Why CHROs are critical to unleashing the transformational productivity of AI

While many companies have deployed AI in some form, the results have been mixed.

In one study, 42% of companies reported they have not seen a significant return on their AI investments. The challenge isn’t always with AI, but with how it is positioned and adopted.

When CHROs treat AI as just another IT tool and relinquish its deployment and management, they miss an opportunity to help their C-Suite colleagues achieve the organization’s strategic objectives.

By seeing AI as a type of talent that can enhance everyone’s productivity, CHROs can position themselves as critical players in boosting employee productivity with AI.

Justify AI by boosting productivity of employees, not by replacing them

The current approach to AI is centered on automation and cost-cutting, but that view is based upon the traditional perspective that AI is just like any other technology, and AI investment is therefore cost-justified in a traditional way – by replacing people to reduce cost.

This is part of the reason AI results have been mixed.

However, when AI is approached as a vital component of the talent mix, CHROs can lead the way in justifying AI investment by using AI to enhance the capabilities and productivity of existing employees as they perform day-to-day activities.

Expand CHRO influence to all talent types to achieve greater efficiency

Every organization has four talent options for performing work: employees, contract labor, outsourced labor, and AI solutions, including AI agents.

Strategic alignment of activities with the talent type that is most effective at performing those activities improves service quality, customer satisfaction, and employee fulfillment, while reducing risk and materially reducing cost.

CHROs can lead the way in helping their organization achieve these benefits by expanding the CHRO purview to include all four talent types, and managing them more holistically.

As the talent types learn to apply AI to get their work done more efficiently, optimal service delivery models will change.

For example, what is best performed by outsourcers today may be more efficiently performed by employees tomorrow.

In a talent ecosystem that is evolving so quickly, it’s critical for organizations to have a CHRO looking strategically for opportunities to optimize service delivery across all talent types.

Beyond the benefits of this centralized approach to talent management, AI is creating new and compelling reasons to extend the CHRO’s purview over all talent types.

AI agents are digital employees in the talent ecosystem

A new category of digital employees – AI agents – is rapidly emerging.

Marc Benioff recently said, “My message to CEOs right now is that we are the last generation to manage only humans.”

Like conventional automation software typically overseen by IT, AI agents require a centrally coordinated, deliberate, and strategic investment.

However, unlike software, AI agents are role-based with evolving skill sets, more like human employees than software.

CHROs must adopt management oversight of these digital employees because AI agents are a central part of the talent ecosystem.

CHROs must establish clear guidelines—identifying which agents are essential, setting security clearances, defining access rights, and seamlessly integrating them within existing systems and processes.

Without applying the leadership and experience of the HR function, digital employees will not maximize their potential and will increase risk.

The HR roadmap begins with training

Organizational leaders have different levels of understanding of the AI landscape, so the CHRO must communicate why using AI agents to perform roles is different from using AI to boost productivity of all employees.

To boost productivity, the essential skill is prompt engineering – the art of asking precise, targeted questions to extract useful outputs from large language models.

Prompt engineering proficiency will become as indispensable as proficiency tools like PowerPoint or Excel.

Simply training employees to use prompts is not enough to maximize productivity. The transformative potential of AI-related productivity is unlocked only within a culture in which employees are using prompt engineering in most day-to-day activities.

A ‘prompt-engineering first’ culture transforms the workforce into an AI-adoptive unit and establishes a virtuous cycle of innovation and improvement.

Comprehensive training is essential – it converts the workforce into proactive innovators that devise breakthrough applications of AI rather than waiting for IT-driven directives.

By investing in robust prompt engineering programs, the CHRO becomes critical in justifying AI by boosting employee productivity instead of replacing employees.

Digital interns unleash employee productivity

Imagine an intern with access to the collective knowledge of humanity—an ever-learning, tireless digital research assistant that handles routine tasks and solves complex problems. This is the vision of AI as a digital intern, empowering employees by taking on mundane tasks.

The intern metaphor helps executives begin to appreciate AI as a type of talent. Imagine the productivity that can be unleashed by giving all employees the assistance of a unique “intern” that can approach tasks with the combined intellectual horsepower of Nobel Prize winners, has perfect memory, continually improves, and remains with the employee throughout their career.

This digital intern is capable of performing tasks that would otherwise consume an employee’s time – conducting in-depth research, distilling meeting outcomes, synthesizing insights from numerous interviews, performing complex and dynamic data analysis, editing code, or drafting an initial test script for a new application.

Although human oversight remains necessary to verify and edit the output (as we would with a brilliant human intern), the presence of this digital intern allows employees to devote time to high-value work.

Employees have been trained as AI prompt engineers and use prompts to get work done embrace using AI because they feel more empowered, efficient, and valuable.

Furthermore, creating this comfort and eager adoption of AI leads employees to begin to innovate and create ideas for AI Agents that drive further productivity and growth.

In essence, viewing AI prompt engineering as a talent multiplier elevates the entire workforce and accelerates adoption of AI Agents.

CHRO’s strategic role in AI transformation

The rise of AI agents and digital employees will mark a turning point in how organizations approach talent management. CHROs must recognize AI agents, or digital employees, are more like human employees than automated software and therefore must be managed differently.

Recognizing AI as a form of talent instead of technology calls for a fundamental rethinking of talent management.

It also calls for a broader perspective of how HR can and should help achieve strategic business objectives through its influence on all talent types within the workforce.

HR’s involvement in skills  and training initiatives is essential to AI training and equipping employees to use AI as a catalyst for innovation.

By expanding its purview to provide strategic management across all talent, the CHRO moves beyond its traditional role and becomes more critical to the success of the organization’s strategic transformation initiatives.

Integrating the digital employee workforce alongside traditional employees, contract labor, and outsourced resources, can achieve remarkable levels of productivity and innovation.

But the integration’s success is fraught with technical, cultural, and business challenges.

The CHRO is ideally suited to meet these challenges and redefine the narrative around AI transformation.

With a vision of how AI augments talent and its potential to transform the workforce combined with targeted investments in training and the proactive strategy for managing all talent types, the CHRO can reshape the future of work.