State of the Industry: AI Readiness in HR

Introduction

Everyone has AI on the brain, and HR professionals are no exception.

Yet how many HR professionals can confidently say their team is not just thinking (and talking) about AI, but is ready to adopt, scale, and oversee the tech in a meaningful way that will drive value for their department and organization?

To answer that question, HR Brew decided to go straight to the source. We surveyed a segment of our audience to gain an understanding of AI readiness among HR professionals. Of the 204 HR professionals who responded to our survey between July 8 and 20, 73% reported holding a leadership position, whether at the manager/supervisor level (31%) or in the C-suite (5%). Respondents were most likely to describe the industry in which they work as tech (18%), manufacturing (11%), or healthcare (8%).

What follows in this report is a summation of HR Brew’s findings.

AI has taken the workplace by storm, and for HR teams—and the companies they’re part of—deploying AI is increasingly important. Seventy-seven percent of respondents to HR Brew’s survey said that AI adoption is at least a “moderate” priority for their department, and that number grew when asked about the workplace at large: 84% said their companies were prioritizing it.

“Every employee is encouraged to use AI tools,” one respondent said. “They are some of the most powerful tools we have access to, and everyone should be finding ways to increase their own efficiency with them.”

And because AI is overwhelmingly a standout company objective, according to the data, HR teams aren’t the only ones at the forefront of its adoption in workplaces. A majority of respondents reported that HR, IT, and executive leadership teams are “involved” in deployment: 78% said HR teams, 77% for IT, and 71% for executive leadership.

HR’s involvement isn’t necessarily translating into significant AI use, though. Only 45% of respondents reported that their HR department’s participation in their workplace’s AI transformation is “high” or “very high,” and only half of respondents said HR is “only somewhat modeling the AI behavior” it wants from the entire workforce.

“Right now it’s really just everyone playing around with AI in their own ways,” one respondent wrote. “We do not have a unified approach to it.”

If workplaces do have unified approaches to AI, HR might not be discussing that with employees frequently, or at all: 22% of respondents said their HR teams communicate AI strategy to the wider organization “every few months,” and 29% never do. Only 13% of respondents reported discussing AI strategy weekly.

Internal communications is where HR pros are most using AI in their workflows. Around 71% of respondents said they use AI for internal comms, and 45% have folded AI tools into their HR tech systems.

HR professionals said they use chatbots and AI assistants like Google’s Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Anthropic’s Claude for purposes such as drafting emails and internal documents, ensuring copy matches their business’s expected tone, as well as analyzing and summarizing meeting notes and transcripts.

“I use Gemini to help me perform day-to-day tasks such as polishing emails, creating slide decks, reporting, best practices guides, really anything and everything which I will then spot check and tweak as necessary,” one respondent said.

Talent acquisition (TA) is the second most common area where HR pros use AI, as reported by 57% of respondents. The top TA-specific use cases for AI largely target tasks at the top of the recruiting funnel like sourcing candidates (64%), conducting screenings (51%), and communicating with applicants (40%). The least-common use cases cited are tasks that fall later in the process, including conducting interviews (19%), making employment offers (8%), and making hiring decisions (5%).

Nearly half (48%) of respondents said they have experimented with or incorporated AI capabilities into their applicant tracking systems (ATS) to help vet résumés, filter for keywords, and compare and contrast candidates.

Chatbots and assistants also come in handy for a myriad of purposes, according to respondents, including aiding in drafting job descriptions, prepping interview questions, and communicating with candidates. Recruiters aren’t guaranteed to be experts on the roles they’re hiring for, and these AI tools can help them better understand what top talent looks like.

“I’m specifically using Copilot to help me start job descriptions, especially the ones I know little to nothing about,” one respondent said. “It saves me a lot of time up front and spares our leadership the time to create them on their own as well.”

However, some respondents expressed hesitation in allowing AI too much agency in the hiring process, citing ongoing lawsuits that challenge how AI tools are used to analyze and vet applications.

“The main specific way we are not utilizing AI is by allowing it to make human decisions regarding hiring or applicant tracking. Humans need to be involved in hiring humans, and this has caused lawsuits for other organizations who use AI for recruitment and hiring,” one respondent said.

Some, though, said using AI specifically to cut down on administrative work also means that they can allow the human parts of recruitment to thrive.

“The biggest benefit isn’t that AI is making decisions for us—it isn’t,” one respondent said. “It’s helping us work smarter, move faster, and spend more time building relationships with candidates and hiring leaders.”

HR Brew’s survey found 43% of HR departments have an existing AI governance framework in place, and another 29% are working on building one now. But 17% of respondents aren’t sure whether a governance framework exists at all, and 11% have no plans to create one.

