CHRO Spotlight: Why Your GenAI Strategy Depends on Your CHRO
CEOs talk about competitive advantage, technologists about platforms, investors about disruption. But here’s the quiet truth—AI won’t transform your business unless it transforms your people. And no one sits closer to this challenge than your CHRO.
Realizing GenAI’s potential is not about deploying the latest tools; it’s about reimagining the workforce and the organization itself. Success with GenAI will depend on change management and cultural transformation as much as it will with the technology.
In the GenAI era, an effective strategy depends on an empowered CHRO—serving as the linchpin of GenAI-driven organizational success. Let’s explore why.
1. GenAI Is a Business Transformation, Not Just a Tech Project
GenAI is often introduced as an IT initiative, but its impact reaches far beyond technology. McKinsey research shows “that gen AI could enable automation of up to 70 percent of business activities, across almost all occupations.”1 That doesn’t mean jobs disappear overnight—it means the nature of work will dramatically evolve. Routine tasks will shift to AI “co-workers,” freeing humans to focus on higher-value responsibilities.
It is important to start by understanding what makes GenAI different from traditional AI.
Human-centric: Natural language interfaces make it intuitive for all users to leverage
Accessible at scale: Free or low-cost tools allow access to many
Exponentially capable: Large language models can generate, reason, summarize, and code, often outperforming humans on routine tasks
Multi-modal: Models can process not only text but images, video, audio, and code
Unpredictable by design: Outputs can vary even with the same input, requiring human oversight and judgment
These characteristics make GenAI less about deploying a new tool and more about adopting new ways of working. Many argue the technology is already more powerful than how it’s currently being used, and it is organizations who now need to catch up.
That’s why forward-thinking companies treat GenAI adoption as a workforce transformation initiative to unlock value. It requires strategic workforce planning: identifying which tasks are best suited for GenAI versus people, redesigning roles, and reskilling employees for new opportunities.
Here, the CHRO has a pivotal mandate: to orchestrate the new human-plus-AI workforce, redesigning roles and skills so organizations capture the strengths of both. As the leader of talent strategy, the CHRO is uniquely positioned to drive AI literacy, workforce reskilling, and career path redesign—ensuring employees thrive alongside GenAI rather than being displaced by it.
2. Operating Model Shifts Due to GenAI
Most companies are trying to bolt GenAI onto yesterday’s operating model. It’s like buying a boat without a captain—you’ll move, but not necessarily toward your destination.
That’s why so many CEOs now admit their current structures put growth at risk. To capture GenAI’s potential, organizations need operating models built for speed, fluid collaboration, and continuous adaptation—not rigid hierarchies designed for the past.
Consider a few possibilities: if product managers can independently customize solutions for clients, how does that reshape their relationship with engineering? If sales leaders gain instant access to accurate legal insights, what does that mean for the role of in-house counsel? These examples may seem pointed, but they illustrate how GenAI doesn’t just automate tasks—it rewires how functions interact, and in doing so, unlocks new value.
Firms should explore:
Cross-functional collaboration: Moving beyond departmental silos to integrate GenAI into end-to-end processes.
New governance models: Balancing innovation with oversight around risk, ethics, and workforce implications.
Redesigned structures: Adapting org charts, roles, and reporting lines as the boundary between human and machine work blurs.
The CHRO should be at the center of this transformation. Partnering with IT, data, finance, and business leaders, HR has a critical role in ensuring GenAI-enabled processes align with workforce planning, job redesign, and change management.
Organizations that treat operating model redesign as a joint C-suite mandate—rather than a technology bolt-on—will avoid the trap of running AI in a vacuum. Instead, they’ll create structures and talent practices that fully embrace GenAI, unlocking a new level of agility, performance, and resilience in the GenAI age.
3. Culture Is Crucial for GenAI Success
Even with a solid plan, an AI strategy can stall without the right organizational culture.
