How AI is transforming the role of the Chief People Officer

AI is transforming every function and role it touches, and the Chief People Officer is no exception. Chief People Officers, or CPOs, are increasingly leaning on AI to support bread-and-butter People responsibilities such as hiring, development, performance management, and compensation. 

As the hiring market has convulsed, growing and shrinking in fits and starts since 2025, AI has proven to be a critical tool for CPOs to guide workforces through uncertain conditions. These AI interventions impact the workforce at every stage of the employee lifecycle, enabling HR and CPOs to cultivate and retain top talent even during lean times. 

What is a CPO? 

The CPO, or Chief People Officer, is the head of the People function at a company. Often referred to interchangeably as the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), the CPO is a C-suite level leader who reports directly to the CEO. 

As the head of the people function, the CPO oversees: 

• Training & Development
• Recruiting
• Total Rewards/Compensation
• HR Business Partners
• Performance Management
• HR Generalists
• Employee Wellness
• Organizational change
• Leadership Development

A lot falls under the purview of the Chief People Officer. Today, as organizations, particularly in the tech space, are facing cash crunches and budget shortfalls, CPOs are being asked to manage all of these functions (and more!) with fewer resources. Engaging AI tools can help CPOs deliver a people-first HR function even while under-resourced.

When did HR become People?

The terms HR and People (and CHRO and CPO) are often interchangeable, but they reflect a real difference in philosophy and vision. HR, Human Resources, is a more traditional term that typically encompasses all the aforementioned functions that the People team oversees. However, Human Resources as a philosophy tends to focus more on compliance, compensation, payroll, and onboarding. People, by contrast, is a “people-centric” view of HR that focuses on employee wellbeing throughout the complete lifecycle – from interview to hire to promotion. 

The term Chief People Officer first gained ground in tech startups that explicitly shifted away from traditional company culture. Their new startup culture, with its emphasis on casual work environments, food & drink, and employee engagement, relied on the People function to actively develop company culture and employee wellbeing. 

In short, startups realized that to create their ideal culture, they needed to start from the beginning (the recruiting) and then manage that culture throughout an employee’s time with the company. 

Today, the Chief People Officer is not exclusive to the tech startup space; many companies both for-profit and non-profit have embraced the CPO model to create a people-first working environment. 

AI: Changing the CPO from operator to architect

Traditionally, the Chief People Officer or CHRO focused on execution. They ensured that all processes were followed, all employees were onboarded, everyone completed open enrollment, and all review cycles were finished on time. 

Today, thanks to AI, this is changing. AI automates all of this administrative busywork. But that hasn’t made the position of CPO irrelevant. If anything, it has freed up the Chief People Officer to be a more proactive and dynamic leader. With AI easing admin bottlenecks, the CPO can focus on more challenging but valuable projects such as developing employee culture, workforce planning, managing employee relations, owning AI governance, and align individual employee goals with company-wide long term vision. 

Recruiting is on the frontlines of AI 

HR, surprisingly, is one of the most AI-exposed verticals within an organization. Even prior to the great LLM-powered AI proliferation that began in 2022, HR already had a foot in the AI door thanks to one key function: recruiting. 

Recruiting has relied on at least primitive AI processes since Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Candidate Management Systems (CMS) like Greenhouse, Lever, and Workday started streamlining the recruiting process. In the early days, these tools often would simply parse resumes, and score resumes by how closely they matched a job description. It wasn’t exactly an AI agent combing through a stack of resumes to find a dream candidate, but it did significantly improve organization – allowing recruiters to quickly discard poor fit resumes to focus on high-scoring candidates. 

Job seekers certainly understood this. Applying via online portals became known as sending your resume “into the black hole.” Resumes went in…nothing came out. 

Today, these AI models are more advanced. Instead of simply looking for generic keyword matches, recruiting software can often understand context to more accurately score resumes. Furthermore, AI chatbots and assistants are helping schedule candidate interviews more quickly, reducing downtime between interview rounds. 

Controversially, AI models have been used to conduct initial phone and video screens. While 63% of candidates have experienced AI in the interview process, more than half dislike it. In fact, 38% of candidates walked away from the interview process due to AI-powered interviews.

Chief People Officers need to navigate this evolving recruiting environment by setting clear, human-first AI policies that make candidates feel welcome. Instead of using AI to conduct interviews, consider having AI assistants present in the interview who transcribe and summarize the interview. 

How AI is transforming HR and the people function

AI has touched far more than simply recruiting. Performance management, compliance, employee retention, compensation, and even employee relations are all directly exposed to AI evolution. 

AI in performance management

Performance management encompasses goal setting, KPIs, OKRs, and employee reviews. It’s a critical component of an employee’s development and a key factor used in promotion and compensation discussions. 

AI has profoundly improved the performance management function by automating a number of processes such as approvals, reminders, and kicking off review cycles. But that barely scratches the surface. AI can help employees set SMART goals by providing feedback on goals, distill information from review cycles to help employees improve, can summarize managers’ reviews at annual evaluations, and can help management get a holistic view of performance by team, function, and entire workforce. 

