HR accelerating skills evolution in the age of AI

In our latest transformation webinar, we examined how organisations can move from AI ambition to real workforce transformation. Our experts explored the evolving role of HR, the critical skills organisations need to build, and shared practical insights from real-world experience on enabling people to adapt in an AI-driven world.

You can find all the guidance our team shared by catching up on demand.

Access the slides here [ 845 kb ]

Setting the context: why this matters now

AI is no longer a future consideration; it is actively reshaping organisations today. Roles are evolving rapidly, skills are becoming outdated faster than ever, and the pace of change continues to accelerate. Yet, the real challenge is not the technology itself, but how organisations enable their people to adapt.

Our early 2026 survey of HR leaders across the private and public sector highlighted that many organisations remain in the early stages of their AI journey, experimenting with tools but struggling to scale adoption. As the year has progressed, we are seeing growing momentum to embed AI tools and related skills across organisations, although maturity and success still vary. This acceleration is also shifting expectations, with employees increasingly seeking clear career pathways, continuous learning opportunities, and reassurance about their future in an AI-enabled world.

Alongside this opportunity, organisations are increasingly exposed to new and evolving risks. Without a structured approach, AI adoption can amplify existing challenges around data quality, governance, workforce capability and regulatory compliance. The pace of change means these risks are not theoretical, they are already materialising in organisations that lack clear ownership and control frameworks.

From HR support function to strategic leader

The role of HR is undergoing a fundamental transformation. One of our Grant Thornton speakers, Beth Walton, highlighted that HR functions are accelerating from a traditional support function into the strategic architect of skills and capability for the future.  

This shift positions HR at the centre of workforce transformation: designing skills strategies, shaping AI-enabled roles, and partnering with finance and operations to drive business value. Rather than reacting to change, HR is now leading it.

As HR evolves into a more strategic adviser, focusing on strategic workforce planning and capacity, it enables organisations to respond quickly to business needs, external regulation and AI developments. It also becomes a critical control point for managing people-related risk, including the ethical use of AI, transparent decision-making, and embedding appropriate guardrails around how data and technology are used across the workforce to deliver the people plan, manage the people risk agenda and support overall business goals.   

The skills challenge: urgent and multi-dimensional

The scale of change is significant. Core skills are being disrupted, and entirely new roles are emerging. Organisations must therefore focus on building both technical and human capabilities.

Technical skills such as data literacy, AI awareness and process automation are increasingly important. However, human skills including adaptability, judgement, communication and change leadership remain equally critical.

Closing the gap between current workforce capability and future needs is one of the biggest challenges organisations face today.

Why adoption, not technology, is the barrier

While investment in AI continues to grow, adoption remains the key challenge. Barriers include limited budgets, data quality concerns, leadership alignment and resistance to change.

In reality, many organisations already have access to the technology they need. The real gap lies in building confidence, trust and capability across the workforce.

Insufficiently managed adoption creates significant risk exposure. Low trust in AI outputs, unclear accountability, and inconsistent usage can lead to operational inefficiencies, employee disengagement and potential reputational or regulatory risk. Organisations that fail to address these risks early often find them becoming barriers to scaling AI more broadly.

Designing the future workforce

Organisations must rethink how work is designed. AI affects tasks before it transforms entire roles, meaning job design needs to follow a task-based understanding of work.

Leaders must identify what can be automated, what should be augmented and where human judgement must be retained. Entry-level roles, often most exposed to automation, must be redesigned proactively to protect future talent pipelines.

Strategic workforce planning as the foundation

Strategic workforce planning provides the structure needed to align skills, cost and capability with business strategy. It connects people data with financial insight and enables organisations to move from reactive hiring to proactive workforce decisions.

Effective workforce planning requires collaboration across HR, finance, operations and technology, ensuring decisions are grounded in both commercial reality and future capability needs.

From a risk perspective, strategic workforce planning provides greater control and visibility across the organisation. It enables leaders to identify potential capability gaps, over-reliance on contingent labour, or misalignment between cost and value before they become critical issues. Without this, organisations risk making fragmented decisions that increase cost and reduce resilience over time.

Leading change: the critical success factor

Successful transformation depends on effective change management. Employees need to understand how AI will affect their roles, feel confident using new tools, and trust the outcomes they produce.

Organisations that invest in awareness, safe experimentation and clear leadership messaging are far more likely to succeed.

A lack of focus on change management is one of the most common sources of failure in AI transformation. Risks often manifest as low awareness, low confidence, or low ownership across the workforce, ultimately leading to stalled adoption, underutilised investment and inconsistent outcomes. Addressing these risks requires clear governance, defined accountability and sustained focus on behaviour change.

Lessons from transformation in practice

Organisations making real progress share common characteristics: strong foundations, clear strategy, effective governance and a commitment to continuous improvement over one-off transformation programmes.

They also recognise that building capability is as important as delivering short-term return on investment. The long-term value lies in creating a workforce that is adaptable, skilled and ready for the future.

As our guest speaker from Standard Life, Gareth Turney noted, "You have to think about this as an adaptation rather than an implementation – how is your organisation adapting to AI?"

Action for HR leaders

To move from ambition to action, HR leaders should focus on three priorities:

1. Define a clear workforce strategy aligned to business and AI priorities, supported by robust strategic workforce planning to improve visibility, reduce uncertainty and manage future capability risk.

2. Build critical skills at scale, balancing technical capability with human skills such as judgement, adaptability and change leadership to mitigate capability gaps and over-reliance on automation.

3. Drive adoption through strong change management and governance, ensuring employees are engaged, confident and supported while embedding clear accountability and ethical guardrails for AI use.