HR Departments Are Still "Experimenting at the Margins" With AI Instead of Redesigning How Work Gets Done, New Report Finds

Most HR functions are using AI in some form, but very few are actually redesigning how work gets done because of it. That's the central finding from a new report by the i4cp, the Institute for Corporate Productivity, which found that HR teams have largely stopped at pilots and one-off experiments rather than embedding AI into their core operating model, a gap HR Dive covered this week.

"AI is raising the bar for what HR is expected to deliver, faster insights, stronger decision support, and measurable impact on the business," said Katheryn Brekken, senior research analyst at i4cp. "But most HR functions are still experimenting at the margins rather than redesigning how work actually gets done."

The distinction i4cp draws matters more than it sounds. Kevin Martin, the firm's chief research officer, put it directly: "The issue is not whether HR is using AI, most are. The differentiator is whether AI is embedded into how work gets done." The greatest gains, according to the research, show up when AI becomes part of the HR operating model itself rather than a technology layered on top of existing processes.

That framing lines up with what I've seen across AI for HR implementations more broadly. Companies buy the tool, run a pilot in recruiting or onboarding, celebrate the time savings, and then stop. The tool never touches how performance reviews get structured, how career paths get designed, or how the function measures its own impact. That's using AI. It isn't being transformed by it.

i4cp's research points to a small group of high-performing, future-ready organizations where HR has taken on a fundamentally different role. In these companies, HR isn't just supporting the business, it's actively shaping strategy and using AI to drive decisions that used to rely on gut instinct and tenure.

Terry Waters, i4cp's CEO, called this a leadership inflection point rather than a technology upgrade. "AI is transforming work at its core, how decisions are made, how work is designed, and how employees experience the organization," Waters said. "If HR is not leading or co-leading that transformation, companies are missing a critical opportunity to unlock the full value of AI."

That's a strong claim, and in my four years advising executives on AI adoption, it's also the one I'd bet on. The organizations that treat AI as a bolt-on function almost always plateau. The ones that use it to rethink how work is designed, not just executed, are the ones actually pulling ahead in AI adoption statistics across the board.

If your HR team is using AI for resume screening, meeting notes, or basic policy Q&A but hasn't touched how promotions, workforce planning, or performance management actually work, you're experimenting at the margins too. That's not necessarily a bad place to start. It's a bad place to stop.

The practical next step is to pick one core HR process, not a side task, and ask what it would look like if it were redesigned around AI from scratch rather than AI bolted onto the existing version. That's a very different exercise than adding a chatbot to your careers page, and it's the one separating the companies i4cp calls future-ready from everyone else still running pilots. For more on making that shift practical, we've broken down the approach in our guide on how to implement AI in business.

What did the i4cp report find about HR and AI?

The report found that most HR functions are using AI in some form, but few have redesigned how work actually gets done because of it. Researcher Katheryn Brekken said HR is "raising the bar" on what's expected but "still experimenting at the margins rather than redesigning how work actually gets done."

What separates high-performing HR functions from the rest?

According to i4cp Chief Research Officer Kevin Martin, the differentiator isn't whether HR uses AI, most do, but whether AI is embedded into the actual HR operating model rather than layered on top of existing workflows as a separate tool.

Why does i4cp call this a "leadership inflection point"?

CEO Terry Waters argued that AI is changing how decisions are made and how work is designed at a fundamental level, and that HR leaders who don't co-lead that transformation risk companies missing the full value of AI, and risk losing organizational influence as the business moves ahead without them.