The first step is thinking about jobs in terms of the component tasks, projects, and responsibilities they contain. If AI is going to remove 20% of activities that make up current jobs, companies have to ask themselves: What is it that we will need to get done? What’s the 80% we now need to hire for or retrain for? What are the specific tasks, projects, skills, and capabilities that automation will replace, augment, or transform?

This is a big ask for CHROs. For many decades, maybe a century, we have looked for workers who presented themselves as 100% qualified for a job we expected to remain relatively stable for years. GenAI technology is moving so quickly that it will create a very fluid ecosystem of work that is in a perpetual state of deconstruction and reconstruction. Roles will constantly change.

It will require a very different way of looking at work. If the CEO or the board asks a CHRO, “What’s the future of work?” in my view, the only rational response is “We don’t know.” Today, that answer makes it sound like you’re abdicating responsibility. But HR needs to become more like software development and product development, where uncertainty is normal, even valued. Human resources will need to evolve this way so that we are constantly redesigning work by experimenting and testing in a systematic way to adapt to, and even harness, the uncertainty that comes with new technology.