From HR to HX: Reimagining human experience in the age of AI

AI is blurring organizational lines in ways that were unimaginable until recently. HR must play a leading role in managing this tectonic shift.

This content was originally featured in an HR Executive article in July 2025.

In January, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made headlines when he said, “The IT department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI agents in the future.” To some, the claim seemed outlandish, but by May, Moderna had made it real—merging its tech and HR functions.

This isn’t just structural experimentation. It’s a signal of a new era where humans and machines are managed side by side.

The rapid emergence of generative and agentic AI is reshaping the blueprint of how organizations operate. Boundaries between departments are dissolving, and human resources functions can play an integral role in managing this tectonic change for organizations.

The drivers behind functional transformation

How is AI pushing companies to reconsider traditional departments?

One of AI’s key strengths is its ability to pull information from myriad sources. The technology doesn’t rely on org charts. It operates across domains—analyzing data, generating content, automating workflows—regardless of whether those tasks “belong” to HR, IT, marketing, engineering, etc.

Generative and agentic AI are not threats to these departments, but rather a spark for reinvention. Corporate functions in particular have a clear mandate to think differently and be a strategic architect of systems and experiences vs. processes.

From inputs to outcomes: a new HR operating model

Traditionally, HR has been anchored enabling processes—tracking inputs, managing steps and executing tasks to keep the machinery of the organization running. That work has been valuable, but it’s no longer sufficient. HR must evolve from process managers to experience architects.

This new model starts with the end in mind: What experience are we creating? What outcomes are we enabling? From there, we can deconstruct work, eliminate administrative burdens and design digital experiences that remove friction from people’s days.

Take for example, a performance management team. Traditionally, this team would have been focused on gathering inputs related to a process step: goals, mid-year check-ins, year-end feedback, delivering performance ratings, feeding progress reports to an individual business unit, etc.

With a goal of cultivating high-performing employees who are strategically aligned and rewarded for their contributions, the experience could be entirely redesigned. Not only could AI handle all of the process-related nudging and reporting, but it could also:

• Suggest personalized objectives aligned with business unit goals, individual roles and historical performance data.
  
  
• Issue timely nudges to gather feedback or encourage employees to reflect on progress and course-correct when needed.
  
  
• Link performance goals with learning paths, recommending courses, mentors or projects based on feedback and aspirations.
  
  
• Schedule performance check-ins and prepare a personalized agenda based on recent feedback and progress.
  
  
• Help employees visualize career trajectories, recommending next roles and development experiences.

In this scenario, instead of enabling process, the HR team oversees a suite of AI-enabled career coaches. Instead of managing steps it is curating a journey, managing both human and digital talent.

The HR-AI partnership: managing humans and agents

As AI agents become embedded in workflows, HR is uniquely positioned to optimize how humans and intelligent agents collaborate. Forward-thinking organizations will leverage HR as the orchestrator of this hybrid workforce. HR can enable this by:

• Designing integrated organizational models in which humans and AI agents work side by side, each contributing their strengths, with HR reconstructing jobs to optimize the outcomes for the end users.
  
  
• Equipping employees with new skills—both technical training to use AI tools and soft skills needed to think critically, creatively and strategically alongside them. Creating safe spaces to try (and fail) is one crucial way to enable innovation.
  
  
• Rethinking performance and rewards to recognize adaptability, tech fluency and the ability to collaborate with AI as core competencies. These traits will soon become the criteria with which to identify high performers.
  
  
• Creating governance structures to ensure ethical, secure and effective use of AI in talent processes. Employees will require training to effectively review, audit and guide AI with an enabling mentality.
  
  
• Bridging functional silos to create partnerships across IT, operations and business units to align human and digital talent under a unified strategy. Going together on this journey will result in stronger outcomes and also more fun!

HR can create the ecosystem that enhances both human and machine capabilities.

HR’s moment of reinvention

HR has long been the backbone of organizational stability, building robust processes and policies to manage complexity at scale and ensure people are hired, developed, engaged and treated fairly.

The rapid rise of generative and agentic AI is the disruption forcing a shift from process to purpose, from tasks to impact and outcomes. This is the moment for HR to take a leading role in shaping the future of the enterprise. With agentic AI automating task execution, HR can focus on enhancing business strategy by building effective talent strategies that power this transformation.

The lines are blurred. The rules are changing. And the future belongs to the functional teams that are bold enough to reimagine it.