The Death of People & Culture: Reclaiming HR in the Age of AI

Summary

Grant Wyatt argues that the People & Culture (P&C) rebrand has largely failed to improve the work experience. Instead of fixing structural issues, organisations layered more wellbeing and engagement initiatives on top of bloated systems, which left engagement and trust declining while burnout rose. AI now accelerates this reckoning: it can perform many transactional and analytic HR tasks and will shift responsibilities toward leaders supported by AI-driven tools.

The article proposes a practical rebuild of HR around the A.I.M.S. framework — Automate, Integrate, Mobilise and Simplify — and urges a return to the candid language of “Human Resources.” HR must subtract low-value work, become strategically commercially useful, and focus on workforce design and capability so people can do meaningful work in an AI-infused workplace.

Key Points

P&C initiatives have often soothed symptoms rather than fixing structural causes of disengagement and burnout.
AI is already replacing many routine HR functions (coordination, analytics, policy interpretation); Gartner forecasts ~60% of HR tasks will be AI-driven by 2030.
HR’s role should shift from cultural gatekeeper to strategic enabler: optimise human capability and convert data into practical support for leaders.
The A.I.M.S. framework: Automate repeatable work; Integrate capability into leadership; Mobilise an AI Guild to govern and test tools; Simplify operating models to remove low-value processes.
Automation must follow simplification — review and simplify workflows before automating them to achieve best returns.
HR’s survival hinges on developing commercial acumen and helping the organisation redesign work, not on adding more engagement programmes.

Context and Relevance

This piece matters because many organisations are mid-transition: investment in culture programmes continues while AI adoption quietly changes who does what. For HR leaders, people managers and C-suite executives, the article connects common operational frustrations to a clear strategic response: treat human capability as a resource to be optimised and use AI to remove low-value activity so people can contribute where they add the most value.

It ties into wider trends — AI-driven automation, skills visibility, and the decentralisation of HR tasks to line leaders — and offers a pragmatic roadmap for governance, upskilling and piloting through an internal AI Guild.

Why should I read this?

Short version: if you work with people, HR or lead teams, this is a wake-up call. Wyatt cuts through the fluff: stop layering programmes on broken systems, learn how AI changes who does what, and get practical steps (A.I.M.S.) to make HR actually useful. It’s brisk, real-world and actionable — saves you time by doing the thinking for you.