How HR Can Navigate AI, Change Fatigue & Workforce Planning with Brian Heger

[00:00:00] Tanya Early: Welcome to Talent Draup, a thought leadership podcast series featuring HR leaders sharing their tried and tested strategies on workforce planning, people analytics, and change management. Today we have Brian Heger with us, and Brian, can you start by sharing a little bit about your background and your experience as an internal HR practitioner?

[00:00:23] Brian Heger: Yeah, sure, Tanya, first of all, great to be here. Appreciate the invite. So yes, I always start out by saying that I'm a business person who's happened to choose a career within HR as an internal HR practitioner. So when I say internal HR practitioner , throughout my career over two decades, I've always worked within a company's HR function as an employee delivering HR within that organization.

So I've worked for some really great companies. Different industries from telecom to retail to pharma, had a number of different HR roles in areas such as workforce planning, talent management, and many others in between. So my view of HR is heavily shaped from an internal HR practitioner standpoint, meaning number one, we always start with how does this add value to the business with what we're doing?

And number two. How do we now deliver value to the business via HR? So there's a really pragmatic approach that I always like to take. I write about a lot of these ideas in my newsletter, Talent Edge Weekly, which I believe at the time is read by over 55,000 HR practitioners and business professionals. I also write about this on brian hager.com, and I try to share that to help HR practitioners deliver on their most important priorities. So that's a little bit about my background, but again, it's great to be here.

[00:01:47] Tanya Early: We're excited to have you. Okay. So let's shift gears now to what may be some of the top priorities that HR leaders and their teams are focusing on. So what are some of those priorities that you're hearing about Brian?

[00:02:03] Brian Heger: Yeah. So depending on who I'm speaking with different HR leaders and teams, the priorities have a pretty big range. But as I talk to folks, there's a couple that tend to emerge as common priorities. I'll share a couple of those with you. Some of these might not sound groundbreaking because we're feeling them right now we're grappling with them. I'd say the first one is the impact of AI on how work is getting done and who's delivering the work. So no matter what HR team I speak to, or colleagues, they're trying to figure out. When you look at all the work tasks that have to be done in an organization to execute on its strategy, which is many of them, which of those

tasks are now going to be predominantly done by AI or machine, which will be done by humans?

And which will be done by a combination of those both. And that sounds really simple, right? Three buckets. It's really easy. We know it's not easy because there's thousands and thousands of work tasks that have to be looked at. And then secondly, when you change one work task and how that's delivered, it impacts so many others.

It has a ripple effect. And then the other thing I'm hearing them say is that as they look at this, they're concerned that when they make these changes, AI continues to grow in terms of capability. We have to keep updating and staying in tune with how is AI capabilities continuing to impact the work that we deliver?

So that's a pretty big one that I'm hearing that people are grappling with. Another one that relates to the first one is workforce planning. So as we look at the impact of AI on work, this has major implications for workforce planning. In terms of what are the skills we need our people to have? What are the roles that we're gonna have?

How does that change? And this Tanya workforce planning has always been challenging. It's always one of the top priorities that people have the biggest difficulty in executing. It's now gotten a bit more challenging. So teams are figuring out how do we do that and how do we make sure that we have the workforce that we need for the future?

And then I would round it out with a third one. 'cause three is a nice number, right? So I would say building change capabilities within the organization, which kind of cuts across a lot of different areas. I continue to hear people saying, Brian we're rolling out so many changes at once that people have change fatigue and people are getting burnt out.

So the challenge is how do we continue to roll out these changes and have people adopt to these changes? While keeping wellbeing high and helping them to really do their best work. So there's a lot more in between those three, but those are a couple that I'm seeing emerge.

[00:04:47] Tanya Early: I'm hearing a lot of those in my conversations as well.

So I agree with that and I think one of the biggest challenges is trying to figure out how do we prioritize how do, how does the HR function prioritize? What

part of this AI transition are they prioritizing? What kind of advice would you give on that?

[00:05:05] Brian Heger: Yeah, that's a really important question, especially as it relates to prioritizing AI because that seems to be the dominant theme right now.

And coming out of a couple of HR tech conferences that many of us have been to, there's a lot of excitement 'cause there's so many applications out there. Platforms use cases, but at the same time people are overwhelmed and saying, okay, this is great. Where do I focus my effort and energy? And I find the best way to do that, no matter what we do, is to not start with the AI use case.

Don't start with the technology. Start with what's the business problem that we're trying to solve here, or the pain point that we're trying to address, or the opportunity that we're trying to unlock. 'cause what happens is when you start with the technology or the AI use case. You start chasing things that you really may not need.

And this is a big investment of time and resources, so we wanna make sure we're focusing on the right thing. So I always say, what's the business challenge we're trying to address? Why is it important that we address that challenge with real data and information? Then we could start shifting into, okay, what are the solutions?

