Latest / Edan Haddock - Total Talent / HR Isn’t Broken… It’s Being Replaced

Transcript

HR Isn’t Broken… It’s Being Replaced · Edan Haddock - Total Talent

• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: No sponsors, no guests, no fluff.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just what's actually happening out there in talent, people experience, and the future of work.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes are dropping every Friday.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And today, we are going to poke the bear a bit.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're going after something that's been sitting quietly in the background of HR for years.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Something that organizations, and I'll say most organizations, still treat as sacred.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: The center of excellence model.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know the pillars in center of excellence, people partnering, HR operations.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's been packaged as best practice for over a decade.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the question I want to sit on today.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: What happens to that model when technology doesn't just support HR, but replaces large parts of it?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean improves, I mean replaces.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we're honest, a lot of what sits inside HR operations, organizational development, people partnering, it's already being automated, augmented, or bypassed entirely.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So does talent then become the front door to everything?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Does the whole model collapse into something new?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And most importantly, what dies first?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: The model we all inherited.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Before we tear it down, let's actually understand it properly.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: The HR operating model most organizations use today was designed for a different era.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: An era where data was slow, systems didn't talk, people teams were process heavy, and scale meant hierarchy.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the solution was structure.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Centers of excellence were created to bring deep expertise, talent acquisition, learning and development, reward, organizational development.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: People partners, HR business partners.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: They were there to translate business needs, provide advisory, and act as the face of HR.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then HR operations handled transactions, managed systems, and kept the engine running.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: On paper, it's clean, it's logical, it's scalable.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But it was built for a world where humans had to be the system.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that world doesn't exist anymore.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Technology just changed the game.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk about what's actually happening right now.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not theory, but reality.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: We've got AI screening candidates, AI writing job ads, AI running engagement surveys, AI analyzing sentiment, AI answering employee queries, AI building dashboards in seconds.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And not one day, this is now.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Inside organizations, inside teams, inside people functions.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the shift.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: HR used to be the holder of information.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now technology is, which means a huge part of HR's value proposition just disappeared.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Think about HROps for a second.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Payroll administration automated.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Contracts automated.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Policy queries, chatbots, reporting, real-time dashboards.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens to HROps?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't evolve, it shrinks dramatically.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not because people failed, but because the work itself is disappearing.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say it plainly.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: HR operations, as we know it, will not exist in the same form in five years.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps sooner.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, likely sooner.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: That whole layer was built to manage friction.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: But tech is removing friction.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what's left?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: A smaller function focused on governance, risk, and systems oversight.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: But not execution.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Execution is being handled by automation, AI agents, self-service.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And here's where it gets uncomfortable.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Some organizations haven't realized this yet.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're still hiring into HROps like it's 2012.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Still building teams around work that is actively disappearing.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that transformation, that's lag.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I feel people partnering and HR business partnering, I feel they're staring into an identity crisis at the moment.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we're really talking here about the one that could get defensive the fastest, you know, HR business partnering.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is where it gets interesting.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: People partners were built to advise leaders, translate strategy, coach, influence.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: But let's get honest for a second.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: How much of people partnering today is actually triage, policy interpretation, employee relations, process navigation, a lot.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: AI is getting very good at all of that.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if technology handles data, insights, first-level advice, then what is the role of the business partner, the HR people partner?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is where most models break.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because if people partners don't evolve into true strategic operators, then that function becomes redundant, not reduced, but actually redundant.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: OD feels like it's the quiet casualty, organizational development.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: This one is flying under the radar a little.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's probably the most at risk.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And why?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because OD traditionally owns engagement, culture, change, leadership frameworks.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: But now engagement is becoming real-time, predictive, and embedded in talent.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Culture, that's measured continuously.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Change, that's driven through data, not workshops.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Leadership development, AI-powered, personalized, and on demand.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So where does OD sit?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: It either integrates into talent or disappears as a standalone function.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And most organizations haven't even started that conversation yet.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, and knowing my audience, this is where it gets fun.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Does talent win?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because if HROP shrinks, OD dissolves, people partnering, HR business partnering transforms, then what becomes the center of gravity?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Talent.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: But not talent as we knew it.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not just hiring, not just pipelines, not just employer branding.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about total talent.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where talent owns hiring, workforce planning, internal mobility, engagement, experience, skills, performance signals.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because talent is closest to supply, demand, capability, and movement.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Which then means talent becomes the function that actually understands the workforce end to end.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: The rise of total talent.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's paint the picture.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: A modern model doesn't look like centers of excellence, people partners, HR ops.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like talent and people experience as the core engine, lean specialist capability on demand, not siloed, and technology and AI layered always on.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Where talent isn't a vertical, it's the platform.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Everything runs through it.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Workforce planning, talent.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Engagement, talent.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Internal mobility, talent.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Skills mapping, talent, hiring, obviously talent.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the shift.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Talent stops being reactive and it becomes the operating system.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what actually dies?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's answer the question directly.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: What dies?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not HR, but parts of it.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my take.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Traditional HR ops as a large function dies.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Standalone OD teams die.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Transactional people partnering or HR business partnering roles die.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: But then what survives?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Strategic advisory, experience design, workforce intelligence, and talent-led operating models.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I'm describing here isn't about job titles.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's about value.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: If the value disappears, the role then follows.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why most organizations won't change, here's the twist.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Even with all of this, most organizations won't move.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And why?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because this structure that we're in, this structure feels safe.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because this is how we've always done it.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is best practice.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what everyone else does.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And change requires us to let go of roles, to redesign teams, to upskill people, and to take risk.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not very good at that.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Human resources are not good at that.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: We never have been.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: We we get old models with new technology bolted on, and that never works.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you might ask me what I feel you should be doing right now.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening and thinking, all right, so what should I actually do?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here's where I'd start.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: We need to map our current HR work and define what is transactional and what is strategic.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: We need to identify what can be automated today.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not next year because things are moving far too quickly.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's what could be automated today, and that becomes an ongoing cycle.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: We need to redesign around talent as the core, not as a function, but as a platform.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: We need to stop protecting legacy roles and protect impact instead.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we need to do this.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us are, but more of us need to do this.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: We can't delay.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: We need to build augmented teams, humans and AI agents.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's where this is going.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is not optional anymore.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is inevitable.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: So is HR broken?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's just evolving faster than its own structure.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the Center of Excellence model, it did its job and it did its job well.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: But its time is running out.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: The question isn't whether it changes, it's whether you change with it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or get left managing a model that no longer fits the world you're operating in.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, as always, no fluff, no sponsors.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just what's actually happening in talent.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is Eden Haddock, Total Talent.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes every Friday.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: If this one's a hit, or if this hit you, or if it got you thinking, or if it got you cranky, that's cool.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is my view.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is sharing me sharing my thoughts of what's happening.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Please, if you connect, share it and start the conversation.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you next Friday.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.