Why CIOs and CHROs should be forming strategic partnerships

AI is changing HR in a way that impacts not just workforce management but the working partnerships between chief human resource officers (CHROs) and CIOs. Under AI's influence, CHROs are shifting from administering the employee lifecycle to designing and governing the whole workforce -- deciding what work exists, who does it, under what rules and how it will be measured. With technology at the heart of this, CHROs are now sitting alongside CIOs in a new strategic position.  

In this Q&A with TechTarget, Kelley Steven-Waiss -- chief executive officer and founder of Novaworks, and previously ServiceNow's chief transformation officer -- discusses how AI's influence on HR is changing total workforce management in a way that sees CHROs partner with CIOs in a new way. 

Editor's note: This Q&A has been edited for clarity and conciseness.  

How is AI changing HR in today's enterprise?  

Kelley Steven-Waiss: AI has definitely changed HR. For decades, HR was built around the employee: hire them, pay them, review them, retire them -- the whole lifecycle. AI breaks that model because a growing share of the work in a company isn't done by employees at all: It's done by agents.  

Now, AI is seeing HR design and govern the whole workforce, and deciding what work exists. That's a more strategic job, and it puts HR right alongside the CIO. 

I lived this as a chief HR officer. The systems we built were designed to record transactions, not to organize work. Now, future-oriented CHROs are building both a system of employment and what I call a system of work, and the two operate simultaneously. 

Can you share more about how AI is changing the operating model and jobs? 

Steven-Waiss: I talk a lot about moving from jobs to outcomes. For a century, we've organized work around jobs: a title, a description, a box on an org chart. But a job is really a bundle of tasks, and AI can unbundle it. Businesses need to be able to visualize the skills of their workforce, and then decide which tasks go to an agent, which get automated, and which get elevated for people to do better.  

In practice, this looks like CHROs start with the outcomes that the business needs. Say the desired outcome is a new hire who is fully productive in 30 days. To reach this outcome, you need to break down the required work and match each piece to the best resource, starting with the foundation of skills. You might find that someone on another team has the right skills, or that a contractor or an agent is a better fit, and you design the work around those tasks.  

Instead of locking skills inside jobs, AI makes that shift much easier and more efficient. I believe that companies that can change their operating model and redesign work will have a competitive advantage. When the wind blows in a different direction or the business model needs to change, their operating model has the flexibility to go with it. If you live inside static jobs, org charts and hierarchy, that's going to be very difficult. 

Where does HR now sit alongside enterprise technology leaders like CIOs and CTOs? 

Steven-Waiss: It is radically different, and I think a new role is going to emerge. I call it the chief work officer. This role is much more about managing the new workforce and the new workforce operating model, focusing on outcomes over jobs, and rethinking how work gets done. It's a new accountability: one leader who owns how work is designed, who performs it and how it's governed. That might be an evolved chief HR officer.  

Traditionally, CIOs and CHROs were the Hatfields and McCoys, with spears being thrown over who would own the technology decisions.

Do CIOs understand that the HR role is changing? 

Steven-Waiss: Traditionally, CIOs and CHROs were the Hatfields and McCoys, with spears being thrown over who would own the technology decisions. A better recipe going forward is joint effort and teamwork, with alignment on the outcomes we're trying to drive and seeing where we can team up on the skills and capabilities of our organizations. 

The CIO will have much deeper experience in digital transformation, and HR has to earn its seat by becoming more data-fluent and more focused on operational outcomes. It needs to come to the table with how work is changing, how the organization is changing and what it needs to execute for the company. 

What skills does a CHRO now need? 

Steven-Waiss: A high level of business acumen, the ability to influence and a very data-driven approach. One thing CHROs didn't grow up with is digital acumen. They weren't the most adept at buying enterprise software, so we leaned on the CIO quite a bit for those decisions.  

Now the role has to rest on three pillars. The first is understanding the skills and capabilities of people. The second is knowing how to innovate on process, because old process creates old outcomes. The third is technology: the ability to drive digital transformation in partnership with the CIO and not to lean entirely on them. 

Do HR leaders recognize they need to adapt, or are they keeping their heads in the sand? 

Steven-Waiss: There's what I call the middle of HR, which has tried in a way to put its head in the sand, mostly because it didn't know what to do. There wasn't training or a specific path for HR leaders to learn how to drive digital transformation. 

The ones who have leaned into this, learned new skills and hired the skills around them, have been able to evolve. I say 'evolve' purposely because HR has completely transformed over the last five years. If an HR leader is not actively looking at people, process and technology, which I encapsulate as the operating model, then I think they may have opted out of the position, or they have gotten exhausted by the work.  

It's a muscle that has to be developed. I call it learning, unlearning and relearning. There are many things we learned that we now have to unlearn and new things we have to relearn. If we can do that, and teach the organization and the workforce to do it too, we'll be much more successful. 

At ServiceNow, where I held my last executive position, the chief HR officer also became the chief AI enablement officer. You can see the shift toward being the leader who designs for the future and for the skills that all roles in the organization will require. 

Where do ethics, transparency and fairness fit into this new strategic approach? 

Steven-Waiss: I'm a creative at heart, and I was definitely an AI skeptic at first. But it goes back to agency and protecting the agency of people. We need to look at AI not just for how it benefits the organization and drives productivity and efficiency, but at how it makes work better for people. AI can augment the human being, take away tedious work and inform you with insights you didn't have. 

The partnership between the chief HR officer and the CIO is the most important relationship in any AI transformation.

What should HR and IT be doing now to prepare for this new AI-native organization? 

Steven-Waiss: Firstly, get HR and IT working as one team. I can't emphasize that enough. The partnership between the chief HR officer and the CIO is the most important relationship in any AI transformation. I saw that partnership at ServiceNow, and I drove it when I was a CHRO, because I knew it was key to the success of what I was trying to do. 

Next, name an owner for the boundary between people and AI. This is about governance, not just policy. Finally, understand that AI is a work design problem, not a technology problem, which is why IT and HR are good co-owners. They need to manage the workforce as one system. The idea that AI is over here with IT and our people are over there with HR doesn't hold up. You need to see it all together, with clear, human accountability for it all. 

Harriet Jamieson is a senior manager of custom content and writer for the IT Strategy team at TechTarget.