HR can’t build the future one AI pilot at a time.
A recent McKinsey & Company article on building HR for the agentic era highlights what it calls the “pilot trap”: organisations can move quickly by automating individual tasks, but without a clear operating model, these initiatives can become disconnected solutions that make future redesign more difficult.
The more important question is therefore what the HR function should look like in the future, and how humans and agents should work together to deliver it.
This means thinking beyond task automation and looking at workflows, organisational structure, capabilities and governance.
It also raises an important question for HR leaders: where should human judgment remain central as more work becomes agentic?
For me, this is where the discussion around AI in HR becomes much more interesting. The challenge is increasingly about redesigning how HR works, rather than simply introducing new technology.