AI-Centric HR Operating Model

Senior HR practitioners must embed Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their operating models and use it to drive both people and business performance, or risk being left behind by the organisation they serve.Organisations are rapidly deploying AI to improve productivity, accelerate innovation, and increase cost efficiency. Yet HR functions are often excluded from these gains. Constrained by legacy structures, process-heavy activity and a limited understanding of their commercial role, many people teams are still disconnected from the way value is now created in the business. Without urgent change, HR risks becoming marginalised and seen as peripheral rather than integral to organisational performance. The AI-Centric HR Operating Model explains how to avoid this.Written for senior people professionals, the book sets out how HR can design and operate an AI-centric model that keeps pace with the business while unlocking the performance, capability, and decision-making advantages that AI enables. It shows how AI can be embedded across the HR function not as a technology add-on, but as a core operating capability aligned to business outcomes. Crucially, the model is grounded in ethics and human value. It enables HR leaders to ensure AI adoption benefits the workforce while also driving commercial outcomes such as improved productivity, faster growth, and greater organisational resilience. By aligning people's skills, judgement and creativity with business priorities, the model supports stronger capability development, higher trust and engagement, faster decision-making, and sustained performance.AI is not positioned as a replacement for human judgement. Instead, it is shown as a force that amplifies human strengths and mitigates human limitations. The book explains why AI cannot replace people, why HR remains essential to organisational success, and why people function that fail to integrate AI into their operating models' risk being left behind. Supported by extensive research, interviews with senior leaders, and real-world organisational evidence, this book is essential reading for those responsible for workforce and organisational performance in the AI era.