Artificial intelligence is colliding with economic and geopolitical volatility to create the most uncertain period HR leaders have faced since the pandemic.

For many employees, it feels like a double blow: jobs at risk from technology on one side and from a shaky economy on the other. The old assumption that roles will “come back” after a downturn no longer feels guaranteed.

That anxiety is showing up in every senior HR forum. SiteMinder chief people officer Dionne Woo said that at a recent gathering of HR leaders she attended, planning for an unknown future dominated the conversation.

Economic cycles are familiar, she said, but this time the overlay of AI is different. People are now asking whether the roles lost to a downturn will ever re‑emerge in the same form.

Yet beneath this uncertainty, there is also a clear sense of direction. The way organisations use data, analytics and AI is rapidly becoming the new foundation of HR – and the choices leaders make now will determine whether they are overwhelmed by change or able to shape it.

“You can’t leap into AI without getting your data right”

Chris Wood, director of people and culture at Nova Systems, argued that the profession has reached a turning point it has been talking about for two decades. In his view, the headline story is not AI itself, but the overdue realisation that HR must finally become truly data‑driven.

He hears constant enthusiasm about potential applications of AI but pointed out that the first wave of real value in HR is being seen in analytics and decision‑making. When leaders ask for a view of retention hotspots, risk areas or engagement patterns, they increasingly expect that view to be grounded in data science rather than intuition.

AI can help surface those patterns and even detect early warning signs, but only if the underlying data is reliable and accessible.

Wood is adamant that organisations “can’t leap into AI” if they have not already done the hard work on data and analytics. The models and agents HR teams are experimenting with will be powered by whatever sits in their HRIS, surveys and dashboards. If those foundations are shaky, the outputs will not be trusted, and HR’s credibility will suffer rather than improve.

He also drew an important distinction between insight‑oriented AI and robotic process automation. Using AI to interrogate data, spot trends and generate forward‑looking insight is one conversation. Automating repetitive tasks such as standard reporting or basic applicant sorting is another.

Nova Systems is interested in using automation to free HR administrators from spending days each month generating leave and liability reports out of large systems, but Wood is clear that this is not where the real transformation lies. The strategic shift comes when AI can look across multiple years of data, predict likely attrition patterns, and give HR enough lead time to act.

In that world, the role of people analytics changes. Rather than spending their time manually building dashboards and spreadsheets, analytics professionals focus on interpreting AI‑generated outputs, adding context and crafting stories that influence executives and boards. For Wood, that evolution – from producing data to generating insight and influence – is what the profession has been working towards for years, only now accelerated by AI.

Read the full article here.