HR is a footnote in history

Work organized itself for thousands of years without us. We have existed for one hundred.

What if HR isn’t needed

One of the perks of writing a semi-large newsletter is everything that lands in your inbox. PR pitches, media monitoring, reports. Most of it is forgettable.

But one thing has struck me lately, there is a lot of “HR must” going around.

HR must lead the AI transformation. HR must own the change. HR must secure a seat at the table.

I have pushed that thesis myself. In this newsletter, on stages, in workshops. I have said it so many times it has become a reflex.

But what if it is wrong?

What if AI should not be treated as a people question at all? What if it should just be pushed out as technology? Install, activate, measure. More tech, less human. No change journey, no workshops, no HR strategy. Just rollout.

That sounds cold. But be honest. A lot of the technology we use today arrived exactly like that. Nobody invited HR when email showed up. Excel never got a change program. It just arrived, and we adapted.

And as I mentioned last week, what if the hype is true? What if agents can handle onboarding, salary reviews, screening, and engagement surveys better than we can? Then the question is no longer how HR should lead AI. The question is what is left.

Does HR need to exist? What is our self-justification in all of this? What is our role when the work that built this function can be automated?

I get a bit despondent at times. Not about the technology, about us. Because we defend our position so relentlessly instead of challenging it.

Every report, every panel, every LinkedIn post lands on the same conclusion.

“HR is more important than ever!”
Is that true, or is it just what we need to hear?

There is also an entire industry that makes its living telling HR how indispensable HR is. (I am part of it.)

Few things in life are static. Why would HR be?

The people function is roughly a hundred years old. Humans organized work for thousands of years without us. In the grand scheme of things, we are a small anomaly, not a law of nature. Yet we act as if our existence were a given.
As if we will always be here.

My point is not that we should shut it all down. My point is simpler. A function that cannot answer why it exists will get the answer from someone else. From a CFO with a savings target. From a CTO with an agent platform. From a CEO who notices the rollout went just fine without us.

So stop defending. Start challenging. Ask the question internally before someone else asks it for you. What do we do that creates value, and what do we do simply because we have always done it?

If we don’t reinvent ourselves, someone else will.