We've been here before. In 2020, HR teams were handed lists and told to execute (remember the panic that the pandemic caused?). The reasons were real. The world had genuinely stopped. Most of us did what we had to do. We built the decks, ran the calls, wrote the talking points, and showed up on Zoom to deliver news that wrecked people's lives. Ugh, I still have PTSD.
Now it's happening again. Except this time the reason isn't a pandemic. It's a pitch deck. AI transformation. Skills displacement. Workforce recalibration. The language has gotten cleaner, but the result is the same: people are losing their jobs, and HR is the one holding the script.
According to LHH research, 87% of HR leaders say their organization has already conducted or is planning layoffs in the next 12 months. That is not a workforce trend. That is a strategy.
Here's what I think gets lost in the conversation: HR leaders don't make the call. I've sat in those rooms. The CEO has the highest accountability and is accountable to the board. The execs debate, push back, ask hard questions, and eventually align. Then everyone moves forward together. That's how it works. HR doesn't decide the company is restructuring around AI, but HR is often the face of it, and the profession takes the credibility hit either way.
What bothers me more than the layoffs themselves is the gap between the story being told externally and what's actually happening. In fact, according to LHH, "while 77% of HR leaders say they offer targeted redeployment and mobility programs, only 19% of employees say they experience or recognize them. "That's not a communication problem. That's a credibility problem.
AI is a legitimate reason to restructure. Roles are genuinely changing. Some of this is real. But when companies use AI as the clean, no-fault rationale for cuts that are also about margins, over-hiring hangovers, and investor pressure, the people in those roles know it. They're not naive. And HR, again, ends up defending a narrative it didn't write.
The COVID comparison is worth sitting with. Back then, there was a shared enemy...something external and visible. This time the "enemy" is a technology that the same company is also celebrating in its all-hands and earnings calls. That contradiction is hard to explain to someone whose job just disappeared to fund it.
I'm not arguing against transformation. I'm arguing for honesty inside the room, before the script gets written. HR leaders who have a seat at the table need to use it. Not to block decisions, but to pressure-test the narrative before it goes out. Because once it does, they own it and you are the internal comms leader.
HR leaders: when the AI restructuring conversation happens at your company, how much involvement do you have with the CEO on execution and messaging?