“At present, we are still learning about all the ways we can incorporate AI into our systems, and learning more about what to look out for regarding data privacy and managing inaccurate information,” one respondent told HR Brew.

It’s a common theme, according to compliance and employment law experts. Organizations are excited (and expected) to participate in the ongoing AI transformation, but the guardrails and governance policies are trailing behind.

Andrew Adams, partner with DarrowEverett, told HR Brew that as companies have moved toward greater AI adoption, most transformation plans have lacked compliance and training components.

“We see a lot of gaps in that, especially training employees in the tools that are out there,” said Adams, who leads his firm’s labor and employment work. “We see a lot of either endorsed use of external AI models that are learning on data that it shouldn’t be, or companies that are slow to adopt and train, and you see shadow AI used by employees, and you have that risk factor as well.”

That’s not to say there’s nothing in place. Experts told us that factors like the organization’s AI maturity can impact where the HR team is on its journey. John Rood, CEO and founder of Proceptual, an AI compliance consultancy, claims even many smaller organizations have some sort of AI use policy, often governing businesses or departments, but they haven’t been “meaningfully updated in a way that keeps up with the technology of the now.” More sophisticated organizations may have an outside counsel or a legal department monitoring and flagging updates to regulations or laws. But Rood said the “gold standard” is a governance system.

“Almost always, these are tied to one of the well-known international standards, whether that be the NIST AI Risk Management Framework or ISO 42001. That is an entire organizational thing, HR plays a part, although HR doesn’t generally lead those efforts in most organizations I’ve seen,” Rood said.

Rood said two fundamental requirements are emerging as regulators set their sights on AI.

“One of them is to control for bias and discrimination in hiring, and then the second is candidate-facing transparency, such that if a candidate is interacting with an AI system, they know that they’re interacting with an AI system,” he said.

Roughly one-quarter (26%) of respondents said their organizations have processes to check AI systems for bias, while 29% are building them. Another third (33%) weren’t sure whether their organizations conduct those types of checks.

To get there, respondents told HR Brew that the efforts to develop and launch governance frameworks is ongoing, citing task forces, AI committees, and “AI champion” programs, alongside AI policies and frameworks. One respondent said employees must self-report which AI tools they use, while others are developing role-specific AI literacy and responsible-use guidance.

“Every employee is encouraged to use AI tools...At the same time, an AI committee is making decisions around the guardrails we should have and are exploring enterprise AI solutions/platforms that might become mandated in the near future,” one respondent said.

On the road to AI readiness, HR pros have miles to go before actual AI readiness matches aspirations, both inside their own departments and among the workforce.

AI literacy among HR pros, while higher than that of the overall organization, remains low: 77% of respondents said AI is a “high” or “moderate” department priority, but just 45% rated their own AI activity as high or very high.

The majority of respondents rated both HR’s AI literacy (52%) and their organization’s overall AI literacy (51%) as “moderate.” But this activation and training lag might yield present consequences, right at the exact moment when HR pros and employees should be basking in the benefits of leveling-up thanks to the new technology.

“As capacity increases, if you do not educate those individuals on how to better utilize AI tools or the platform, you’ve done that individual a disservice. But that individual—in not knowing how to utilize the tools—now goes back to [the old processes],” Harry Osle, principal and CHRO of the strategic consulting and executive advisory firm The Hackett Group, said. “We go back to what we know. It’s the path of least resistance.”

Osle warned that some costly (and ongoing) AI investments may not produce their intended—or expected—outcome if the HR team or the workforce are relying on pre-AI processes to complete work, while expensive AI investments sit collecting dusk, reserved only for the most technophile of teammates.

More than half of HR departments (53%) have pursued AI courses for upskilling and another 48% have leaned on experimentation. But 20% of respondents haven’t pursued any upskilling. The same goes when it comes to org-wide AI upskilling: Experimentation (45%) and courses (44%) are top tapped strategies for upskilling, when it comes to tactics, but nearly one-quarter (24%) of HR teams aren’t promoting any kind of AI upskilling program at all.

HR has led responsible AI and efficient usage training, according to respondents; others have worked with dedicated L&D pros. HR leaders are even looking to start AI training along the onboarding process, according to one respondent.

Conclusion

“What you have to do as an organization when you look at transforming, utilizing your technology platform or a new platform with AI, is a skills-first focus on your talent, not only for HR, but for the entire organization,” Osle told HR Brew.

HR leaders could help shape the productivity boom inside their organizations by leading on AI adoption, helping to identify and grow the skills and talent needed in the new AI-powered workplace.

“What are my AI skills that I need? How do I assess whether the individuals have it or not? And then how do I introduce things like microlearning and agentics to train them on a continuous basis so it becomes part of their work? And then now you really have a leverageable model,” he said.