What if the most disruptive impact of AI isn’t on entry-level roles but on the middle of your organisation?
That’s the provocation at the heart of HRchat Podcast episode 872 with returning guest Brian Kropp, Vice President of Global Insights at Heidrick & Struggles. Rather than treating AI as a technology rollout or training exercise, Brian makes a compelling case that the real differentiator is how organisations approach AI as a people, work design, and change challenge.
And that reframes HR’s mandate entirely.
Speed Is the Signal
We opened with a stark contrast. Startups can move from idea to pilot in around 30 days. Large enterprises? Often closer to 270. The difference isn’t access to better tools—it’s decision friction, unclear ownership, and risk-averse governance.
Training alone won’t close that gap.
Brian argues that organisations need to design AI experimentation deliberately: give teams clearly defined tasks and roles to automate or augment, reduce approval layers, and track learning as a tangible outcome. Which leads to one of the sharpest ideas in the conversation—“R before ROI.”
Early AI value doesn’t show up as tidy cost savings. It shows up as capability, confidence, and insight. HR leaders should be designing experiments that surface where returns exist before finance teams lock in expectations about savings.
Why Middle Managers Are Ground Zero
Perhaps the most unsettling—and important—part of our discussion focused on middle management.
Scheduling, approvals, status reporting, basic performance coaching—many of the tasks that define modern management are increasingly automatable via AI tools and agents. Brian estimates that 30–50% of a middle manager’s workload could realistically disappear.
That forces a choice:
Fewer managers
Or redesigned roles centred on judgment, sense-making, escalation, and culture
Without a proactive plan, Brian warns, finance will default to cuts that erode long-term capacity. With a plan, however, organisations can reinvent management into something more human, not less.
Where Job Evolution Is Happening Fastest
We also explored where AI-driven job redesign is already visible—call centres, finance operations, diagnostic and analytical roles—and why some of the most valuable future skills may come from unexpected places.
As technology collides with culture, liberal arts thinking, market insight, and contextual judgment may become engines of breakthrough value. AI can process information at scale; people still make meaning of it.
Two Moves That Separate Leaders from Laggards
The conversation closed with two practical recommendations for senior HR and business leaders:
- Set an explicit formula for AI savings: Decide in advance how productivity gains will be split between margin and reinvestment in people and reskilling—before politics takes over.
- Create a VP of AI Workforce Transformation: This role (and team) would own task design for automation vs. augmentation, agent selection and “performance management,” and the operating system for fast, safe experimentation at scale.
- In short, HR’s role is shifting—from training and cheerleading to directing experiments, measuring learning, and redesigning work.
For CHROs, HR leaders, and curious operators, this episode offers a pragmatic playbook for turning AI demos into durable advantage.