Josh Bersin on the Next Evolution of HR Leadership
On this episode of Redefining Work, I’m joined by Josh Bersin, global HR analyst and founder and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company. Josh dives into the transformation of the HR function from a transactional, administrative role to a more strategic, consultative powerhouse critical to business success.
HR’s role has only grown in importance as circumstances place higher value on people and relationships at work. “We don’t live in a world where people think about their careers around their companies anymore. Their careers are very independent of their companies,” Josh says. “So we have to run companies in a way that we have to assume that talent is scarce and skills are critical, and we have to design our companies around operating with fewer people.”
We explore how HR is evolving to tackle the challenges of today’s business environment, the shift towards systemic HR, and the groundbreaking role of AI in this transformation. Tune in to discover how HR can lead the charge in shaping the future of work.
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Develop Skills to Evolve Your Role
HR has moved far beyond the days of paperwork and compliance. Josh passionately argues that HR is transforming into a strategic engine that drives business success. But it’s incumbent on you to keep up with changing needs and expectations from the business. “HR professionals have to really upskill themselves and redefine their roles in a much more consultative, strategic way,” Josh insists.
Josh suggests managing strategic HR in a smaller company to experience a wide range of challenges and grow your skills rapidly. He recounted how the HR lead at OpenAI dealt with massive, complex issues — often single-handedly. He says that one person did 90% of the work in a certain area. This shows how much pressure and responsibility HR has in small but growing companies.
This environment forces HR professionals to be agile, innovative, and quick-thinking. “Those of you who want to work in small, fast-growing companies, it’s a great challenge and a tremendous learning experience,” he says.
Fall in Love With the Problem, Not the Solution
Historically, HR has focused on compliance and service delivery — but that’s not the case anymore. “The history of this whole profession was back-office, compliance administration, and then it moved into service delivery. And so HR departments were measured around their speed of delivering services to employees,” Josh explains.
HR leaders today need to be much more integrated across the organization, where the real value is being created. “Now we think about HR as a problem-solving organization, a consulting organization, a systemic thinking organization, because the problems that companies have are not siloed problems,” he says.
This new approach requires HR to adopt a systemic perspective, working across functional teams to address complex business challenges. “They’re working together on business-related problems, and they do what we call falling in love with the problem, not falling in love with the solution.”
Leveraging AI for HR Transformation
AI has unlimited potential to aid HR in this transformation, but its success hinges on the quality of data it uses. “If we don’t have good data to put into the AI, AI is not going to behave well,” Josh points out. Quality data is the fuel that drives effective AI solutions in HR, enabling more accurate and insightful decision-making.
“If you build an AI for recruiting or employee experience or benefits or L&D, and you put a bunch of junky stuff in there and you don’t know where it came from, all bets are off, because now anybody can ask any question and they’ll get the wrong answer,” he warns.
To fully leverage AI’s potential, HR leaders must focus on data management and quality. Josh pointed out emerging trends such as predictive analytics for workforce planning and AI-driven learning platforms that personalize employee development, showcasing the transformative potential of AI when grounded in high-quality data.
Josh provides an example with his own generative AI-powered HR assistant, Galileo™ which draws exclusively from Josh’s years of experience and expertise. “We didn’t want it to be connected to the internet, because there’s listicles and all sorts of junk up there that we just didn’t want,” he says. Instead, it draws from Josh’s writing and research to provide deep strategic HR advice.
People in This Episode
Josh Bersin: LinkedIn
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