The consensus on AI as regards the workforce, particularly at entry and early-career levels, is that it will reduce employment. But does this reflect reality? Some HR leaders believe that organizations should take a new, more positive approach. By using AI as the basis for a different model of recruitment and retention, rather than simply an opportunity to reduce workforce costs, organizations could both preserve jobs and improve performance.

Josh Bersin, founder of The Josh Bersin Company, a research and advisory company that specializes in corporate learning, talent management and HR, is a proponent of this argument. The increasingly hysterical warnings of an AI-driven job cull are unjustified, he believes. Rather, HR professionals should worry about their organizations being left behind by peers who have adjusted their talent strategies more effectively to an AI-driven world.

“Too many CHROs are still working their way through the same old talent acquisition cycles,” Bersin warns. “All they’re doing is filling the seats that the business tells them need filling.”

Toward a new world of work
Bersin has an optimistic take on the impact of AI. While new technologies increasingly enable organizations to automate the kind of work typically allocated to early-career employees, this, he argues, will change the nature of many jobs, rather than eradicating them.

“Entry-level employees are going to be undertaking more sophisticated tasks and they’re actually better-placed to do that work,” Bersin argues. “Many companies tell me that it’s their youngest employees who are teaching them how to make the best use of new tools.”

In any case, Bersin argues, organizations can’t afford to just ignore a generation’s worth of new talent. “Employers need a pipeline and what most organizations will tell you is that, in developed companies, the supply of talent is drying up,” he says.

The expectation that AI will shrink headcount numbers overall is misplaced, Bersin believes. The short-term goal of technology implementation for many organizations is to do a similar or greater volume of work with fewer people. But Bersin suggests that CHROs should steer strategy toward more ambitious top- and bottom-line gains. To succeed in these ambitions, organizations will need to keep recruiting the talent to manage AI. “CEOs will expect to hire people at a higher productivity rate, but they’re still going to hire people,” he suggests.

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