What the next HR service model should deliver

AI is changing the delivery options. The harder work is agreeing the service, who owns it and where any freed capacity goes.

Take an internal transfer. The manager wants a confirmed date, the employee wants to understand what changes, and several teams each update their part. Every team can finish on time and the move can still be late.

That’s the problem I’d put at the center of any HR operating-model discussion. Adding AI to individual steps won’t close an accountability gap between them. Carlos Larracilla’s LinkedIn post raised a good question about how AI will reshape HR’s contribution. My view: first be specific about the services HR intends to deliver. Different work needs different arrangements.

The research offers choices, not a blueprint. McKinsey describes a more flexible function with stronger strategic, scientific and technological capabilities. Bain links automation and augmentation to reallocating time and redefining responsibilities across HR. Gartner’s public abstract calls for operating-model transformation beyond isolated pilots. None of it tells a given organization which service must improve, which capabilities to build or what to do with any freed capacity.

Design around the kind of help people need. I see four patterns, often within one journey:

• Clear information: approved guidance that’s easy to find, maintained, and backed by a route to help when the situation is unclear.
• Repeatable transactions: controlled workflows with defined permissions, approval points and error correction, and confirmation to the person who asked.
• Cases that need judgment: a named professional who understands the circumstances and takes responsibility. AI can help them prepare.
• Strategic business work: HRBPs, specialists and leaders on a defined organizational question, with the decision and its trade-offs staying with the accountable leader.

The test is the handoff. Can the service move a request to the right level without making the employee start again?

Give each journey one owner. Someone confirms the transfer can happen, sees the dependencies and has an agreed route to resolve conflicts between teams. A coordinator who can only send reminders will struggle when priorities compete. The technology needs owners too. Knowledge, data quality, access controls, testing and incident response all need capacity after launch and belong in the budget from day one.

Agree what the capacity is for. A shorter backlog, more access to specialists and better workforce planning are different commitments. Small time savings spread across many people don’t automatically become a new capability. Work has to be reorganized and skills built. Count the time shifted to employees, managers and other functions, or HR reports an improvement while the organization absorbs more work.

Use 90 days to earn the next decision. Pick a problem important enough to matter and narrow enough to evaluate, with a named business owner and access to the people doing the work.

• Month one: map the journey with users and delivery teams, agree the owner and baseline, repair the source knowledge and set the limits of automation.
• Month two: test with synthetic cases, then run a bounded live pilot. Track review effort, errors and corrections next to speed.
• Month three: compare complete outcomes with the baseline, including maintenance and oversight. Extend, change or stop.

The timetable is a planning aid, not a launch commitment. Unresolved data, controls or service risks are reasons to pause.

A leadership team doesn’t need to settle HR’s future shape today. It does need to agree what the business requires from HR, who owns delivery and how improvement will be measured. Start there. The structure and technology choices get easier once the service commitment is clear.

Sources: Carlos Larracilla · LinkedIn discussion on future HR operating models (prompt for this note); McKinsey · A new operating model for people management: More personal, more tech, more human; Bain · Better, Faster, Leaner: Reinventing HR with Generative AI; Gartner · Preparing the Transformation to an AI-Infused HR Operating Model; CIPD · Transforming HR operating models. The service patterns and 90-day plan are my synthesis, not a forecast or a validated formula.