The AI roadmap had 32 slides. The people strategy had four lines.
I’m starting to hear this a lot. The CTO walks into the boardroom with a detailed transformation plan - tools, timelines, productivity projections. Months of work, impressive stuff.
Then someone asks: "What about the people?"
Four bullet points. Maybe a vague mention of "upskilling." And then the CEO turns to the CHRO and says, "Where's YOUR plan?"
The honest answer? They don't have one. Not because they're not capable - but because nobody looped them in during the planning phase. They're finding out about changes that will reshape roles, skills and team structures at the same time as everyone else.
This Isn't a People Problem. It's a Planning Problem.
I want to be fair here, because this isn't about blaming anyone.
Tech planning and people planning happen in different rooms, on different timescales, with different data. CIOs have vendor roadmaps, proof-of-concept results and measurable ROI projections. They've got slides because they've got inputs.
CHROs have... engagement surveys and gut feel.
That's the gap. Not a competence gap - a data gap. And the data gap is the credibility gap.
Linda Chai (an enterprise architect and AI expert) and I wrote about this dynamic - we called it the Shotgun Wedding, because HR and IT are essentially being forced to co-parent an AI baby together. Neither of them planned for it. They speak different languages, they're solving different problems, and they've spent the last two decades in a polite, arms-length relationship. Now they need to figure out how to raise this thing without killing each other.
The problem is that when these two functions don't plan together, bad things happen fast. A recent Harvard Business Review article put it bluntly: companies are already laying off workers based on AI's potential, not its actual performance. That's what happens when tech planning runs ahead of people planning - decisions get made on assumptions, not evidence. And it's HR that gets left scrambling to respond.
I worked with a large insurer where exactly this played out. The CIO had an ambitious AI roadmap. The people team suspected a large, complex transformation was coming. But they had opinions, not evidence.
They needed three things: data to base a workforce strategy on, evidence that would get them taken seriously at the strategy table, and a business case to secure funding for what they knew was coming.
We analysed 3,000 unique roles across the organisation. Task by task. Which tasks would AI likely handle. Which would become more important. Which skills were in decline, which were rising.
Six weeks later, they walked into the boardroom with answers instead of assumptions. They got executive sign-off to move to the next phase of workforce transformation with funding and a mandate to act.
The four bullet points became a strategy.
So What Does a Good AI Workforce Plan Actually Look Like?
Here's what I've learned from doing this with multiple organisations: most workforce planning content offers 3-year roadmaps and definitive timelines as if the future can be predicted. That's not planning - it's fantasy.
The reality is that nobody knows exactly how AI will transform work over the next few years. Not the consultants. Not the tech vendors. Not even us. What you can do is make smart bets on what you're confident about, build the capacity to adapt as things change, and keep your people in the picture while you do it.
A good AI workforce plan needs five things:
1. Task-level understanding of your current roles. "Which jobs are at risk?" is the wrong question - it creates panic and it's too blunt to be useful. The right question is "which tasks within each role will change?" Some tasks get automated. Some become AI-assisted. And some - usually the ones involving judgement, relationships and creativity - become more important. That distinction is everything.
2. Scenarios based on YOUR technology roadmap - not generic McKinsey stats. A workforce plan built on industry averages is like a financial forecast based on "the economy." Useless for actual decisions.
This is where the shotgun wedding becomes practical: you literally cannot build a workforce plan without your CTO's roadmap. If HR and IT aren't in the same room, your people plan is fiction.
3. Skills trajectory mapping - which skills are declining, rising, or stable - so you can turn vague "upskilling" promises into specific investment plans.
4. A communication plan that doesn't create panic. How you talk about AI and workforce change determines whether people work with you or against you. Get the language wrong and you'll spend months in damage control.
5. A board-ready format. If your people plan can't be presented with the same rigour as the tech roadmap, it won't get the same respect.
That's the framework. But knowing what to include is different from knowing how to actually build it - which sessions to run, what questions to ask, how to make the business case, and what to say (and not say) to employees.
That's why we wrote the guide.
The Human-Centred Workforce Planning Guide
Most AI workforce content gives you a 3-year roadmap and acts like the future is predictable. Our guide starts with an honest admission: nobody knows exactly what's coming. Instead of pretending, we help you build the capacity to adapt - with practical working sessions, templates and AI prompts you can use immediately.
It's five working sessions, each designed to produce something you can actually use:
Session 1: Know What You're Actually Facing - a 10-question self-assessment and a one-page AI Exposure Snapshot template. Most organisations are operating on vibes and vendor pitches. This gives you a structured read on where you actually stand in about an hour.