AI in compensation 

Appropriate compensation – both for hiring and for performance-based raises – is a critical tool in attracting and retaining top talent. Chief People Officers are increasingly relying on AI to analyze salaries across the entire workforce to determine appropriate compensation that rewards employees for their work while also reducing the risk of unnecessary attrition. 

AI in compliance 

Employment law is notoriously byzantine. With companies now spread across a host of states and even countries, it becomes increasingly challenging to keep track of all the relevant employment law and compliance requirements. 

AI can ease the burden of HR and Chief People Officers by providing specialized chatbots that are trained on the relevant law – thus helping HR and employees stay in compliance without digging through reams of legalese. 

AI in employee self-service

A standout use case for AI integration within the people function is employee self-service. Employees have access to a wide variety of benefits – from health insurance to PTO to retirement accounts – that can often be challenging to sift through. 

As a result, employees rely on HR professionals to help them navigate challenging processes like open enrollment for health insurance. AI-powered self-service tools such as chatbots and guided decision making can help reduce the amount of inbound requests HR receives, freeing them up to work on new projects as opposed to continuously responding to routine queries. 

How Chief People Officers can use AI agents in HR

AI agents are the next leap in AI workflows. By combining automation, autonomy, and LLM processing, AI agents can independently execute many tasks, reducing the need for HR leaders to manually manage repetitive processes. 

As an example, an AI agent for onboarding can be triggered whenever a new employee is hired, starting a cascade of processes including sending paperwork, chasing down approvals, responding to new employee queries, validate documentation, and finalize the hiring process – all without requiring employees to move between different programs or manually process paperwork. 

This union of automation, autonomy, and context-dependent knowledge means that employees get answers faster, work gets done faster, and fewer errors occur during notoriously complex processes such as onboarding or open enrollment. 

AI governance and the Chief People Officer

When AI first exploded onto the scene, adoption was the wild west. Companies were using AI haphazardly with no regard for data hygiene, sensitive data, or even consistency across functions. 

AI is a real watershed moment that can unlock a tremendous amount of growth for organizations – but, when used improperly, can cause serious risks and even lasting damage. 

To guard against this damage, companies need to set consistent, clear, strict AI policies. As the organization that already manages compliance, the People team is uniquely equipped to take the lead on rolling out AI policies within an organization. 

HR can consult with disparate teams to identify the most useful AI tools, then partner with tech teams to create protected AI environments for sensitive data. HR can then lead informational sessions to disseminate new AI policy, providing clear guidance on which tools can be used with what type of information. 

Owning AI governance is a real opportunity for HR and the Chief People Officer to step up and assume a new leadership role and function within this rapidly changing work environment. 

How the Chief People Officer can manage the change to an AI-first workforce

Here’s the reality: not every organization or every employee is ready to make the leap to AI-first on day one. 

Employees and organizations have hesitations. Many are worried about data hygiene, others are confused by how to use the technology effectively, and many others simply haven’t been given the opportunity to train on these new systems. 

The Chief People Officer can take the reins on becoming an AI-first workplace and teaching employees how to effectively adopt AI into their workflows. By focusing aggressively on employee development via upskilling and reskilling workshops – introducing AI use into performance reviews and SMART goals, and making AI accessible to everyone within a company, the Chief People Officer can manage organizational change that benefits both employees and the overall organization. 

Human-in-the-loop: the importance of keeping “people” in the people function

Reading all this, it’s tempting to think, “won’t AI automate all the work out of work?”

As Parkinson’s Law states, “work expands to fill the time available.” In short, no – it won’t. In fact, AI has created new types of work, and shifted some work from creation to management. However, there are also key areas (particularly in the HR function) that need to remain AI-free. 

These can be divided into two categories: “human-in-the-loop” and “human-only.” 

For “human-in-the-loop,” these are tasks that an AI can complete, but a human needs to review. Onboarding, open enrollment, vendor shortlists, meeting scheduling, and performance review cycles can all be managed mostly by AI – with the “human-in-the-loop” reviewing work and making the final key decisions. 

Other People team components need to remain AI free. These functions, like interviews, mediation, and terminations – are built on human connection and trust. Removing the human from these processes removes the value, long-term goodwill, and negatively impacts employer/employee relations. 

This list is not exhaustive. HR and the Chief People Officer need to proactively identify and protect these AI free functions – not retroactively respond to an AI fiasco. 

The future of the Chief People Officer: leading an AI-powered workforce

Not since the advent of the personal computer and the internet itself has a technology threatened to so radically overhaul the way we work like AI has. The role of the Chief People Officer is tipped to transform from a diligent administrator to a forward-looking visionary who uses AI to cultivate a competitive workforce within a curated working culture. 

Because AI still is so nascent, Chief People Officers should grab the reins on AI, harnessing it to power their vision for an AI-powered workforce, instead of waiting for AI to rewrite the rules at their expense. 

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