UNLEASH World 2025: The Role of HR in the AI Era

1. HR Leads in Workforce Transformation 

   Organisations like Airbus, Unilever, HelloFresh are blending internal upskilling, targeted hiring, contingent talent, and an expanding layer of AI agents to reshape how work gets done. Build, buy, borrow… and bot. 

 

2. HR as a Product Function 
   Think end-to-end experiences, not siloed processes. Industry leaders such as Hermès show how design-led HR ca scale. Operating models built around cultural territories – such as craftsmanship, benevolence, transmission, and beauty – succeed because they’re designed like products, with user needs and adoption at the centre.  

 

3. People Analytics are a Strategic Advantage 
   Stronger analytics means faster AI adoption. Multiple sessions, including the editorial wrap, reinforced that real value comes from frontline insight creation, not just HQ strategy.  

 

4. Foundational Shifts 
   We’re moving from job titles to skills and outcomes, from linear careers to dynamic marketplaces, and from annual cycles to continuous, signal-based planning. We’re moving from IT-owned tech to cross-functional execution. Execution is shifting from rigid to rapid and experimental, and success is measured by outcomes, not activities. 

 

5. Designing Human-Fit AI Systems 
   HR is evolving through stages: from basic AI to augmented intelligence, to agentic systems, and eventually, toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). However, the design still needs to stay human-centred. This means staying purpose-aligned, psychologically safe, supporting human judgement, and ensuring transparency and measurable benefits like trust, wellbeing, and inclusion. 

As Microsoft CPO, Amy Coleman, put it: “Leaders shouldn’t try to control AI, but learn to navigate the waves and bring people with them.” 

Each of these takeaways provides valuable insight for HR leaders ready to act. Here’s where to start: 

• Own the operating model: Stand up a cross-functional HR x Tech x Finance squad to drive the foundational shifts – from skills and marketplaces to continuous planning.
• Build your A-team in People Analytics: Pair data scientists with HR business partners and push insights to the frontline.
• Pilot agentic workflows: Start small with one HR service, one recruiting step, and one learning flow. Measure time-to-value and experience outcomes.
• Redesign listening: Pivot to continuous sentiment and open-text analysis, with clear escalation paths and privacy guardrails.
• Invest in managers: Train ‘Supermanagers’ to orchestrate humans and agents, and coach for skills mobility.
• Keep it human fit: Make purpose explicit, create psychological safety, and measure success in trust, wellbeing, inclusion, and performance.  

“You can’t get in the way of AI… but the biggest winners might be all of us.” – Scott Galloway.  

UNLEASH World 2025 showed that the future of HR isn’t about adopting more technology, but about redesigning work and organisations around skills, AI-human collaboration, and consciously human-fit systems that create value for both people and business.