Why does culture matter so much? Because GenAI isn’t just another tool—it’s fundamentally different from past technologies: it’s accessible to everyone (no data science degree required), multimodal (text, voice, images, video), and it reshapes how teams collaborate and create. In short, GenAI changes not just the work, but the way we work. That makes it less a technical challenge and more a cultural one.
Too many organizations respond to this shift with a familiar playbook: launch a learning hub, offer a few courses on prompt engineering, host a webinar. These steps are useful, but they aren’t enough. You don’t build a GenAI-ready culture by simply passing a quiz. GenAI is not Excel 2.0—it challenges how people think, not just how they work.
What’s missing today isn’t more information. It’s energy, belief, permission, and reinforcement—the messy, human ingredients that actually shift norms. That’s why adoption has to be culture-led.
A few starting moves:
Set the Vision: Define the firm’s position on the use of GenAI and how it aligns to the firm’s business strategy
Spark Curiosity: Use engaging demos to show, not just tell, the power of GenAI.
Empower Champions: Let early adopters experiment, inspire, and lead with practical tips and lessons learned.
Reinforce Micro-Habits: Encourage small routines that make GenAI use part of daily work.
If you want GenAI to live inside your organization—not just as a tool, but as a new way of thinking—you must operate at the human level. The technology is already powerful. The real challenge now is getting people to believe it belongs to them.
What Leaders and CHROs Should Do Now
Here are six strategic priorities for leaders—particularly CHROs—to successfully align GenAI implementation with workforce development and organizational transformation:
Foster seamless C-suite collaboration: Cross-functional leadership alignment is essential for coherent AI strategy execution. CHROs must work closely with CTOs, CFOs, and other executives to ensure technology investments support human capital objectives and organizational goals.
Articulate a compelling GenAI vision: While employees are already experimenting with GenAI tools independently, fragmented efforts yield limited results. CHROs need to establish clear guiding principles that explain GenAI's strategic importance, demonstrate its value to employees, and define appropriate boundaries—creating a unified direction for the entire organization.
Proactively map future skill requirements: The pace of skill obsolescence is accelerating dramatically. Leaders must systematically analyze organizational functions to understand how GenAI will transform core tasks and reshape operating models. Combining strategic reskilling initiatives with internal mobility opportunities reduces employee anxiety while strengthening retention.
Continuously evolve organizational culture: GenAI adoption represents an ongoing transformation, not a single implementation. CHROs should cultivate environments that celebrate experimentation, reward intellectual curiosity, and treat failures as valuable learning opportunities. The objective is building an adaptive culture that evolves alongside advancing GenAI capabilities.
Transform the operating model: Traditional organizational structures may not support GenAI-enhanced workflows. Leaders need to reimagine how work gets done, potentially restructuring teams, processes, and decision-making frameworks to maximize GenAI's collaborative potential with human expertise.
Create dynamic learning experiences: Conventional training programs fail to drive meaningful GenAI adoption. Interactive approaches like hackathons, innovation showcases, and peer learning networks generate enthusiasm and practical understanding, helping employees recognize GenAI's transformative potential.
By taking these steps, companies can start to unlock GenAI’s value while bringing their teams along on the journey. The common thread is that the human element is planned and managed with as much rigor as the technology itself.
The Bottom Line
Everyone is chasing the latest GenAI tools. But here’s the truth: technology alone won’t transform your business.
The future of GenAI in your company will depend on those human leaders who can guide and inspire others to learn, adapt, and boldly embrace the future. That makes the CHRO a critical GenAI leader in your company. They’re the ones who shape culture, guide reskilling, and ensure humans and AI work together to create value.
The firms that get this right won’t just deploy technology—they’ll unlock a workforce that’s more agile, creative, and future-ready.
Want help jumpstarting that belief in your team? At BeaconAP, we blend AI strategy with cultural design—because we know real change takes both.
Let’s build something better, together.
1: McKinsey & Company, The organization of the future: Enabled by GenAI, driven by people (September 2023).