And AI may be one of those solutions, or it may not be, but in the event that it is a solution. We should then double click a little bit further and say, okay, why do we believe this AI application is gonna solve this business issue? What are we basing this decision on? Is there data? Is there evidence?

What are the risk of implementation? What? What are the risk of, we don't do anything, and so on. So once you start double clicking on those areas, but always starting with the business case, you usually end up prioritizing what's most important. So those are a couple of thoughts. Sounds simple and fundamental, but it's not always done in practice.

But if we start with the business case or the business issue, invariably you'll find your way to the right solutions.

[00:07:12] Tanya Early: I agree. And as far as those AI use cases, like which ones do you really see adding value?

[00:07:22] Brian Heger: They could all add value depending on that business problem we're trying to solve. So I always say that the AI use case is important to the extent that it solves the problem for the business that we're trying to solve with the capability.

With that being said, a couple that I've seen others using, and we'll take the example of workforce planning. I was talking to somebody the other day actually a couple of people that are doing the same thing. How are they using workforce planning? To come up with future business scenarios they might face as an organization.

And then once they model out those scenarios, using AI to understand what are the skills that might be needed, what are the roles that might be more important, and so on. So it's almost becoming a thought partner with these teams that they're using that. Another area is talent acquisition or internal mobility where talent acquisition teams or talent management teams whether it's resumes or internal talent marketplace platforms, they're using these AI platforms to help to uncover what I call hidden talent, right? It's the talent that you have within your organization. They have the skills, they have adjacent skills, they have experiences that could be a good fit for the need that we have right now, which could be in another part of the business, but we just don't know it.

So they're utilizing AI to help uncover who those people might be. Then to round it out with another one. Employee retention is always a focus, especially in critical roles and top performers. So using AI to proactively flag where retention risk may be within the organization, and then even setting up a workflow where prompts a manager to say, Hey, this is a risk you can have, and saying, here's why.

Here are some things that you could do. So again, almost becoming a partner to the manager in itself. So again, there's a lot of other ones in there, but I would always tie it back to what's the business issue we're trying to solve for? And then work your way into the use case.

[00:09:27] Tanya Early: And I think when we think about this too, it leads into understanding the topic of change and what does that mean for the employees and the organization overall.

So what are some ways that you think that HR can help organizations manage all that change and preserve the employee wellbeing?

[00:09:46] Brian Heger: Such a critical point, and it ties back to one of those priorities that I mentioned that I hear people talking about. But you raise an important question, which is what do we do about it?

And I'll start by saying I, I might've been two years ago, I remember reading a report by Prosci who does a lot with change management, and I believe the report, they did a study and it said, at any given time, an organization is managing five major changes on average. And then it goes up to 10 when you start factoring in other changes like in business units and so on.

And that was two years ago. So I would imagine that those numbers have increased since then, which is why it's becoming even more of a priority. And I think a couple things that we might be able to do, whether you're an HR leader or even just a practitioner on a team, there's a few things. Number one is helping our business partners and leaders.

Understand what's the collective view across the organization of all of the changes that are happening within our company. 'cause what tends to happen is when a leader's running a change and building change plans and so on, they usually don't have insights into all the other changes that are happening, which means we could end up overwhelming employees.

So how do we really get a sense of what are the changes that are happening? What's the magnitude of those changes? And. Who are the groups that are impacted by that? I've seen when you do that, it's usually a big wake up call for the company to say, wow, we didn't realize we had this much going on at the same time.

So helping to really be a steward of that, to bring insight into that. I think that's one important thing. A second thing I would say is we've all built change management plans and so on and I really feel that when I look at a lot of change management plans, 30% to 40% of what's in it could be eliminated because it's just adding a lot of stuff that may not really impact the outcome in itself.

So how do HR leaders help to coach all of our business leaders to really challenge them to say, what's really needed to pull off this change in the easiest way possible in removing the complexity? That's a big one. Then the third one is, and this is good because I was just talking to somebody the other day who, who's doing this as well who's an HR leader in a business unit.

And what they're doing is they said, we're moving away from change management plans to building more change readiness capabilities. So what

they're doing is they're trying to embed in these team discussions and normal team discussions. They're trying to envision, okay, what are some scenarios we may be facing in the next year, 18 months, and getting them to envision what those changes are and then start talking about how should we respond to that. So it does two things. It helps get insight into potential changes, but it starts getting the teams more comfortable with no matter what the change is, here's how we can talk about it or think about it.

I think that's a pivotal point because now we're moving away from just creating change plans to more building capabilities in the natural flow of work. So those are just a couple of tactics. There's many more, but but those are some that I've seen that, that are helpful.

[00:13:10] Tanya Early: So simplifying that complex process and finding a way that you can have just practical one page framework and layout for the tools.

Is important.

[00:13:22] Brian Heger: Yes.

[00:13:22] Tanya Early: So you've used these one page frameworks on LinkedIn and across your platforms to simplify HR topics. And what have you found is the value in using those and how do they help the HR teams move forward?

