The Future of HR: How AI, Automation, and Evolving Leadership Will Shape Workforce Productivity

The business world is changing faster than ever, creating unprecedented challenges for HR leaders. Today’s HR teams face intense demands: managing diverse demographics, mastering new technologies, and proving productivity impact. HR must adapt to stay relevant. Becoming future-ready isn’t optional—it's essential. The Ibec Annual HR Summit brings together 450 of Ireland's top HR leaders, sharing insights on how HR must evolve.

But what are my key takeaways from the event?

1. Productivity Management Not Human Resource Management

For HR to remain relevant, it's crucial to align with, and contribute to, the overall business strategy. Failure to do so will render HR ineffective, potentially leading to another team assuming their role and seat at the executive table.?? Therefore, HR's focus should be on delivering what shareholders need. This requires strategic action in setting, measuring, and managing productivity goals.? A comprehensive productivity management framework should incorporate generative AI, automation, and a mix of permanent employees, gig workers, and outsourced partner organizations.?

HR's role is not just about managing human resources; it's about making a positive impact on the P&L and balance sheet through workforce productivity. If HR cannot demonstrate how its work contributes to these financial outcomes, it risks having a negative impact on the organization.

Therefore, financial and data literacy are essential for HR to demonstrate its impact on the P&L and balance sheet. Without this, HR risks losing its place at the executive table. In fact, every C-suite manager and individual needs to understand and communicate the value and impact they offer the business or step aside and let someone else manage this message.

2. Behavioural Science and Embrace Cognitive Diversity.

Embracing diverse perspectives prevents groupthink and enriches decision-making. Inclusive leadership values listening, openness to change, and fostering a culture of respect.? Leaders that don't listen, don't encourage disagreement with their beliefs and create a dangerous groupthink environment that disengages.? If you think you are different, then answer these questions.?

• Do you say less in meetings than your colleagues, or are you waiting on your turn to speak??
• Would you allow your meetings to be recorded as evidence of best practice for the rest of your organization??
• Do you like being surrounded by people who disagree with you??
• When was the last time you changed your mind about something you felt passionately about?
• Do you admit mistakes and failures when you are wrong?

HR leaders need to listen more to those who disagree with them. By actively seeking out and considering diverse perspectives, they can foster a more open-minded and receptive environment. This not only benefits the business but also promotes a culture of respect and understanding.

By embracing difference and diversity and by fostering an inclusive environment, HR leaders can help develop a sense of responsibility and commitment to their teams.        

How does this help?

Inclusive leadership is not just a concept, but a commitment that requires a lot of work. Every team is unique, with different age groups, personalities, and more. By listening you reduce withholding and and promote contributing, and develop a more inclusive and diverse environment. And the good news is that practically and statistically diverse environment are proven to more creative and productive.?

3. Employee and Colleague Centric Work Places

Employees need to be able to bring their best self to work. What does that look and feel like? It means a more personalised and engaging environments. But that is not easy to do. Trying to promote equity across a business while providing individual benefits and personalised fixability takes a lot of work on both sides.

So what's the answer?

A flexible philosophy on both sides is key. It is a negotiation and balance between you, your manager, your team, and the business goals. Freedom within a contract framework that develops transparency and trust and has high productivity is key.

Hiring, creating and empowering great leaders is key to deliver hyper-personalisation of teams. It is imperative organizations spend money and time developing the best leaders to create and sustain human-centred design and work experience. My skills and work have meaning. I am part of a learning organization, and I am leaning toward self-learning.

What should the result look like in the words of every employee?

• I have work and colleagues that inspire me.?
• I develop and grow. I am respected, and my views are respected, too.?
• I have the flexibility to be the best me.
• I am an individual and a team member who matters.?
• I have the tools and a wide variety of career path options open to me that will allow me to excel in my field. I have responsibility and control.
• We have a collective sense of the issues and goals of the team and business because we are clearly communicated with them.
• I have a sense of belonging within my tribe.

Now that is something to aspire to and highly possible if you want it to happen.

4. Gen Z are rejecting the way things have been.

Every generation struggles to understand the generations that come after them. So, it is no surprise that organizations have learned that they need help integrating Gen Z into their businesses. They are readily rejecting traditional career paths.?? Gen Z does not want to work for a company for more than 4 years. ?

A huge number - 72% - don't want to be you – they don't want to work 100 hours a week and climb to the top of the traditional corporate ladder the same way you have.

Yet, whilst they don't aspire to be you, they do want the things you have? – a family, home, car, holidays with a nice office, great colleagues, and fun work.? They aspire to have fun and engage in meaningful work. They want to make an impact, desire to be coached and mentored and have a work-life balance. ?

Gen Z are technology and AI literate and struggle to enter a workplace that is more analogue than digital.?

But what does all this mean??

Integrating Gen Z requires new approaches. They value work-life balance, tech-forward environments, and purpose-driven work. Organizations must embrace digital onboarding and ongoing development to attract and retain Gen Z talent.

Gen Z are not like you and that's ok. Lot's of people are not like you and they don't want the same things. So, stop blaming Gen Z for being different. Learn to lead and provide differently for that new generation. They actually have a far better concept of work than you think.

• What's wrong with wanting work to be fun and meaningful?
• What's wrong with wanting to be respected and consulted?

For too many years, my generation faced work place bullying, sexual harassment, poor communication and leaders. We came to accept exceedingly poor work practices as the norm, and despite not wanting to go to work, we were conditioned to accept it, put on our 'big boy pants' and suck this up.

