At the Society for Human Resource Management's annual conference in Orlando last month, CEO Johnny C. Taylor Jr. issued a stark warning: HR professionals who resist AI will be sidelined. The message from the world's largest HR association makes clear that treating AI as a back-office IT function rather than a strategic priority risks competitive decline.
Embrace AI or get left behind
Taylor told HR Brew that clinging to familiar roles is no longer viable. "If you want to do the job that you've done for the last 10, 20, hell five years, then you're in trouble…Embrace AI and use it to do the strategic value-added stuff that makes HR really valuable," he said. "If you stand still and say, 'I'm not going to embrace it, and this is bad for mankind,' you will be left behind."
The organization, which represents over 300,000 HR professionals, is pushing members to move beyond administrative tasks and toward AI-augmented strategy. Taylor's stance reflects a broader shift in how the Society for Human Resource Management sees the function's future.
Skills and lifelong learning as the foundation
Jim Link, SHRM's CHRO, argued that the best defense against uncertainty is a relentless focus on skills. "The focus today should really be on skills, and skill competency, and capability. Why is that? Because if you have a set of skills, and you learn how to keep those skills fresh and alive, then no matter what that next skill is that you're gonna have to learn in order to be ready for the next 30, 60, 90 days, you're already gonna be a lifelong learner," Link said. "You're already gonna have that mindset of continual growth and continual development, and that's the absolute best thing you can do to be prepared for whatever lies around the corner."
Link's emphasis on continual development mirrors the resources available in an AI Learning Path for CHROs, designed to help HR chiefs build adaptive skill sets for AI-driven workplaces.
HR must become the AI leader inside the organization
James Atkinson, SHRM's VP of thought leadership, noted a troubling pattern: HR professionals typically step back when their companies deploy AI, deferring to IT until it's time for workforce training. "Jump in," Atkinson said. "You should be as knowledgeable about AI as anyone else in the organization…because this technology is so interwoven in its future with how it interacts with the human aspect of it, HR really needs to be that AI leader."
The shift to work execution
Alex Alonso, SHRM's chief knowledge officer, described a future where HR transforms into what he calls the work execution profession. "It's thinking specifically about not just the humans that it takes to do the work, but actually the artificial intelligence that it takes to do work, the combination of the two, and where it is that each of those really brings value to the organization," he said.
Why this matters for executives and strategy
SHRM's direction signals that AI integration is not a technical side project but a leadership mandate. Executives who delegate AI decisions to IT without building their own fluency risk fragmented strategy and slower workforce adaptation. The path forward demands continuous learning at the top and a deliberate blend of human and machine capabilities. For further reading on how AI reshapes leadership roles, see our AI for Executives & Strategy content hub.
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