It will take technology to humanise human resources
- Future of Finance
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Explore the paradox of using artificial intelligence (AI) to make better people decisions than managers can do on their own.
What is the event about?
Many corporations, especially in financial services, attribute much of their success to the quality of their talent, which might suggest that they would also credit the HR function with helping them to acquire, develop, motivate, and retain said talent. However, managers and employees instead often complain that HR is a large, growing and not particularly helpful function that creates policies and processes that interfere with corporations’ ability to effectively manage their talent. Whether justified or not, many managers fault HR for not adequately or appropriately leveraging technological advances for the benefit of both employees, managers, and shareholders. This event will explore how recent advances in AI can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the HR function, reducing the resources it requires while also transforming the speed and quality of services it delivers.
Why attend?
Whether you reply of the services delivered by your HR function to help you manage your people, work within the HR function or are also a consumer of HR services as an employee, you have an opportunity to influence how the HR function in your company may need to evolve. AI solutions are now available that can transform the performance of the HR function across recruitment, retention, compensation, training and development, workforce planning and risk management, through more expansive data integration, more sophisticated levels of automation, and genuine process innovation and simplification. This event explains what AI solutions are, why they work and how they can turn an HR function from an expensive and frustrating cost centre into a source of sustained competitive and strategic advantage.
Who should attend?
Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), Chief Risk Officers (CROs), Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Data Officers (CDOs), Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), Chief Operating Officers (COOs), Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs), Heads of Total Rewards (TR) or Compensation and Benefits (C&B), Chief Legal Officers (CLOs), and Heads of Investor Relations (IR).
When is it happening?
At 14.00 London time on [Wednesday 19 November] 2025
What topics will be discussed?
HR covers a wide range risks, including the risk of labour costs spiralling out of control, the risk of failing to acquire the skills necessary to deliver products and services, loss of knowledge when individuals leave, legal and reputational risk if disgruntled employees are mishandled and technology risk if employees resist automation. Is HR really a risk management function?
HR is often described as “over-staffed” (the average HR headcount at Fortune 1,000 companies is1,200). What are most of the headcount doing?
To what extent does HR have the capabilities to capitalize on the latest advances in AI?
In a sense, AI in HR is not new because it has been used by HR managers for many years to manage and screen large numbers of job applications (via the use of interviews by avatars). What has the industry learned from that experience (e.g., that applicants and employers’ “game” the algorithms)?
HR functions possess a lot of internal data on compensation, benefits, salary scales and grades, management spans, employee satisfaction and engagement, employee productivity and performance, customer perception surveys, absence and sickness, travel time and costs, training and compliance courses completed, vacation allowances, exit interviews, good and bad leavers, talent and career development, business performance, employee chat and email traffic, competitor analyses and so on. How effective are firms at identifying, accessing, aggregating, integrating and using their internal data?
Not all data will be controlled by HR; some will be controlled by the finance function or business units, and data will also be in different formats on separate systems. How are internal data system and format silos best overcoming (e.g., centralisation in a data warehouse, assign responsibility to a CIO or CDO etc.)?
There are multiple external sources of data, such as compensation benchmarking, economic and labour market statistics, job portals, commentary portals, demographic information, emerging industries and skills, education and training statistics, legal databases and so on. How adept are HR functions at integrating these external data sources into decision-making?
Is data privacy and confidentiality a constraint on the use of internal data and/or the quality of external data?
What evidence or information do we have that AI will lead to better decisions by HR managers (e.g., in making counteroffers to key employees that threaten to leave, in encouraging under-performing employees to leave, in mapping career paths for talented people etc.) than relying on traditional data mining, intuition and experience?
How powerful is AI as a predictive tool (e.g., attrition of key skills, skills likely to be needed in the future, succession planning)?
Do AI tools improve over time (i.e., does their decision-making improve as they gain “experience”)?
In many business areas, AI will never operate autonomously but will require human supervision of its outputs. Are there any decisions which HR can trust AI to make unsupervised?
Technically, how difficult is it for corporations to implement a modern, data-driven HR system as (a) software as a service (SaaS) and (b) AI capabilities?
CHROs dream of becoming strategic advisers on people, helping their organisations identify future staff needs, plug gaps between current headcount and future needs, acquire the skills needed to complete an upcoming project, combine disparate individuals into successful teams, manage demographic and retirement risks and introduce technology to maintain revenue and margins, but end up fire-fighting day-to-day issues. Is AI powerful enough to allow CHROs to fulfil their dream?
Apart from the application of AI to HR specifically, is HR the logical function to lead the adoption of HR throughout an organisation (i.e., if AI is the future of business, can HR be in the vanguard)?
Moderna has famously merged its HR and IT functions, which can be read as the company viewing people and intelligent machines as alternatives in any role. For flesh-and-blood employees anxious about being displaced by AI machines, is a HR function led by technology reassuring or alarming?
“Our people are our greatest asset” is a platitude of longstanding in corporate life, which underplays the fact that people are also the greatest liability of most corporations. In the final analysis, is the HR function of a corporation managing an asset or a liability?
“Human capital” is now sufficiently well-defined and measurable for exchange traded funds to be launched using it as the foundation of an investment strategy. Is the CHRO of the near future going to be sitting at a data-fuelled dashboard, adjusting recruitment, compensation, benefits, career development plans and training programmes to maximise shareholder value?
Who is on the panel?
It Will Take Technology to Humanise Human Resources
Contact Information
If you would like to be involved, get in touch with: Wendy Gallagher
Co-Founder Future of Finance
Mobile 07725 160903
