If you're an HR leader, you're probably already bracing for the Q4 open enrollment storm: carrier negotiations, decoding broker jargon, and the inevitable Slack flood of "wait, what's a deductible again?"

Traditional brokers love keeping it complicated. Complexity makes them indispensable. But it just piles stress onto HR and leaves employees guessing about their own coverage.

The good news: you don't have to accept that trade anymore. You’ve got more leverage than you think, here are two ways to get it:

1.  A new generation of brokers is building the plain-language, self-service layer in-house — decision support, searchable plan explainers, claims help — instead of leaving you to fill the gap with a glossary doc and your own Slack replies.

2. HR teams are also building their own stopgaps: a GPT trained on your SPD, an internal FAQ bot to kill the repetitive "what is a deductible" questions even before enrollment opens.

Either way, the shift is the same: routing translation and hand-holding to something other than you. Not because you don't care, but because playing benefits middleman was never actually the job. The job is knowing when someone on your team is struggling before they tell you, and building a culture people want to stay in.

What's actually cutting down your benefits-question volume this year — a broker doing more of the heavy lifting, something you built yourselves, or still mostly you? Curious what's working for other HR leaders right now. Let me know in the comments! 

In Good Company Live is coming to Amsterdam on Thursday, 3 September, and if you haven’t registered yet, now’s your chance!

Expect a relaxed, engaging evening with fellow HR and People leaders—sharing ideas, exchanging experiences, and exploring what "From AI Hype to Workforce Reality" really looks like in practice.

Think fresh perspectives, honest conversations, great company, drinks & bites, and plenty of time to connect.🥂💬

📅 3 September | 16:30–19:30
📍 HiBob, Weesperstraat 113, Amsterdam

Spaces are limited, so grab your spot while you can 👇

👉 Sign up and join the conversation: here

See you there! 💚

We often talk about AI in HR as if we're waiting for the future.

But here's the interesting part: A lot of that future is already here.

AI can already screen CVs, draft job descriptions, match candidates to roles, answer employee questions, analyse engagement data, recommend learning, support performance reviews and help HR teams make sense of large amounts of information.

The technology isn't necessarily the biggest question anymore.

Our ability to rethink how HR work gets done is.

Recent SHRM research found that 39% of organisations surveyed had already adopted AI in their HR functions, with recruiting, HR technology, learning and development, and employee experience among the most common areas of use.

And Gartner​ predicts that by 2030, AI could perform up to 50% of today's HR activities.

That doesn't mean 50% of HR jobs disappear.

It means the work inside those jobs is going to change.

So what can AI actually do in HR today?

I've been mapping this out, and this is how I see the landscape.

I've grouped it into three simple questions:

What is the HR activity? What is AI already doing? And where does human judgment still matter?

The full picture is in the visual below:

Looking at the different HR activities together, one pattern stands out.

AI is already becoming very good at finding, sorting, drafting, coordinating, analysing and recommending. But when we move closer to motivation, relationships, context, empathy, fairness and accountability, human judgment becomes much more important.

And this is where I think the conversation gets interesting.

AI is moving beyond automation

For a long time, we thought about HR technology mainly as a way to automate administration.

Send the reminder.

Create the report.

Schedule the interview.

Answer the FAQ.

But AI is moving into a different space.

It's starting to help us think.

It can surface patterns we might miss.

It can challenge our assumptions.

It can prepare us for difficult conversations.

It can help us explore different scenarios before making a decision.

That's a much bigger shift than simply automating tasks.

A recent Digital HR Leaders podcast series captured this change well: the starting point for AI shouldn't be the technology itself, but the work, the business problem and the decisions we want to improve.

I couldn't agree more.

But there's an important catch Capability doesn't equal readiness.

We shouldn't assume that because AI can do something, organisations are ready to use it.

SHRM found that 56% of HR professionals surveyed don't formally measure the success of their AI investments.

And McKinsey's 2026 HR Monitor points to a similar gap between AI experimentation and scaled impact.

So perhaps our next HR question shouldn't be:

"What AI tool should we introduce?"

Maybe it should be:

"What HR work should we redesign?"

What changes for HR professionals?

This is the part I find most exciting. If AI takes care of more of the searching, summarising, drafting, analysing and coordinating...

What do we do with the time we get back?

Hopefully, more of the work that requires us to be human.

More coaching.

Better manager support.

More thoughtful workforce decisions.

More time with employees.

Better conversations.

More attention to culture.

And perhaps, importantly, more time to challenge the business rather than simply respond to it.

Because the goal shouldn't be:

Do more HR with AI.

It should be:

Do better HR with AI.

My reflection

I don't think the biggest opportunity in AI for HR is replacing HR tasks. It's redefining what deserves our time.

AI can process information.

It can identify patterns.

It can prepare us.