[00:13:37] Brian Heger: Yeah, it's so funny. I think I've become known as this one page trying to simplify things down on one page between my newsletter and on LinkedIn.

I always say that the purpose of those one pagers, it's never about oversimplifying complex topics because what we deal with is very complex. So it's never to say, wow, this very complex topic can be distilled into one page. That's not what the purpose is. The purpose is trying to overcome that first obstacle that I always see, which is complexity gets in the way of execution and when things are so complex.

Two things happen. People can't really understand the topic or the issue that we're talking about because of the complexity, and if you can't understand it, we can't have a dialogue and discussion around it, which means we can't move it into some type of action. So I found that these one pagers, what they do, they help to overcome that first obstacle, which is to say, listen, this is a big topic,

but let's start to frame the first part of this so that we could have a discussion around this.

It's not about filling out templates or forms, but this is more about a thought process and if we can do that, but the right people have the right conversation, we begin to build momentum, get clarity, and then we could do all the other stuff that we have to do. I found those to be. Really helpful, especially with leadership teams where we have limited time with to maybe broach a topic and have a discussion.

So those one pagers are really helpful for initiating the dialogue, getting the conversations going, and building the momentum so we could figure out the rest of the stuff that we have to do. So that's how I typically use them.

[00:15:22] Tanya Early: Got it. Okay. Excellent. This has been great information. So now that we're nearing the end of the podcast we typically do a rapid fire for questions and I just wanna get your initial thoughts and like a quick answer to some of these.

[00:15:38] Brian Heger: Yeah.

[00:15:39] Tanya Early: So I'm gonna start, what's one shift do you think will happen in HR in 2026?

[00:15:47] Brian Heger: I think it relates to what we talked about with the AI. So we've been talking about it, we've been experimenting with it. Now it's a time to start implementing some of this in the areas of HR that we think are gonna add the greatest value.

So we continue to hear about people don't have time to focus on some of the higher level strategic work. So once we implement some of these AI tools, it's gonna unlock some capacity. So now it's gonna pivot. From experimentation and talking about it to actually having it into our daily workflow, which is gonna free up capacity.

I expect that we're gonna see more of those shifts happening.

[00:16:26] Tanya Early: Okay. AI transitions.

[00:16:28] Brian Heger: Yes.

[00:16:28] Tanya Early: So what advice would you give a new CHRO or HR leader who's stepping into their first leadership role?

[00:16:39] Brian Heger: This may not be just specifically for HR. This could be any leader, as we're talking about HR is I think as a new leader, we come in, we're hired for the knowledge.

We have what we've done in the past, and we have this desire to come in and to start fixing things and making changes, which could be good at one point. But I would say come on in and understand getting back to those business challenges, understand what the business challenges are. Anchor your thinking into that, then start coming up with some of the solution.

And that requires a great deal of listening, relationship building, and reaching out. And then look at the common themes and then start building from there. So that would be one piece of advice I give.

[00:17:21] Tanya Early: And that leads into probably the next question in your answer to the next question, which is, what's an underrated skill HR leaders should develop to navigate technological shifts?

[00:17:33] Brian Heger: Yeah. Again I think it goes back to what I've talked about, and you can see here, I'm pretty consistent in my thinking. I think it's that simplification piece. We have so much going on and we have so many partners and leaders to influence that. We really have to think through what is the story that we're telling in a compelling way.

Motivates a leadership team to make the changes that we believe can help the business. So that requires really cutting through all the noise and the stuff, anchoring things back into the business, and then simplifying it by telling a really compelling story in a simple way people can understand it, and really tying it back to what's the ROI or the outcomes that are going to be impacted.

If leaders can do that simplification, they can move the agenda faster and with greater impact.

[00:18:26] Tanya Early: And do you have a must listen podcast or book recommendation for HR leaders?

[00:18:32] Brian Heger: Oh, that's a tough one. 'cause there's so many out there. But I'll pick one book because I was just had this person as a guest speaker in my talented circle community for internal prac HR practitioners.

And it's on the topic of workforce planning. So Ross Sparkman, who's been a lifelong internal HR practitioners done workforce planning at companies like LinkedIn, meta, GE. He's just written the second edition of his strategic workforce planning book. And what I love about the book, it has a lot of practical tools, strategies, and recommendations for internal practitioners that they can use to, to implement.

And there's a good chapter on AI as well, which was one of the challenges that, that people are facing in the context of workforce planning. So that would be my one, but there are many good ones out there.

[00:19:21] Tanya Early: Excellent. We appreciate your time today, Brian, and it was great getting to know you and hear what you had to say about AI.

It's something that I feel like we're talking about every day and it's gonna be a big change for the next couple years. So great talking to you. And that's it for the episode folks. Stay tuned for next episodes and follow us on LinkedIn to stay updated on more thought leadership content from HR leaders.

[00:19:45] Brian Heger: Great. Thanks Tanya.

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