HR is under unprecedented amounts of pressure – driving mass layoffs while sustaining culture, finding and supporting employees amid global talent wars, and helping entire organizations to adopt and adapt to developments in AI.

But just as leaders lean more heavily on HR for strategic guidance, they’re also being challenged to rethink how they support the people who keep the workforce functioning.

90% of HR professionals report that they don’t feel “adequately supported at work.”

And as Hebba Youssef, Chief People Officer at Workweek described at HR event, Beyond Borders, New York, “If your HR person isn’t engaged, how can any of your employees really be engaged?”

Freeing HR from endless admin

As HR is being asked to take on more time-consuming, strategic work, tools that free up teams from admin are becoming even more essential.  “I don’t want to send one more offer letter or answer one more question about a policy. I want to be doing deep strategic work – like exploring how to upskill employees in the age of AI,” Youssef said.

As more teams expand across the world, global HR solutions are especially critical. Managing cross-border payments, learning local employment laws, and keeping pace with changing compliance standards – all of these tasks can eat up hours in an HR leader’s day. As Sagar Khatri, Co-founder & CEO of Multiplier explained in conversation with Hebba, “The goal is that all HR admin will be automated so that HR leaders can actually focus on what’s important — people and culture.”

Adopting AI – the right way

HR is being called to support AI adoption — but, to avoid this becoming yet another task on the function’s overflowing plate, the C-suite must step in with strategy and governance. With a framework to show what successful adoption looks like, HR can work toward a specific goal instead of a moving target..  

For Youssef, successful adoption also means creating space for experimentation. “Curiosity and creativity are anti-burnout functions,” she explained. If the C-Suite helps both HR and wider teams to experiment with new tools, AI can become a source of resilience rather than another pressure point.

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