Dive Brief:
- Only 4% of U.S. CHROs in The Conference Board’s quarterly CHRO Confidence Index said they felt very prepared to lead through workplace change driven by artificial intelligence over the next two years, reflecting an array of strategic uncertainties, the organization said Thursday.
- Most respondents said their organizations changed their workforce planning processes because of AI, but only 19% said AI’s anticipated effects were incorporated into enterprise-wide workforce and financial planning. Respondents cited difficulty predicting AI’s workforce impacts as a primary barrier in this regard alongside limited AI skills.
- Employers are increasingly concerned about AI causing skill shortages within the workforce, according to recent studies; others suggest that some employee capabilities may atrophy as a result of the technology’s adoption. Those findings add to CHROs’ broader uncertainty about the future of work.
Dive Insight:
CHROs remain largely optimistic about their hiring plans, with The Conference Board’s Q3 index sitting only slightly below what the organization previously described as its strongest-ever reading in Q1 2026. However, “the broader workforce picture is becoming more cautious” as growth slows, Diana Scott, U.S. human capital center leader at The Conference Board, said in a press release accompanying the data.
Part of that caution is due to AI’s potential impact on jobs, which 67% of respondents said they had analyzed. The same share said they had brought AI tech or AI leaders into workforce planning discussions, while fewer than half said they incorporated new AI-related workforce, skills or labor-market data.
An emerging potential danger is AI’s negative effect on skills. Last month, a University of Phoenix published survey data suggesting that HR teams are facing a “skills visibility gap” leaving them with an incomplete view of their employees’ capabilities. A separate study by IBM found that AI could erode skills like critical thinking and judgment.
There is also the divergence between different groups of employees on the basis of AI proficiency. According to PwC, employees who lack specialized skills and do not excel at AI use are at risk of falling behind their peers. Employees also may use AI without fully understanding its purpose — leading to a lack of real productivity improvement as a result.
These and other findings speak to HR’s emerging responsibility to redesign their talent strategies and work itself, as Gartner experts explained in a September report. Though AI’s ultimate effects may be uncertain, the firm advised practitioners to anticipate, and promptly react to, changes to jobs and responsibilities caused by the tech and to maintain a flexible approach to workforce planning.
In any case, internal talent development is key, especially because poor retention of current employees can disrupt productivity and increase costs, according to Gallagher. The firm noted that disengagement and lack of trust can prompt further lags in AI implementation.
