Unison Risk Advisors

I transitioned into the role of Vice President of Talent Transformation in May of this year. For 20 years prior, I held nearly every role in HR. I have seen what has worked and what hasn’t. I’ve seen trends come and go. Transformation is a new role for me, but it isn’t necessarily unfamiliar territory. What I am seeing as a trend with potential to significantly impact transformation is how we use AI. That might not sound groundbreaking. AI is not exactly new. But HR professionals slowing down for a few beats to figure out when and how to use AI in Transformation is. With AI migrating into many aspects of our work, it is critical we stay current on changing technology and in control of what we decide is the best use case for it. Because the real risk isn’t that we use AI too little. It’s that, in the name of efficiency, we use it in places where people need humans more.

The most valuable lesson I have learned about transforming talent strategies is you can’t take the human out of Human Resources. Employees are going through enough emotional turmoil in times of change. Sometimes they just need the familiarity of someone to walk them through a question or reassure them that the changes are a catalyst for growth. Technology can support that work, but it can’t replace it.

Nowhere is that human element more visible than in how we communicate. Communication is key during transformation. Clear and concise communication is critical but meaningless if it comes across as just another task someone was able to check off their to-do list. Employees want to know what is changing and when but also what it means for them. Many HR practitioners are turning to AI to communicate. It’s easy to pop a list of things into Copilot and ask it to write a memo to all employees announcing what is changing.

“The most valuable lesson I have learned about transforming talent strategies is you can’t take the human out of Human Resources.”

Copilot will deliver a rhythmic, thorough and organized memo. It will contain fancy words and positive prose meant to calm nerves and get employees on board. But it may feel hollow if it is obvious that it was written by AI. If we turn to AI to write every crucial communication, we risk losing the thread of employees’ real concerns. AI can often fail to capture the culture and spirit of an organization. In other words, what we gain in efficiency, we can lose in authenticity.

I saw this play out firsthand recently. I was just at an employee meeting welcoming a new company to our fold. One of our executives was trying to convey the uniqueness of our ownership structure. He made a remark about having a slide that was clearly written by AI and how he would rather communicate the meaningfulness in his own words. We have vast tools in our HR toolboxes. We need to be careful that we are picking the right tool for the job. And while AI is certainly efficient at drafting communications, sometimes it just takes a human and time to thoughtfully communicate with employees.

That challenge isn’t limited to employee communications. Leadership, coaches, mentors, peers all keep touting how much time using AI saves and how we should all be using it more. From creating agendas and replying to emails, to organizing our days and analyzing our data. But all of this comes with the warning that we have to keep the “human in the loop”. People will tend to skip that step, assume AI got everything right, trust because they don’t have time to verify. But that is where we lose. We let AI do everything for us. We don’t challenge it to produce something new rather than the same thing it has produced for countless others (how many of us have recently “stepped into new roles”, “started a new journey” or used the rule of three and an em dash for good measure). Scroll LinkedIn and you will see a healthy amount of job updates that read as if they were written by the same person using the same language. Hint! They were. His name is ChatGPT. When everything sounds the same, nothing sounds genuine. That is the efficiency trap, and it is one HR can’t afford to fall into during transformation.

So where does that leave us? It brings me back to where I started. The lesson I’ve learned is we can use AI to be more efficient, but we can’t use it to be more human. We can’t take ourselves out of the equation when dealing with real people’s lives in the realm of talent transformation. My advice to aspiring HR leaders is to remember why you are here doing what you do. You likely got into this role because you like people and have excellent communication skills. Let AI summarize your meetings and float emails to the top of your box for immediate attention. Take the time you gained from those tasks and invest it back in human-to-human contact. Write your own communications. You can ask AI for suggestions and critique. You no longer have to start with a blank page if that trips you up. But take the time to fill in the blanks, lend your voice to the piece. Make it genuine and let it sound like it came from you, not your robot assistant. Remember to be the human in the loop.