How AI is reshaping jobs: The emerging challenge and opportunity for HR

Author: Lilia Dangi

AI's impact extends beyond efficiency gains. It also changes the mix of tasks, responsibilities and judgment that make up a role. Despite this, in many organisations job titles and job descriptions remain unchanged. For HR, the practical question is no longer "Will AI replace jobs?" Instead, it becomes "How is AI changing roles in practice and what should we do about it?"

We often discuss artificial intelligence (AI) in terms of job losses, replacement, disruption and the future of work. But for many employers, the immediate issue is more mundane and, often, more difficult to manage. Roles still exist, employees are still in place and the organisation chart looks much the same as it did a year ago. Yet the work itself is starting to look different.

For example, a recruiter may spend less time screening CVs and more time checking AI-generated shortlists. Similarly, a payroll administrator may spend less time entering routine data and more time investigating anomalies and contextualising information before explaining decisions to employees. In both cases, the role has not changed formally, but the duties attached to it are no longer quite the same.

This presents HR with a challenge that goes beyond technology. It raises a question that many organisations have yet to answer: If the work is changing, what does that mean for role design, performance, development and workforce planning?

To answer this, we first need to understand that most organisations are built around jobs. HR recruits into jobs, benchmarks jobs, grades jobs and writes job descriptions for jobs. This system has made sense up to this point because workforce plans are often built around headcount and job families. Even career progression pathways are often built around an employee moving from one role to another.

However, AI operates at task level rather than at job level. It does this by:

• speeding up some tasks;
• removing tasks entirely in some instances;
• changing the importance of some tasks; and
• creating new tasks.

Individually, the changes can seem relatively minor at first. However, over time, they can significantly change the work that makes up a role, reshaping the role altogether as well as the very nature of work.

The shift from job loss to job redesign

Research shows that rather than leading to widespread redundancies, the introduction and adoption of AI in organisations is mainly resulting in the redistribution of work. For example, a 2023 report by the World Economic Forum found that while 83 million jobs may be displaced by technological change by 2027, 69 million new roles are anticipated to be created as most organisations are expected to redeploy rather than reduce their workforce.

Another survey found that HR professionals working in organisations using AI were 16 times more likely to say that AI was transforming existing jobs (32%) rather than displacing jobs (2%).

Finally, a study by McKinsey Global Institute found that up to 30% of hours worked in the UK could be automated by 2030, but most employers are reallocating those hours to higher-value activities rather than eliminating positions.

This points to a future in which the primary impact of AI is redistribution of work within roles and, in some cases, organisational restructuring, but the more immediate shift is likely to be to the day-to-day composition of roles. We're already seeing routine tasks that once occupied a significant part of the day being automated or AI-assisted. As a result, employees are spending more time exercising judgment, managing exceptions, building relationships, solving problems or checking the quality of outputs.

In principle, this sounds positive. After all, most organisations would like employees to spend less time on repetitive work and more time on activities that create value. But, if the role on paper resembles less and less the role being performed, organisations risk making decisions based on an increasingly outdated picture of work, which then raises an issue of organisational effectiveness.

The opportunity cost for employers and HR

We know that tasks within roles are changing, and if roles change but organisations continue to manage them as though nothing has happened, several problems can arise, including:

• unclear performance expectations;
• evaluating employees against outdated assumptions about the role;
• widening skills gaps because learning and development pathways have not kept up with changing work;
• managers struggling to explain what "good performance" now looks like;
• employees becoming frustrated because they feel the reality of their role is not being recognised; and
• perhaps most importantly, organisations missing opportunities to redesign work in ways that improve productivity, employee experience and organisational performance.

A big danger for HR is viewing AI primarily as a technology implementation issue. If HR's contribution begins and ends with adopting AI tools and writing an AI policy, it risks missing the bigger picture, which goes beyond understanding how humans can partner with AI to complete tasks more quickly. The real challenge is understanding how people can contribute more effectively when AI automates a significant part of work.

HR shouldn't be expected to turn every AI rollout into a major restructure. However, HR does need a clear process for spotting when work is changing in a way that matters.

This means working with managers, employees and other relevant stakeholders to understand how AI is affecting the tasks that make up a role and whether those changes have implications for role design, performance expectations, skills, progression or workforce planning.

The important questions are not simply technological questions for the IT team. They are questions about how work is organised, how value is created and how employees are expected to contribute. HR should be helping the organisation ask:

• Which activities genuinely create value?
• Which parts of the role develop future capability?
• What work should remain distinctly human?
• What new responsibilities are emerging?
• How will employees grow if routine learning opportunities disappear?

The answers to these questions should then feed into practical decisions about whether job descriptions need updating, performance expectations remain fair and realistic, employees need new training or support, and the organisation should redesign parts of the role rather than simply add AI on top of existing work.

The future of work is proactive role redesign

Rather than the current hyper-focus on whether jobs will disappear as a result of AI adoption (some will), the real story for HR is about knowing what happens when the job remains but the work changes. That is where role design and employee experience meet.

If employers do not understand which tasks are changing, they will struggle to explain what the role now requires. If they cannot explain what the role now requires, they will struggle to manage performance fairly, have meaningful discussions about how work is changing and support employees properly through that change.

The most effective organisations are not waiting until disputes, skills gaps, performance concerns or engagement problems emerge before discussing the evolution of roles. They are recognising that these issues are not separate from organisational success. Clear role design, fair performance expectations, effective consultation, skills planning and employee trust all affect whether AI adoption improves productivity and performance or simply creates confusion and resistance.

Employers that treat work redesign as a core part of AI adoption from the outset are more likely to benefit from real improvements in productivity, performance and employee engagement, while maintaining a workforce that understands and can succeed in their reshaped roles.