Is HR Obsolete?

“HR is irrelevant and AI will replace it” is the sort of claim that gets repeated until it feels true. We slow it down and ask a better question: if the admin and compliance bits are automated, what should a modern people function actually do that makes organisations stronger?TL;DR / At A Glanceretiring transactional HR work that technology can automatewhy rebranding HR does not fix purpose, trust, or credibilityemployee trust gaps and the case for advocacy or ombuds rolesshifting people management back to leaders with HR as architectthe leadership capability gap in coaching, feedback and difficult conversationsAI in performance feedback and why AI plus human coaching mattersredesigning jobs for humans and AI, not just adding toolsmoving HR metrics from compliance to organisational capabilityWe pull apart the case for retiring the term HR and the case for keeping it, from the Ulrich model to today’s rebrands like People Ops and employee experience. Then we get into the real issue behind the labels: trust. Many employees assume HR represents the organisation first, which creates a credibility gap. We explore whether advocacy and ethics roles should sit outside HR, and what that means for fairness, transparency, and day-to-day employee experience.From there, we go straight at the uncomfortable fix: leaders must own people management. That only works if we stop promoting accidental managers and start building leadership capability in feedback, coaching, and difficult conversations. Finally, we debate AI and performance feedback. AI can be candid and consistent, but it cannot replace human judgement and empathy, so we argue for “AI plus a human coach” and, crucially, redesigning jobs for humans and AI rather than layering more tech onto broken work.If you want a practical, future-of-work conversation about people strategy, agentic AI, organisational design and leadership development, press play.Subscribe, share with a colleague, leave a review, and tell us in the comments: should we retire HR, or reinvent it?Support the showIf you are leading your businesses strategic transformation and need greater clarity, stronger execution and measurable results, let’s connect.  🌎 Website: www.KieranGilmurray.com📅 Book a call: https://calendly.com/kierangilmurray/catch-up📘 Kieran Gilmurray | LinkedIn🌐 Substack: https://kierangilmurray.substack.com📕 Amazon https://tinyurl.com/MyBooksOnAmazonUK AI Transparency Notice:  This podcast uses a hybrid format. When an episode features one of Kieran Gilmurray’s written articles, the narration is generated using a synthetic clone of his voice via ElevenLabs AI (the underlying article text is entirely human-authored). Episode descriptions and summaries are assisted by AI and should be considered unedited by a human unless specified.