AI in HR: Position Your Organization for Success

AI is no longer just a tool — it’s a top CHRO priority. It’s transforming how CHROs and HR leaders drive efficiency, innovation and employee engagement. To stay ahead, CHROs and HR leaders must reshape the AI-infused HR operating model and take a strategic approach to implementing AI and generative AI (GenAI).

The GenAI landscape today

GenAI adoption in HR is rapidly increasing. The share of HR leaders who are actively planning or already deploying GenAI has jumped from 19% in June 2023 to 61% by January 2025. This sharp rise highlights growing recognition of GenAI’s power to reshape HR processes.

But adoption alone isn’t enough. CHROs must evolve how HR works — not just what it uses. That means redesigning roles, workflows and service delivery to unlock AI’s full value.

Strategic recommendations

To maximize AI’s value, HR leaders must address challenges and plan carefully:

• Craft an HR-focused AI strategy that aligns with enterprise goals and includes clear ownership.

• Overcome challenges: Work with IT, legal and compliance to ensure accuracy, reliability and transparency.

• Prioritize use cases: Focus on HR applications with the highest value.

• Focus on skills: Prepare employees for AI by identifying and developing needed skills.

• Redesign HR roles and delivery models to reflect how AI agents will take on transactional tasks.

Steps to implement AI in HR

• Strategize and plan:

  • Benchmark your current AI progress.

  • Set clear objectives for AI in HR.

  • Establish an HR innovation command center to lead transformation.

• Collaborate and educate:

  • Engage stakeholders to leverage collective expertise.

  • Train HR teams on AI capabilities.

  • Shift HRBPs to strategic talent leaders as AI takes over routine tasks.

• Focus on high-value use cases:

  • Use AI agents to improve HR service delivery.

  • Transform learning and development with AI-generated content.

  • Enhance recruitment with AI-driven candidate matching and recruiter agents.

  • Design custom HR projects like personalized onboarding and tailored learning.

• Monitor and adjust:

  • Regularly assess AI’s impact and adapt your approach as needed.

  • Track dual KPIs — one for short-term performance, one for long-term transformation.

New HR roles for the AI era

AI integration will create new HR roles, including:

• Product leader for AI in HR: Owns HR’s AI strategy and connects HR to enterprisewide AI efforts

• GenAI expert: Leads GenAI initiatives

• Head of HR innovation: Drives HR innovation

• Digital HR operations lead: Oversees AI-powered service delivery

Preparing for workforce disruption

Sixty-two percent of CEOs believe AI will define the next business era. Yet only 21% of CIOs say their organizations prioritize mitigating AI’s impact on employees — exposing gaps in skills and human-centric approaches.

CHROs must lead this transformation — it’s a top priority. That means evolving HR service delivery and preparing the workforce for an AI-enabled future. Without active CHRO involvement, organizations risk negative outcomes and a diminished HR role.

Prepare your teams and workforce by:

• Upskilling employees. Add AI skills to development plans.

• Identifying AI talent. Find and nurture employees with AI expertise.

• Preparing for role augmentation. Help staff adapt to AI-augmented roles.

• Managing dual talent strategies. One for “now” and one for “next.”

By benchmarking, planning and focusing on collaboration, education and high-value use cases, HR can fully leverage AI. Upskill employees and create new roles to ensure a smooth transition into the AI-driven era.

AI is set to fundamentally change how work gets done — and what jobs look like. As of January 2025, HR leaders estimate that 37% of the workforce will be impacted by generative AI (GenAI) in the next two to five years, up from 27% in November 2024.

Despite concerns about job loss, Gartner expects the global jobs impact from AI to remain neutral through 2026 — with no net decrease or increase. By 2036, AI will drive the creation of over half a billion net-new human jobs as tasks and roles evolve.

AI’s impact on the workforce

AI will reshape how organizations hire, develop and leverage talent. To stay ahead, HR and senior leaders must define an AI talent strategy — including both AI talent acquisition and AI tools for HR — to prepare for coming talent transformations.

CHROs must also rethink how work is designed and delivered. Gartner’s 2026 CHRO top priorities emphasize the need to shape work in the human-machine era, where AI agents and human workers co-deliver outcomes.

Gartner sees two main ways AI will affect the workforce

• Role shifting within professions: AI will automate routine tasks, reducing headcount needs for the same output. Leaders should expect to redesign jobs into fewer, multiskilled generalist roles that offer broader responsibilities and a stronger employee value proposition.

• Emergence of specialized roles: As performance expectations rise, organizations must use AI to compete. New, highly specialized roles will emerge, blending business and technology skills — talent that is currently scarce.

• Blended workforce models will become the norm. CHROs must move beyond bolt-on AI tools and begin designing work where humans and AI agents collaborate seamlessly.

Action steps for HR leaders to prepare your organization 

• Identify roles that can benefit most from AI-driven productivity in the near term.

• Build a roadmap to increase AI literacy across the workforce.

• Collaborate with business leaders to assess AI’s long-term impact on jobs and roles.

• Redesign and co-create future roles in partnership with employees and business leaders.

• Establish dual talent strategies for immediate needs and future human-AI scenarios.

• Use AI to personalize development, onboarding and career paths to support evolving roles.

AI agents are autonomous or semiautonomous software entities that use AI to perceive, decide, act and achieve goals in digital or physical environments. While the terms “AI agents” and “agentic AI” are often used interchangeably, Gartner distinguishes agentic AI as a broader approach — encompassing solutions built on software entities that fully or partially qualify as AI agents.

Agentic AI has generated significant buzz for its potential to boost efficiency across business processes.

AI agents in HR

In a May 2025 Gartner webinar, 44% of HR leaders said their function plans to use semiautonomous AI agent capabilities in the next 12 months. Only 2% expect to deploy fully autonomous, unsupervised agents to replace human HR workers. Notably, two-thirds of HR leaders trust that AI agents will act in ways that benefit the employee experience.

CHROs must lead the adoption of agentic AI — not just approve it. That means ensuring AI agents are deployed ethically, strategically and in ways that enhance human performance.

AI agent adoption beyond HR

Emerging use cases for AI agents span multiple domains. However, the space is still maturing: AI agents range from simple, supervised tools to systems capable of independent decision making. Many vendors are rebranding basic chatbots and virtual assistants as “agents” without adding advanced, autonomous features.

CHROs should cut through the hype and focus on high-value, practical applications. Gartner recommends starting with supervised agents that augment — not replace — human roles.

The HR leader’s role

As an HR leader, you are critical to ensuring AI agents deliver real value — driving productivity, improving the employee and customer experience, transforming decision making and augmenting workforce skills. You will also help shape the future use cases for agentic AI across the enterprise.

This leadership role is central to Gartner’s vision for HR in 2026. CHROs must guide the transition to a human–agent workforce, ensuring alignment with business goals and employee needs.

Action steps to prepare for the human-agent workforce

• Cut through the hype by understanding the fundamentals of agentic AI.

• Benchmark your organization’s approach to AI agents in HR and across the enterprise.

• Assess both the opportunities and risks agentic AI presents and plan accordingly.

• Identify the best use cases and technology options and take a structured approach to piloting AI agents.

• Design workflows where humans and agents co-deliver outcomes, rather than replacing human roles outright.

• Establish governance and success metrics to ensure AI agents enhance — not erode — trust and performance.

By grounding your strategy in fundamentals and focusing on practical, high-value applications, CHROs can lead the responsible adoption of  agentic AI — a critical step in reshaping HR for the future.