SHRM CEO gives HR needed pep talk amid bad rap, AI challenges

ORLANDO, Fla. -- At the Society for Human Resource Management's 2026 annual conference, SHRM CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. exhorted attendees to be courageous in fighting for HR's continued relevance to business success at a time when their departments are being reduced or eliminated, their profession's value called into question and AI poses unprecedented challenges in engaging, retaining and developing employees.

"We have to be willing to look ourselves objectively in the mirror and ask the profession, is it willing to change?" Taylor told an overwhelmingly female audience that numbered in the thousands for his Thursday morning keynote. "We absolutely, I believe, can unleash a revolution, a revolution that will open incredible new doors to the future of HR."

Taylor began by recounting meetings where executives told him about their dislike for HR and skepticism about its value. In an informal poll he once took of 92 corporate leaders, 60% said they only tolerated HR, and 30% thought it had little value. Only 10% said they loved HR. But some told him privately that they found it indispensable.

Taylor attributed the sharp negative swing to executives' COVID experiences. He said they loved how HR helped them deal with the employee retention challenges, including remote and hybrid work. "You all helped companies pivot overnight," he said. "You kept people informed, calm, connected and working during the most uncertain time that any of us ever lived through."

CEOs followed HR's advice to "take care of people, and they will take care of you," he recalled. "But then the pandemic ended and a lot of employees quit anyway." The companies that had protected their people during COVID because of HR's guidance and assistance were met, he said, with mass resignations -- the Great Resignation, the "turnover tsunami," the fight over returning to the office, static over vaccines and other workplace rules -- all while CEOs were trying to stabilize their businesses.

Taylor said the attitude now, with employees once again fearing job loss -- this time from AI -- is that CEOs are asking why they should protect their jobs.

He said HR must respond to the existential threat to the profession by augmenting its longstanding emphasis on people with a laser focus on work. "We need to become the experts not just on people but on work -- how it gets done, who does it or what does it. That's new for us." To do so, HR will also need to understand the tensions between technology and talent, and -- crucially -- the concepts of worker value.

Business consultants have recently been advising companies to shift their AI strategies and gain a clear understanding of how work gets done so they can divide tasks between AI and humans and upskill employees for the new age of intelligent automation. Taylor implied that HR's new focus on work is motivated by AI's sweeping changes to how work is performed but did not explicitly link the two or attribute the changes entirely to AI.

"Every former technology came with lots of new toys to make our lives easier and -- most important -- with tons of new, higher-paid jobs. But this time, the new technology -- AI -- is openly eliminating jobs with no promises to replace them," he said. Companies are no longer comparing people to technology; they're comparing the costs of investing in them. He urged HR practitioners to be less focused on performance reviews and employee satisfaction statistics and more on demonstrating the value of employees.

"We need to fully understand and appreciate the friction between tech and talent, and then be able to explain the value and ROI for each and every one of our employees," he said.