Adapting to the Agentic AI Era: Insights from Deloitte on the Future of HR

The future of HR isn't coming; it's already running workflows, screening candidates, and coordinating workforce planning without human intervention.

Agentic AI has moved from concept to reality, yet most HR teams remain structured around administrative responsibilities rather than work design. The gap between what AI can do and how HR functions is actually widening. It’s a challenge Kyle Forrest, Future of HR Leader at Deloitte, knows well. On Talent Experience Live, he explored a question many teams are now confronting: how does HR lead when AI begins to redesign work itself?

Drawing on insights from HR Reimagined and the 2026 Human Capital Trends, Forrest was direct: this is HR's moment to move from the back office to the front of the business strategy conversation.

How is the AI Shift Structurally Different for HR?

Previous waves of technology focused mainly on automation. The current one operates at a completely different level. Agentic AI can coordinate complex workflows that once required human judgment. It interprets context, manages competing variables, and supports cross-functional decisions in ways earlier tools simply could not. That capability changes the nature of work itself, not just the efficiency of tasks within it.

"Applied AI can now operate at scale across domains where judgment, interpretation, and different skill sets come into play," Forrest said. Hiring, development, and workforce planning aren't transactional processes; they involve judgment, trade-offs, and continuous adaptation. When AI participates in those decisions, HR's role shifts from process management to system design. That's a fundamentally different conversation to be having with the business, and it's already underway. The question is no longer whether AI will change work, but how quickly organizations can adapt.

Why Do Some AI Experiments Never Get Implemented?

While many organizations have launched AI pilots, few have scaled them meaningfully across the enterprise. In most cases, the issue is direction, not technology.

Absence of a shared vision: When teams experiment independently, progress stays isolated. Without a clear organizational direction, successful pilots do not translate into consistent outcomes elsewhere in the business.
Decision overload: The rapid expansion of AI tools creates more options than most leaders can realistically evaluate, and too many choices make coherent decisions harder rather than easier. Forrest noted candidly that no single vendor will deliver a complete end-to-end agentic solution, which means achieving measurable value requires combining capabilities thoughtfully across a considered stack.
Momentum without clarity: The third barrier is perhaps the most counterintuitive, and it showed up consistently across 9,000 respondents in 70 countries through the report. As Forrest said: "Seven in ten leaders say their business strategy is to be fast and nimble, but being fast and nimble sometimes means losing focus."

When computing power doubles every six months, moving fast isn't enough. The organizations scaling most confidently are adopting new capabilities while building the internal capacity to effectively put them to work.

HR's Real Opportunity: From Cost Center to Value Architect

For years, HR has been measured through cost and efficiency. That framing made sense when the function focused on compliance and administration. Today, the most pressing business challenges are talent and workflow problems with direct financial consequences: unfilled roles slow product launches, skills gaps limit growth, and poorly designed processes extend sales cycles. These outcomes affect performance directly, yet they often originate in how work is structured, not how individual people perform within it.

Forrest explained that HR is uniquely positioned to address exactly these problems, provided the function is willing to step into that role. "The HR team has an opportunity to take their understanding of AI capabilities, pair it with their understanding of work, and help the business redesign how work gets done,” he said. That means helping leaders decide what work should be automated or remain human-led, and how both can work together to drive productivity while improving the experience of the people doing it.

Phenom AI Agents are already putting this into practice by handling screening, scheduling, and candidate communications autonomously, freeing recruiters to focus on candidate relationships, workforce planning, and higher-order decision-making.

That is what HR shaping the business looks like in practice. And getting there requires HR leaders who understand AI deeply enough to own it as a strategic capability, not delegate it as an IT decision.

What Is the Difference Between AI-Assisted, AI-Augmented, and AI-Powered Work?

Forrest offered a practical framework for cutting through the noise on AI adoption: a spectrum that runs from AI-assisted to AI-augmented to AI-powered.

AI-assisted roles, such as HR business partners and sales executives, remain human-centered. AI makes the work faster and better informed, but the human is still central to how value gets delivered. AI-powered roles sit at the other end, where today's work will be done predominantly by AI, with humans shifting toward oversight, governance, and keeping agentic systems accurate. Augmented work falls in between, where AI meaningfully enhances human capability without replacing the human's role in the outcome.

The framework gives organizations a shared language to answer the same question consistently across every function and level: not whether AI will change work, but how.

How Do You Turn an AI Framework Into Organizational Action?

Value can only be found when organizations move from framework to practice. Each step builds on the one before it, creating the clarity that enterprise AI agents need to operate effectively across functions.

Map existing workflows to understand how work is currently performed and where time is being spent.
Assign ownership by deciding where AI and humans each contribute, and communicating that clearly rather than letting it emerge by default.
Define governance by establishing accountability and oversight as automation expands into more complex decisions.
Deploy the right tools to support the chosen operating model, ensuring people understand what they have access to and how to use it.

How Will AI Change the Way Employees Access Opportunity?

AI is also reshaping how people move through their careers. As capability access broadens, employees will contribute outside their traditional role boundaries and build competencies that would have taken years to develop otherwise.

"The easiest time for me to apply to a new role might be 5:30 am on a dog walk," Forrest said. "A hiring manager will not be available then, but a voice agent can move me through the process and surface me as a qualified candidate worth the investment. Think of the power of that." That kind of access, available at any hour without a gatekeeper, changes who gets seen and who gets an opportunity, while drastically improving the productivity of HR leaders.

Where Should HR Leaders Start With AI and Workflow Redesign?

As administrative work becomes automated, HR capacity shifts toward higher-impact responsibilities. The place to start is simple: identify one process that consumes significant time or creates frequent delays. Map how it currently works, determine which steps require human judgment and which can be automated, then redesign accordingly.

This builds confidence quickly. Teams learn how to apply new tools, measure outcomes, and refine decisions before expanding further. As a result, intentional improvements create meaningful organizational change.

The shift to agentic AI is not defined by technology adoption alone. It is defined by how organizations choose to redesign work. HR leaders who take ownership of that redesign will shape how their organizations grow, compete, and retain talent in the years ahead.

The shift to agentic AI starts with knowing where your hiring workflows stand today. See how 300+ TA leaders across eight industries are closing the automation gap. Access the State of Hiring Automation: 2026 Benchmark Report.

Devi B

Devi is a content marketing writer passionate about crafting content that informs and engages. Outside of work, you'll find her watching films or listening to NFAK.