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While AI is debated and decided on by the board and the C-Suite, it ultimately plays out in the everyday questions employees are already asking: Will AI replace me? Will my skills still matter? How will my work change? These questions are personal, and how they’re answered will shape how a company's AI efforts perform.
For HR leaders, this "downstream" focus is one you know well. As AI continues to loom large, your role will be to work with functional leaders across all departments to help them get their teams ready. You can't solve every detail, but you can establish the overarching principles that will guide your organization with clarity and confidence at scale through the uncertainty ahead.
The HR Leader’s Framework for Preparing the Workforce
This excerpt from our new playbook, Shift Happens: Get Ready for HR’s AI Reckoning, shares the big ideas you’ll need to anchor employees through change. The “how” lives inside the playbook: frameworks, checklists, and examples that show you how to make each principle real.
Set Principles Early
It will be critical to establish how AI will — and will not — be used across the organization before adoption scales.
Address Career Concerns
Despite not knowing what the future of work will look like, you must still acknowledge employee fears openly and connect AI literacy to future career growth.
Redefine Work and Performance
It will be essential to evolve performance measures so they reflect new contributions like oversight, judgment, and AI fluency.
Balance Speed with Precision
Organizations will need to distinguish between tasks where AI accelerates output and those where human accuracy remains paramount.
Train Leaders and Employees
Managers and employees alike will need confidence in reviewing, validating, and improving AI output.
Establish Practical Guardrails
Setting accessible, easy-to-follow boundaries will encourage safe adoption while protecting against risk.
Build a Culture of Quality
Trust in AI depends on people — and on creating a culture where quality assurance is valued and visible.
Adapt Talent Strategies
Hiring and promotion will need to account for AI-era skills like adaptability, ethical judgment, and prompt design - starting now.
Communicate Relentlessly
Above all, it will be vital to keep a steady cadence of communication. Silence fuels fear; communication builds trust.
The Tortoise or the Hare?
Remember the fable about quick starts vs. 'slow and steady wins the race'? Any org that puts this framework into place will eventually be miles ahead of the ones that started with shiny new tools but no foundation or strategy.
Flesh out these principles by downloading our new guide, below.
Sources- Siemens AG. (2023) - not publicly available
- IBM. (2022) A look into IBM’s AI ethics governance framework.
- McKinsey & Company. (2023) “The State of AI in 2023: Generative AI’s Breakout Year.”
- Deloitte (2024). 2024 Global Human Capital Trends: Thriving beyond boundaries.
- Forrester Research (2023). AI Risk and Trust Report. (Exact URL not publicly available; see Forrester research library.)
- Gartner (2023). Workplace Sentiment Index survey data on AI role risk and employee disengagement. (Internal, not publicly available.)
This blogpost is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of our new guide, which examines these strategies (and more) in depth.
Download the complete AI readiness playbook to access the full frameworks, metrics, and checklists you need to lead your organization’s AI transformation - and shape the future of HR.
