A month or so ago, the buzz was about whether HR and IT functions could—and possibly should—merge. It sounds like a bad idea—because it is. Each of the two have so many separate tasks where there is no overlap. Trying to put them together would be senseless.

The story was kicked off by something much more reasonable: a development at Moderna where the head of HR also became the head of IT (or, more likely, an IT leader also reported to the head of HR). It wasn’t a merger of the two functions. Two smaller companies since then have at least been identified as making the same change.

What was the reason? In principle, at least, it is a good one: The introduction of AI into work can and likely will be something that could touch every job. The big challenge, smarter organizations are realizing, is to actually make that happen—to get AI inserted into jobs in a way that drives efficiencies.

Earlier this year, I wrote about an amazing Harris survey showing that CEOs were desperate to show results from using AI. Three-quarters of them felt they would lose their jobs within two years if they could not. More disappointing is the result that at least a third think organizations can simply drop off-the-shelf AI into existing jobs.

It can’t, and most organizations soon learn that. What does that have to do with merging HR and IT?  Merging wouldn’t help, but the idea that HR might know how to get AI into jobs is at least a better guess.

HR’s shifting mandate

Readers here already have a gut feel that introducing AI will require a big organizational change process. We have to take existing jobs, including the employees in them, figure out what, if any, AI tools could take over at least some of the tasks of those jobs and then get it to work. That requires first getting the cooperation of current employees, who likely fear exactly what the CEOs want, which is to use the introduction of AI to cut headcount. That means losing their jobs. Why should they help do this? “Because we will fire you if you don’t” is a really bad—but, no doubt, common—answer.

Even if you get employees to cooperate, they have to work together with AI experts to figure out which tasks AI could take over or at least assist with. They need to help train the systems, and then someone has to figure out if they need to rearrange the jobs depending on how much they have changed. In short, this is a lot of work. Good HR people should know enough about how to manage organizational change to at least scope out what this task requires. If the CEO’s goal is to get AI into actual jobs quickly, it makes some sense to put HR in charge.

In fact, a recent survey of IT leaders (bless their hearts) finds two-thirds of them think that a merger of HR and IT will happen in the next five years. Whether they think IT will take over HR or HR will take over IT isn’t clear from the results. It would be madness to have IT take over HR. Assuming it will be HR that has at least some control over IT, is this likely to work?

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