The HR renaissance: Human in the relationship

Before the printing press, much of Europe’s intellectual labor went into copying. Scribes, among the most educated of their time, spent years reproducing texts by hand. When the press took over that work, it did not end scholarship. It helped spark one of history’s great periods of human creativity. HR has reached a similar moment. Its tools are changing faster than its habits. AI can draft a job architecture, answer benefits questions at 2 a.m. and summarize a year of engagement data before a meeting starts. What it cannot do is decide what any of that is for or create a work environment that sets an organization apart from competitors.

Recently, we convened on the West Coast a small group of experienced and innovation-focused CHROs from WTW’s CHRO Thinking Ahead Group to discuss HR’s future. Their vision for the next generation of HR: a technology-enabled renewal that makes HR better, faster and more human. Jeff Newman of TEGNA called it the “HR Renaissance.”

As AI takes on more of HR’s work, fears about its impact on people are understandable. Yet despite concern about AI replacing people, technology may make the profession more human, not less. By freeing professionals from repetitive tasks, AI can give them the opportunity to create engaging workplaces and use data to better meet employee needs and their organization’s goals in ways they couldn’t when routine tasks required much of their time.

One theme held throughout: Technology matters, but the renaissance depends on how HR uses its newfound freedom and capabilities to add new forms of value in an increasingly digital, virtual and volatile environment.

Freedom from self-imposed constraints and repetitive work

The 14th-century Renaissance is viewed by many historians as a period of reinvention that occurred during the recovery from a pandemic. The CHROs view something similar occurring today. Their first observation was about habit, not AI.

Enterprise platforms brought HR consistency and scale. They also brought a quiet drift, as capable teams learned to shape programs around what their systems could easily support, such as fixed merit cycles, two-layer job architectures and companywide performance management processes.

Group members asked how many HR professionals have designed a program from start to finish, rather than configured one inside a platform. They discussed how AI could untether HR from force-fitting its work into a single software framework and enable customization that previously would have required impractically large HR teams to administer.

Each participant described the opportunity as a kind of freedom. One framed it as liberation from self-imposed constraints, drudgery and lower-value work. Another called it freedom from self-limiting beliefs. A third noted that HR is often constrained by its own assumptions about how it “needs” to operate and described the renaissance as freedom to do what is right for the business and its people.

AI is a people problem

Even organizations with the best technology need people who understand how to put it to work. That framing, raised early in the discussion, shaped much of what followed.

Participants noted that many organizations are racing to build AI agents, often without governance. One described how AI responsibilities in his organization eventually moved to him after an initial IT-led approach, partly because of the sensitivity of HR data. Scott Sherman of Ingram Micro offered a reframing that resonated across the table: moving from “human in the loop” to “human in the relationship.” The phrase captures something oversight models can miss. Approving AI output is one thing. Owning the relationship with the employee is another.

The central tendency trap

The CHROs observed that AI often leads people toward central tendencies or common approaches rather than unique or differentiated ones. Models trained on broad datasets can produce answers that reflect medians or common patterns. Enterprise platforms, built on common practice, can produce similar results across organizations. If every company asks an agent to draft its incentive plan, proxy disclosure or employee value proposition, much may begin to look the same.

The group called this the central tendency trap. Efficiency increases, but at the risk of a slow convergence of culture, employer brand and program design, which are among the hardest assets for competitors to copy. Competitors no longer need to copy when the playing field levels itself.

The CHROs raised practical questions:

• Who performs the unique “soft skills” that differentiate organizations?
• Which cultural norms need to be embedded?
• Can a corporate-wide style be applied?
• How does the organization maintain one source of truth?

The trap also applies to people. Organizations risk reducing learning and growth opportunities in the pursuit of efficiency. Renaissance artists learned their craft in workshops, starting with routine tasks such as grinding pigments and preparing panels. The routine work was part of the training. Some of today’s tedious tasks play the same role. Taking notes is one example: It is how many professionals learn to listen and synthesize information. Some skills will disappear unmissed, while others will need to be protected. HR can act as a steward of the experiences that build the skills people and the business require.

Beth Hayden of SpotHero (an Uber company) put it most directly: Bots can handle many tasks but not the relational elements that shape employee experience. She sees creating a five-star employee experience as the defining measure of the people team and a key element of an employer’s brand.

Andy Ortiz from Cedars-Sinai noted that when AI absorbs lower-value work, HR gains time to engage employees and connect humans to more meaningful work. As a result, organizations may need more people in certain roles, not fewer. He shared Cedars-Sinai’s purpose, “to be a blessing,” and noted that people, not systems, create countless meaningful moments in healthcare every day.

What stays, what goes, what gets added

The group outlined how HR’s work could change. Rather than asking which jobs AI will replace, they organized HR’s work into three categories:

• Program administration and delivery, likely agent-managed or outsourced: Agents and outsourcing partners can handle enrollment, payroll processing, routine inquiries and transactional workflows quickly and consistently at scale
• Program design, concentrated in small expert teams: Small groups of subject-matter experts use agents for data and scenario analysis but still develop the plans themselves. This is where organizations can resist the central tendency trap. The analysis can be automated. The judgment about what fits a particular culture and strategy cannot. These teams become HR’s modern workshops
• Employee experience, an expanding human purview: As agents take on administration and expert teams focus on design, HR can devote more time to what the group called the building blocks of HR’s next era: relationships, humanity, wellbeing, skills, experience, purpose and culture, talent development, human flourishing, mentoring, people analytics and corporate context

The group distinguished benefits administration from benefits strategy. CHROs argued that no modern CHRO can succeed without a deep understanding of benefits, amid ever-rising costs. WTW’s 2027 Global Medical Trends Survey projects a 10.2% increase in global healthcare costs without corrective action, continuing a multiyear pattern. Benefits administration may move to agents or partners, but design, now a board-level cost and strategic issue, belongs with the expert team.

People analytics follow the same pattern. Producing analyses can be automated. Understanding the data is one thing. Knowing how to apply it is another.

The ‘Renaissance CHRO’

The group expects the next cohort of CEOs to bring different demands to HR: a sharper focus on maximizing returns and a much faster pace. They view emerging and future CEOs as having “clock speed,” or rapid decision-making, along with emotional intelligence, comfort with risk and the ability to bring clarity to ambiguity. Real-time dashboards can give CEOs access to much of the same data about a function as its leader, and CHROs no longer control much of the flow of people data.

The CHROs identified helping the new generation of CEOs see their blind spots as one of HR’s greatest opportunities to add value. The group observed that CHROs who thrive bring executives business problems, not HR problems, and help define them before others rush to solutions.

Several capabilities for future CHROs came up repeatedly:

• Relationships as the engine of execution in complex organizations
• Purpose as context for everything HR does
• Commercial depth
• Technology fluency

Other capabilities likely to become more important include financial and business fluency, data visualization that is consistent with other business dashboards, AI fluency, organizational design (where the group felt AI ownership naturally belongs), understanding of the economic and political ecosystem, government relations, and mergers and acquisitions.

Together, these abilities describe a renaissance generalist: someone fluent in commerce, technology, policy and people. The next generation of CEOs likely will expect this breadth from their CHROs.

Thinking ahead

Ten years ago, these same leaders asked how technology would change HR. Today they ask how HR can shape technology in service of people. The organizations that recognize and navigate the promise of the HR renaissance will likely use AI to reduce repetition, resist the central tendency trap and devote the time they gain to strategy, relationships, experiences and judgment no system can replicate. The original Renaissance was defined by humanism, the conviction that people belong at the center. The HR renaissance offers a similar opportunity: keeping the human in the relationship.