Something interesting happened to me recently.
I wrote a short LinkedIn post about the future of HR. It wasn’t radical. It wasn’t dramatic. It simply suggested that much of what HR has traditionally “owned” is already being automated, outsourced, or redesigned. AI is not asking for permission.
The post received far more engagement than usual. That wasn’t the surprising part.
What surprised me was what happened internally.
The conversation that followed forced me to clarify something I’ve believed for years but had not fully articulated:
As AI absorbs transactional work, what remains — and what becomes more valuable — is human growth.
For decades, organizations have measured performance through financial metrics: cost of goods, time to market, customer acquisition cost, shareholder return. These measures matter. They always will.
But here’s the deeper question:
What drives those metrics?
People.
And not just people who show up.
People who care.
People who feel trusted.
People who feel meaningful.
People who experience joy in their work.
I’ve observed something consistently over 25 years of teaching, consulting, and coaching:
When joy at work rises, most business indicators rise with it.
Engagement improves.
Turnover declines.
Innovation increases.
Collaboration strengthens.
Resilience grows.
Yet we rarely measure joy with the same seriousness as profit.
Why?
Because joy feels intangible.
And because for many years, we believed performance was driven by incentives, pressure, and compliance.
That belief is now colliding with a new reality.
AI is changing the structure of work.
It can analyze data.
It can generate reports.
It can screen candidates.
It can write summaries.
It can automate coordination.
It can even “teach” content.
But it cannot build trust.
It cannot cultivate courage.
It cannot mentor with presence.
It cannot create belonging.
It cannot experience meaning.
As transactional work diminishes, the differentiator becomes human leadership.
Not positional leadership.
Not authority.
Human leadership.
The kind that understands personality differences.
The kind that designs complementary teams.
The kind that asks employees a simple question:
Do you enjoy your work?
And then has the courage to listen.
In my undergraduate HR and Organizational Behavior classes, I recently ran exercises on career branding. I told students:
If you don’t define your brand, the algorithm will define it for you.
In the AI era, “interchangeable” is dangerous.
The same applies to organizations.
If companies do not intentionally design environments where meaning and growth are central, they risk becoming mechanistic systems managed by software rather than guided by human judgment.
Over the past twenty years, HR has evolved. We’ve seen advances in workforce planning, capability building, performance systems, and change management. These are important developments.
But too often, even sophisticated programs still frame people as assets to deploy rather than human systems to nourish.
There is still a gap between impressive strategy language and how people actually feel at work.
Closing that gap is the work ahead.
In my book, The Humanistic Leader: Humanistic Leadership for the Soul, I argue that leadership is not about managing performance alone. It is about developing people in ways that are sustainable — for both the organization and the individual.
Humanistic leadership does three things:
- It begins with self-awareness.
- It designs systems that respect human dignity.
- It prioritizes long-term sustainability over short-term pressure.
In the AI era, this becomes even more critical.
If we are going to live longer, work longer, and collaborate more closely with intelligent systems, then the quality of our human experience at work matters more, not less.
Boards an CEOs will increasingly ask new questions:
Not only, “What were this quarter’s earnings?”
But also, “Are our people thriving?”
Joy at work may become a leading indicator of competitive advantage.
That is not soft thinking.
It is strategic thinking.
I do not believe HR should disappear.
I believe it must evolve.
Its primary responsibility must shift toward enabling meaning, cultivating growth, and designing environments where human contribution flourishes.
Otherwise, it risks being automated into irrelevance.
This is the focus of my Humanistic Leadership Model (HLM©) Workshop, where we explore how leaders can move beyond compliance-driven management and become architects of sustainable human growth inside their organizations.
If you’re curious about how to integrate AI-era realities with deeply human leadership practices, I invite you to explore:
The Humanistic Leader: Humanistic Leadership for the Soul
The Humanistic Leadership Model (HLM©) Workshop
Because as technology accelerates, our responsibility as leaders becomes clearer:
To build organizations where people do not merely perform.
They grow.
Warm regards,
Dr. Craig Nathanson