digital and technical savvy. The lines are blurring.
My HR team is developing a base of skills and abilities. We speak with consulting partners and clients. There is an openness to joint learning because everyone is trying to understand the same things: what the AI-driven workforce will look like, how to divide work into tasks for AI versus humans, and what AI agents can handle versus humans.
We are subject to a lot of regulatory oversight in our industry. It’s great that people can develop their own AI agents – there’s a move to decentralize these capabilities – but we need to be aware of the risks and governance and how we do it safely and ethically.
Alicia Pittman, director of human resources at Boston Consulting Group
Alicia Pittman, Director of Human Resources, Boston Consulting Group Boston Consulting Group
AI is changing how the work is done and What the job is done. Business models are evolvingand the way businesses serve their customers is changing. The role of CHRO now requires adapting to both at once. It’s a big challenge.
In consulting, our ability to add value requires constant evolution of our approach to human capital. The problems are constant; it’s the rhythm that’s different. Today, a quarter of our activity relies on AI, which was not the case two years ago.
We need our people need to master AI. About 90% of our workforce uses AI regularly, and more than half use it daily. To achieve this, we built a multi-tiered support system: an empowerment network of 1,400 people acting as evangelists and coaches.
We have trained over 100 team coaches to provide practical support. We deploy experts directly into teams to help them reinvent workflows and organize innovation competitions to maintain momentum.
Our HR team has taken the lead. We started with recruiting, consolidating six IT systems into one and integrating AI across the platform as well as performance management and development.
We are also experimenting with voice tools, chat interfaces and AI Avatars for real-time coaching. These tools give employees confidence, learning opportunities and instant feedback. They don’t replace managers: they free them up for higher-level thinking and relationship building.
Agi Garaba, Director of Human Resources at UiPath
Agi Garaba, Human Resources Manager, UiPath UiPath
OUR business is automationso this muscle is very strong for my team. But the next frontier of agentic AI is that of adjustment.
We use these AI agents, but we also create them. An agent, almost in production, participates in performance reviews, a tedious and sometimes dreaded task. Our agent helps employees write their self-assessment and collects feedback, bringing it together much faster. It also helps managers by consolidating feedback from multiple resources.
He won’t make grading decisions on behalf of the manager, but he will make the end of the year much smoother. Instead of spending time on administration, managers can focus on providing feedback to themselves and my team on the right career development framework.
There are a lot of unknowns at the moment and fear is natural. But it should fuel curiosity and development. Now is the time to think seriously about career development.
We have this idea that AI only affects entry-level or lower jobs. The truth is that technology is replacing skills learned by highly skilled people.
If you look at medical and aviation – areas that we always thought technology wouldn’t touch – that’s no longer the case. This won’t happen overnight. We have time to prepare. But this concerns everyone, regardless of profession.