Session 2: Map Where People Can Actually Go - an honest transition framework that avoids "fantasy pathways." Not everyone can be reskilled. Not every transition is realistic. This session helps you think honestly about what's actually possible - including the IKEA vs. Klarna contrast (same technology, opposite people decisions, dramatically different outcomes).
Session 3: Make the Investment Case - the hidden costs of "just cut" (55% of companies are already regretting AI-driven layoffs) vs. the compounding ROI of reskilling. Speaks CFO language, not HR language.
Session 4: Plan the Conversation - communication principles and a "language that works vs. language that backfires" table. Including what not to say, which is usually more useful than what to say.
Session 5: Build Your Iteration Rhythm - a 90-day action plan with built-in checkpoints. Because AI is moving too fast for static 3-year plans. You need a solid quarter with regular reassessment points.
It also includes AI prompts you can use with your preferred AI assistant to brainstorm each session, and full source references for every statistic cited.
What You Can Do This Week
If you're not ready for the full guide yet, here are three things you can do today with zero budget:
Ask your CTO for a copy of the AI/technology roadmap. This is the first date in the shotgun wedding. If you don't have it, that's your first finding - and your first conversation.
Pick 5 roles that touch the most automated processes and map their tasks. Just list what those people actually do in a week. You'll be surprised how much clarity that creates.
For each task, ask three questions: Will AI likely handle this entirely? Will AI assist with this (making it faster or easier)? Or will this remain essentially human?
That's not a full workforce plan. But it's a starting point. And it's more than four bullet points.
When DIY Isn't Enough
That exercise works for 5 roles. For 500+ roles, you need a structured methodology and a consistent framework - otherwise you'll get different answers depending on who's doing the assessment and how optimistic they're feeling about AI that day.
We built a free AI Impact Assessment that does this task-level analysis for any individual role. Try it on your own job first - it takes a couple of minutes and gives you a feel for what the output looks like.
For enterprise-scale analysis across your full workforce - the kind that produces board-ready reporting - that's what our platform does.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should an AI workforce plan include?
A good plan includes task-level analysis of current roles, scenarios based on your specific technology roadmap, skills trajectory mapping (declining, rising and stable skills), a communication strategy, and board-ready reporting. Our Human-Centred Workforce Planning Guide walks through each of these in practical working sessions with templates.
What's the difference between AI workforce planning and preparing your workforce for AI?
AI workforce planning typically refers to using AI tools to improve HR processes - things like scheduling, hiring forecasts and skills mapping. Preparing your workforce for AI means understanding how AI will change your actual roles, tasks and skills, and building a strategy to respond. This article and our guide focus on the second: how to plan your people response to AI disruption. They're complementary but different problems.
How long does workforce planning for AI take?
A basic assessment of 5-10 roles can be done in a week using internal resources. Enterprise-scale analysis of hundreds or thousands of roles typically takes 2-6 weeks depending on data readiness and scope. The guide includes a 90-day framework that breaks this into manageable phases.
Who should own the AI workforce plan?
Ideally it's co-owned by HR/People and Technology leadership. The CTO owns the technology roadmap; the CHRO owns the people impact. Neither can plan effectively without the other's input - which is exactly why the planning needs to happen in the same room.
What's the difference between job-level and task-level AI analysis?
Job-level analysis tells you "40% of accounting roles are at risk." Task-level analysis tells you "within accounting, invoice processing and reconciliation tasks are highly automatable, but advisory work and regulatory compliance tasks become more important with AI." Only task-level gives you enough detail to actually plan reskilling, redeployment and communication.
How do you communicate about AI workforce changes without causing panic?
Carefully. The guide includes specific communication principles and a table of "language that works vs. language that backfires" - including what to say when you don't have all the answers yet (which is most of the time). The short version: say what you know, admit what you don't, and tell people before they guess.
89% of HR leaders expect AI to reshape jobs in 2026, but only 11% feel confident predicting the skills their workforce will need even 12 months from now. The gap between knowing change is coming and being able to plan for it is where most organisations are stuck. The Human-Centred Workforce Planning Guide was built to close that gap.
Helena Turpin spent 20 years in talent and HR innovation where she solved people-related problems using data and technology. She left corporate life to create GoFIGR where she helps mid-sized organizations to develop and retain their people by connecting employee skills and aspirations to internal opportunities like projects, mentorship and learning.