What actions should you take to make work better?

Organizations need to work hard to digitally hire, onboard and develop Gen Z talent. They need to make work meaningful and individually inclusive.? It means training and developing the generations before to understand and work with Gen Z.? They must invest in the latest technology – and train every generation to use it.?

In addition, organizations must deliver frictionless processes and ensure everyone understands the mission they are on, and that mission should be purposeful. Training must be provided even if companies know Gen Z will leave, as not investing in them will result in their leaving sooner.?

Of course all this takes time, commitment and investment. However, once firms invest in Gen Z, they will benefit from a hard-working, talented, and inclusive workforce that can make a tremendous impact on their work.

Leadership has changed.

Leadership knowledge and unique subject matter expertise no longer define leaders' success, as generative AI and knowledge management systems can better manage knowledge dissemination. Expertise crafted and learned over many years is much less important, as Generative AI offers a generational opportunity to synthesize and make sense of huge volumes of data.?

Our brains don't cope well with complexity – but Generative AI does.        

Today, with Generative AI in ascendance, social capital is a much more important topic than intellectual capital—leaders need to get people to want to follow. The question is: Are we able to adapt? Are we open to new ideas? Are we able and willing to change?

Can we deliver disruptive HR where employees are treated as adults, humans, and consumers?

Adult to adult:

Adopt a trust-first approach, with clear guidance rather than strict policies. Foster an adult-to-adult work environment that values trust, accountability, and productivity.

More often than not, HR time is consumed designing for the tiny minority we can't trust rather than creating an environment for the vast majority of the enablers. We need to start from a position of trust—people will behave decently and thrive if we have an adult-to-adult approach, not detailed, prescriptive policies that slow us down.

Rather than being prescriptive, we need to provide broad guidance and trust adults to deliver.

Play nice. Use common sense. If you mess up, take it off social. Dress for your day.        

That means that you need to own the way you work. Be a grown-up—you won't get everything you want but talk to your manager, and you will get what works for you, the business, and the client.

Consumer

R can apply marketing techniques to personalize employee experiences—use personas and listen actively to tailor benefits and recognition.? This is the start of an understanding and better delivery for everyone.? But don't wait for perfect personas to be developed; start listening and engaging and micro-coaching at every contact point you have. For example, as employees onboard ask what the best recognition that you have ever had is, you can then deliver more of that to that individual.

Human

We need to show aspiring employees a more human side to the business. For example, place a video of their perspective manager in the job advert. That way, they can see who they will be working with and hear them talking about their team, what they will be doing, and so on.

Remove annual performance reviews. Take away silly 9-box grids - people, their needs and social value are far more complex than a simplistic distribution curve.

Get people talking regularly with their people so we promote human to human solutions, not 1990s processes that need to die with history. Encourage multiple informal check-ins as opposed to more annual one-directional feedback sessions.

Ask questions to show you are thinking of the whole human being

• What are you working on (alignment)?
• How can I help (manager as a coach)?
• And how are you feeling? (show you care)

Introduce learning shots—three-minute learning videos—as opposed to sending people on one or three-day courses they won't enjoy or will quickly forget.

5. Top Leadership Lessons To Run Businesses

Leadership needs to learn new ways of leading and behaving.

It is vital to learn new ways of working, leading and learning to deliver for everyone - and for you. Research shows that there are key lessons to be an effective leader.

• Build a diverse network. Your network is your corporate net worth.
• Be helpful (reciprocity) without any expectation of benefit. You give, you will get.
• Build from agreement rather than disagreement – being with I think these are all the things we agree on.?
• Be better prepared and patient at all times.
• As leaders focus on being respected, not liked, and lead with competence to build credibility.
• Communicate effectively.
• Present a carefully curated personality—it's not about being authentic—that is na?ve advice if you are not in the 'in-group' but beginning consistent helps.
• Listen to the other side of the mountain. ?We have our world subjective view. If you try to explain something contrary to my view I will not listen – facts no longer win arguments – aka the backfire effect.? This is often reinforced by AI algorithms that feed us content 'showing how right we are'.?
• Hierarchy – build coalitions, get others on your side.

These are the principles that will help you lead effectively, build trust, and make a meaningful impact. You just have to make the change to make the change.

Adapting for Tomorrow: The Strategic Evolution of HR Leadership

The demands on HR are evolving. Today’s HR leaders must be strategic, shareholder-aligned, and adept in tech and finance to drive productivity and meet individual employee needs effectively. Therefore, HR CPOs need to change. They need to be more strategic, aligned to shareholder value, technologically and financially literate, and focused on driving people's productivity.

HR should recognize that it is not a service delivery function. Instead, we need to think about the HR products people need to meet individuals' unique needs.? We should think about the end product or outcomes we want to achieve, not the process we need to design.

In addition, we as employees, managers and leaders also need to change to as we are all individually accountable for our own development and performance.

And remember, things do not have to be perfect—go with HR MVP and use your team as an experiment and pilot – but do have a broad direction of travel in line with what the business needs to create a workplace that works!

End.

You might also like to read about:

• 8 GenAI Risks you Should Not Ignore
• How to build the business case for GenAI
• Citizen Innovation using AI
• Why do only 5% of GenAI projects get into production and what can you do about it ?

Need our support and guidance to understand how you might you generative AI and automation in your workplace? Then Find me on social media LinkedIn | Kieran Gilmurray | Twitter | YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts visit website: Https://KieranGilmurray.com or book a meeting with.