HR Isn’t Changing This Year (Part 1)
AI is Just Here for the Vibes
Despite what you may have heard from LinkedIn, vendors, co-workers, thought-leaders, or that one executive who just discovered ChatGPT, HR is not changing this year.
Absolutely not.
AI? That’s just a shiny new feature. Like lava lamps, open office plans, or “unlimited PTO”.
Nothing Says “Stable” Like a 14-Step Workflow
HR processes are famously resilient. Some were designed so long ago, they’ve outlived multiple HRIS platforms, 17 re-orgs, and at least one “transformation initiative”.
Consider a typical HR workflow:
Employee submits a request
Manager approves
HR reviews and asks clarifying question
Employee responds and updates request
Manager re-approves
Finance weighs in
Legal joins the conversations “just to be safe”
Churn for a while and everyone forgets about it
AI sends a reminder
HR apologizes and approves
Employee request is resolved
See, we added AI into the process, making everything better. With more AI engagement, we can now send reminders faster and more frequently, reject requests more efficiently, and confirm, with at least some degree of confidence, that nobody actually owns the decision.
Progress.
AI is Only Doing the “Low-Value” Work
(Which is coincidentally 80% of the Work)
AI isn’t impacting HR. It’s barely doing anything at all. It’s only:
Answering employee questions and queries
Writing and editing job descriptions
Screening resumes
Summarizing performance feedback
Flagging pay equity issues
Predicting turnover and who’s about to quit
But HR was never about those things. HR is about…meetings. And coordinating calendars. And reminding managers to complete their reviews. So yes, no impact.
AI Can’t Replace Human Judgment
Correct. AI cannot replace human judgment. But what it can do is:
Apply rules consistently
Ask uncomfortable questions
Notice the patterns humans missed
Remember each and every decision forever
This is just unfair, when humans rely on:
Vibes
Gut feel
“Context”
That exception that was made like 3 years ago for that one person…
Nothing threatens tradition like a system that refuses to forget.
Fairness Has Always Been a Core Value
HR has always been fair. Always. It may only feel like promotions are mysterious, and pay decisions or salary increases require another meeting after this meeting. And performance ratings should be clustered together like that.
But now AI is asking why this outcome keeps occurring. Seems accusatory.
Honestly, very rude tech.
The Org Chart Proves Nothing Has Changed
One of the strongest pieces of evidence that HR isn’t changing? The titles. We still have HR Business Partners, Centers of Excellence, and Shared Services. I even heard “personnel” recently.
So clearly everything is the same. Let’s ignore the fact that managers expect instant insights, employees expect transparency, and executives expect predictions not reports.
If the box on the org chart didn’t move, the work didn’t change. That’s just science.
Conclusion: Everything is Fine. Probably.
HR isn’t changing this year. Why should it? AI isn’t impacting HR. Just like other technology hasn’t every year so far. And nothing about decision making, process ownership, fairness, transparency, skills, or accountability needs to be rethought.
If something breaks, we’ll just automate it harder.
One final thought before all this sarcasm wears off. AI won’t force HR to change. It will just keep asking the questions that our old processes were never designed to answer. And that’s… inconvenient.