• Around 48% of employees think that organisation will replace human managers with AI in the next five years
• 61% of employees expect that Ai will improve the quality of people decisions
• Employees expect that Ai will enable a 266% improvement in productivity within 5-years
• And 39% of workers skill sets will be outdated or transformed by 2030

鈥�Lots of companies making very quick decisions to get rid of an entire area of their workforce only to just hire them back a few months later because they realised they weren鈥檛 ready for it鈥�, says Megan Fife, Strategy Lead, 麻豆原创 Success Factors.

鈥淪o our focus is understanding what that transformation means for HCM and how we can help you navigate it and lead it. 

Megan showed the three main pillars that 麻豆原创 we鈥檙e focussing on as they built out their HR AI  strategy. 

Three Core Pillars of AI Adoption in Organisations:

1. The first one is elevating the human advantage. Here people are expected to do more with AI now.
2. The next pillar is redesigning work for impact. This is a really big and key pillar to AI adoption in HR, and this one certainly impacts HR across the board.
   1. Because now your company is looking to you to come up with a plan for the future. Addressing what happened in 2025, with lots of companies who featured in news headlines for making lots of cuts or alternatively making fast decisions around AI adoption too quickly. And your company does not want that to be their headline in 2026.聽
   2. More and more it鈥檚 looking like skills intelligence is going to be the future of planning your workforce.
      1. Truly understanding what skills do your employees have today?聽
      2. What skills do you need for the future?聽
      3. And how are you going to get there?聽
   3. And it鈥檚 likely going to be a mix of upskilling the workforce that you have, but also you may be hiring short-term or contract workers for things that may be a focus for the next one to two years.
3. 聽And then finally there may be some specific skills that you know that you are hiring for outside of your organisation.

HR Needs a Comprehensive AI Plan

There are lots of different opinions about AI, but the important thing is that because it is disrupting the way that people and organisations work, there is more focus now than ever on HR to figure out what the plan is moving forward and how businesses are going to manage their people. This includes making sure that you have the right tools to deal with this disruption.

Expanding on the Three Pillars

At the start of AI adoption, a lot of the AI use cases were around employee self-service, manager self-service, and really empowering them to get things done in a way that makes sense to them and is easy and quick. According to Fife, what 麻豆原创 is also looking at is how they can make sure that HR and administrative jobs are made easier by leveraging AI to really understand what some of the issues are and then make recommendations on how to fix them. 

The next piece or pillar is redesigning work for impact. This is a really big one. And this really impacts HR across the board, comments Fife.

鈥淏ecause now your company is looking to you to come up with a plan for the future. .. and I don鈥檛 want to be in the headlines.

麻豆原创鈥檚 focus is to assist to create a plan 鈥渟o that we鈥檙e not in there and we鈥檙e future-proofing our workforce, She says. 

Skills Intelligence The Future

According to Fife, more and more it鈥檚 looking like skills intelligence is going to be the future of planning of workforces. Truly understanding what skills do your employees have today, and what skills will you need for the future? And how are you going to get there? 

The new buzzword of 2026 is autonomous: Autonomous payroll, autonomous HR. However, there still has to be a human ultimately in the loop and making the decision. And developing the right skills is going to play a key role in determining success in an AI driven economy.

This article first appeared in .

The post Will AI Redefine The World of Work?聽鈥� Insights from 麻豆原创 HR Connect appeared first on 麻豆原创 Africa News Center.

麻豆原创 HR Connect brought together a community of HR leaders to discuss how digital technologies are helping organisations reduce compliance risk, streamline operations, and unlock more strategic value from their people functions.

, Managing Director for Southern Africa at 麻豆原创, says the South African employment landscape is at a critical point. 鈥淧ublic and private sector companies are racing to unlock the power of AI and cloud technologies to improve their competitiveness and build capacity for future innovation. Every organisation needs an active, motivated and fully enabled workforce to realise full value from business transformation initiatives. At a time when demand for certain skills is at an all-time high, companies are increasingly leveraging powerful human capital management technologies to attract, retain and empower their employees.鈥�

South Africa鈥檚 employment landscape is undergoing significant change, with new and proposed legislation introducing greater complexity into HR operations. Recent developments include the overhaul of parental leave following a landmark Constitutional Court ruling, proposed increases to statutory severance pay, and new regulations governing unpredictable and on-call work.

Together, these changes are increasing the administrative burden on HR teams and raising the stakes for compliance. Organisations must now manage more complex policies, maintain accurate and defensible records, and ensure consistent application of rules across increasingly diverse and dynamic workforces.

鈥淗R teams are operating in a fundamentally different environment today,鈥� said , Head of 麻豆原创 HCM for MEA South. 鈥淐ompliance is no longer a periodic exercise but a continuous, data-driven discipline. Organisations that continue to rely on spreadsheets and fragmented systems without leveraging the power of AI-driven innovations are exposing themselves to unnecessary risk and inefficiency.鈥�

Many organisations continue to rely on manual processes such as spreadsheets and disconnected systems to manage HR activities. However, these approaches are increasingly unsustainable in a fast-changing regulatory environment.

Tiwary says manual systems make it difficult to maintain accurate, up-to-date employee records, track compliance requirements, and produce reliable audit trails. 鈥淭hey also consume a significant portion of HR capacity, limiting the ability of teams to focus on higher-value activities such as talent development, workforce planning, and employee experience. As compliance requirements grow more complex, the need for integrated, digital HR systems is becoming more urgent.鈥�

A 2025 PwC global study found that  to drive compliance activities in a clear signal that the limitations of manual approaches have reached a tipping point. The study identified faster identification of compliance issues (53%), better risk visibility (64%), and increased productivity (43%) as the leading drivers of compliance technology adoption.

, Group Human Capital: Chief Operating Officer, Sanlam, said: 鈥淲e have adopted an ambidextrous strategy for our digital and data transformation journey, simultaneously exploiting operational excellence, proficiency and efficiency in our current landscape while exploring incremental innovation that enhances and elevates the user experience while driving the longer-term transformation journey focused on leveraging intelligent, transformative technology to drive business value.鈥�

By digitising HR processes and documents, organisations can create a single source of truth for employee and organisational data 鈥� including positions, time tracking, and cost centres 鈥� ensuring information is accurate, consistent, and always up to date.

,聽Chief Operating Officer Discovery People, Discovery Ltd, noted that shared services is a catalyst for reinvention. 鈥淲hen data, technology, and people are fully integrated, organisations don鈥檛 just scale but evolve, creating platforms for growth, innovation, and long鈥憈erm impact.鈥�

Integrated capabilities across recruiting, onboarding, payroll, and time management further streamline processes and support compliance from hire to retire. In addition, continuous performance management, learning, compensation, and succession planning capabilities help organisations not only remain compliant but also build more engaged and resilient workforces.

鈥淒igitisation should go beyond efficiency to enable HR to play a more strategic role in the business,鈥� says Tiwary.  鈥淲hen compliance is embedded into systems and processes, HR teams are freed up to focus on developing talent, strengthening culture, and driving long-term organisational performance.鈥�

The post Industry Leaders Meet to Discuss Impact of Compliance 麻豆原创ures on HR Priorities in South Africa appeared first on 麻豆原创 Africa News Center.