Just 38% of CHROs and CIOs have a shared understanding on how AI impacts the future of work, highlighting the need for stronger alignment between HR and IT, according to Gartner.
“Organisations have made significant progress implementing AI, but many continue to struggle to realise meaningful value,” says Rachel Juley, senior director analyst in the Gartner HR practice. “Success increasingly depends on how effectively CHROs and CIOs collaborate to prepare the enterprise for AI transformation.”
Juley identifies four things CHROs should know about CIOs to help drive AI transformation together.
CIOs are becoming accidental talent leaders
CIO responsibilities increasingly extend beyond technology as workforce readiness, adoption and organisational change are becoming important parts of the CIO agenda. The pace of AI transformation forces workforce decisions into technology initiatives faster than traditional HR workforce planning processes allow, leaving CIOs to fill the gap.
“As AI adoption expands, CIOs are increasingly responsible for workforce challenges they were never traditionally expected to own,” says Juley. “CHROs must help their CIOs navigate workforce readiness, adoption and organisational change.”
To help address these workforce readiness challenges, Gartner recommends CHROs embed HR expertise directly into AI delivery teams in two ways:
- Embedding: HR staff are temporarily embedded into fusion teams to address the workforce implications of AI in real time.
- Coaching: HR staff coach fusion teams on how to use HR frameworks, such as skills maps and literacy programs.
CIOs are facing a leadership identity crisis
CIO accountability for AI outcomes is growing while ownership of the capabilities needed to achieve those outcomes is becoming more distributed. As AI ownership expands to multiple executives involved in AI, technology, and transformation, ownership of AI outcomes is less clear.
When ownership of AI initiatives is unclear, organizations can experience execution gaps, which erodes confidence.
To address these execution gaps, CHROs can create a unified view of shared areas of responsibility by formalising shared ownership of key enterprise capabilities and measuring success through shared indicators rather than function-specific metrics.
CIOs are only focused on the most visible AI costs
Organisations often evaluate AI investments through a technology lens, obscuring the workforce costs required to achieve business outcomes. These hidden workforce costs can limit AI value realization, leaving workforce investments undervalued and AI business cases distorted.
AI business cases should incorporate talent, workforce, and organisational costs alongside technology investments.
These costs may include compensation and retention of AI talent, productivity and retention impacts, workforce structure and organizational benefits, employee engagement, and labor market branding.
CIOs lack confidence to lead end-to-end AI transformation
The biggest barriers to AI value increasingly lie beyond technology as end-to-end AI transformation requires changes to work, workforce and operating models.
Organisations should position HR as a critical driver of AI value across four pillars:
- Co-pilot: Serve as an AI strategy partner
- Futurist: Lead workforce planning efforts.
- Engineer: Drive workforce transformation
- Architect: Shape organizational design
“The greatest risk for CHROs is being confined to supporting a transformation they should co-lead,” says Juley. “The most influential CHROs in the AI era will not be remembered as workforce leaders, but as architects of enterprise transformation.”