It can even recommend what we might do next.

But HR professionals still need to decide:

What is fair?

What is right?

What does this person need?

What does this organisation need?

And sometimes...

What shouldn't we do, even if technology allows us to?

That's where the real value of HR may become even more important.

AI can handle more of the work.

But that gives us an even bigger responsibility to decide what work is worth doing.

A question I'm exploring: If AI could take away 30% of your HR workload tomorrow, which 30% would you happily give away—and what would you do with the time you get back?

Every conversation about AI in HR today seems to start with the same statements:

"AI won't replace HR." "The future is Human + AI." "HR professionals need to learn AI."

I agree. But after spending time experimenting with AI in my own HR work, I have started asking a deeper question:

Are we focusing too much on what AI can do, and not enough on what humans should continue to own?

Because in HR, efficiency is only one part of the equation.

Trust is another.

Over the past year, I have used AI to support many aspects of HR work — drafting policies, summarizing interviews, analyzing survey insights, creating learning content, preparing communication drafts, and reducing repetitive administrative tasks.

The productivity gains are undeniable.

But one thing has become even clearer:

The most valuable moments in HR are rarely the ones that require more speed.

They are the moments that require more understanding.

A difficult career conversation. A manager struggling with a team challenge. An employee sharing a concern. A leader making a decision that impacts people's lives.

These moments require more than information.

They require judgement, empathy, and accountability.

A Practical Filter: Where Should AI Play a Role in HR?

When evaluating whether AI should be part of an HR process, I ask three questions:

1. Is this about information or interaction?

If the task is about finding, organizing, or processing information, AI can create tremendous value.

Examples:

·       Searching policies

·       Drafting documents

·       Creating learning materials

·       Summarizing data

·       Automating repetitive workflows

AI helps us move faster.

2. Does this require a decision or a recommendation?

AI can identify patterns.

It can highlight trends.

It can provide suggestions.

But decisions that impact people's careers and experiences need human accountability.

Examples:

·       Hiring decisions

·       Promotions

·       Performance evaluations

·       Compensation decisions

·       Workforce planning

Data can support judgement. It should not replace judgement.

3. Does this moment require trust?

This is where the human role becomes irreplaceable.

Consider:

·       Employee relations conversations

·       Coaching discussions

·       Conflict resolution

·       Career development

·       Sensitive feedback

·       Organizational change

These are not transactions.

They are moments where employees decide whether they feel respected, heard, and valued.

And that responsibility cannot simply be delegated to technology.

My AI + Human Ownership View

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Article content

The pattern is simple:

The more predictable and repetitive the task, the more AI can help.

The more personal and meaningful the moment, the more humans matter.

AI Should Remove Friction, Not Humanity

For me, the biggest opportunity with AI in HR is not replacing HR work.

It is giving HR professionals more time to do the work that creates the most impact.

Less time spent on:

·       Searching for information

·       Formatting documents

·       Creating repetitive reports

·       Managing administrative tasks

More time spent on:

·       Coaching leaders

·       Building culture

·       Supporting employees

·       Solving business challenges

That is where AI can become a true partner.

My Reflection

I don't believe the future belongs to companies that automate the most.

I believe it belongs to companies that understand where automation creates value and where human connection creates meaning.

The best HR teams will not be those that ask:

"How much can we automate?"

They will ask:

"What should technology enable, and what should humans continue to own?"

Because the future of HR is not Human versus AI.

It is Human intelligence amplified by AI — with wisdom guiding the choices.

I would love to hear your thoughts:

What is one HR activity you believe AI should take over completely?

And what is one HR moment where human presence will always matter?

Hiring for a normal office role is one thing, but finding people for highly specialized projects can be a completely different challenge.

I'm curious how HR teams handle recruitment when a company needs people with very specific technical experience for a limited project. Mining and infrastructure work seem like a good example, since the right skills aren't always available in the same city or even the same country.

I was looking at the staffing side of an exploration drilling contractor Saudi project recently and it got me thinking about how companies deal with specialist hiring, contractor management, accommodation, travel, and onboarding.

For HR teams working with technical or field based projects, do you normally build an internal talent pool for these roles, or rely more heavily on specialist contractors?

As companies grow, I think network security gets a lot harder to manage than it looks from the outside.

It's one thing when everyone is working from the same office and using a fairly simple setup. It's another when people are working remotely, using different devices, connecting from different locations, and still need access to company systems.

I'm particularly curious about how companies handle firewall and network security when their teams are spread across different offices or countries. For businesses operating in the UAE, I was also looking at options around a Fortinet distributor in Dubai while trying to understand how companies normally source and support this kind of equipment.

For HR and People teams working closely with IT, how involved are you in these decisions? Do you normally leave everything to the IT team, or does security become part of wider workplace and remote work planning?