AI is redefining the Chief People Officer’s remit
‘CEOs need to understand how AI is redefining the chief people officer’s remit—and then determine whether their CPO has the right skill set and mindset to deliver.’
This is a tough yet valuable challenge for all HR leaders. Your CEO is likely to be engaging energetically with the opportunities presented by AI – their inbox is full of AI. They don’t want to be behind the curve.
Every CEO will quickly realise from recent research reports that this is a people and culture issue.
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)’s October 2025 report: ‘Strategy and Soft Skills: What CEOs Should Look For in an AI-First Chief People Officer’ is an excellent summary of the demands that every CPO will need to confront:
‘To generate bottom-line value from AI, companies must redesign workflows, reshape job architecture and role expectations, upskill their existing workforce, and craft KPIs to gauge real progress—not to mention earn and maintain the trust of their employees. All of these responsibilities sit squarely within the purview of the CPO.’
The CEO is likely to ask themselves whether or not their current CPO is up to it. The report offers five questions to help them answer that question:
Q1. Is my CPO AI-curious?
Q2. Has my CPO played a role in another type of transformation?
Q3. Can my CPO bring structure to ambiguity?
Q4. Can my CPO create and manage a new social contract with employees?
Q5. Can my CPO claim their rightful seat at the table and challenge me?
It’s a good list for HR leaders to use for self-evaluation. I would add another question: ‘To what extent do I trust my CPO to be my strategic partner and co-leader in this? How strong are the relationships between HR and leaders across my organisation so that they can facilitate and co-create our own value from AI?’
As you may know, that’s the core of the work we do – building strategic relationships between HR and the business, and positioning HR to lead powerfully across the organisation.
Many HR teams aren’t in great shape for this new challenge – under-resourced or lacking strategic credibility, and this needs to be tackled too. Indeed, the need to step up to AI could give the CPO the mandate they need to build the HR function they’ve always wanted.
Quotes like these from the BCG report illustrate that this is potentially the greatest opportunity the CPO has ever had:
‘Of all the miscalculations CEOs can make in an AI transformation, underestimating the role their chief people officer (CPO) plays in success is the biggest we’ve encountered.’
Contact me if you’d like an informal chat to explore and scope out the role you’d like to play in the AI journey of your organisation, or to build a business case to beef up your HR function.
