An HR industry leader says one overlooked leadership trait is shaping which companies get more from AI
Companies have spent the past two years racing to prove that AI can replace headcount, redesign workflows and cut costs at scale. Increasingly, the pattern emerging from those decisions is more complicated. The return on that investment seems to depend less on the technology itself, and more on how well leaders manage the humans using it.
"There are business needs that have to be met, but how do we account for the fact that we have humans working in our workplace?" said Jennifer McClure, a keynote speaker based in Cincinnati.
McClure has spent decades studying what makes leadership work, first as a corporate HR leader and now as CEO of Unbridled Talent and founder of DisruptHR, a global organization active in more than 30 countries. As an advisor to leaders on workforce transformation, she's seen firsthand what separates the companies actually getting a return on their AI investments from the ones already reversing course.
In her view, empathy is the most significant factor. And other leaders agree, according to the 2025 Global Leadership Forecast report from Development Dimensions International (DDI), a leadership development research firm.
"They asked thousands of global leaders what the most important leadership skill was, and empathy was the one that reached number one," McClure said.
What happens when empathy is ignored
McClure has watched a pattern repeat over the last two years. Companies announce workforce cuts, credit AI for the savings, and later find themselves short staffed.
"We've proven that already," McClure said. "A lot of companies, not the majority, but the ones that gathered the headlines, were the companies that made major cuts in their workforce and blamed it on AI... And a lot of the data now is saying, whoops, those people are trying to hire back."
That tracks with recent reporting on companies scrambling to rehire the humans they let go, where reductions framed around AI savings have proven harder to sustain than announced. McClure argued the miscalculation starts earlier than the layoff itself.
"The ROI has not proven out on what AI has been able to provide thus far, because we didn't approach it about how does work need to be designed in order to make the most use of AI," she said.
"We don't just have drones and soldiers working in our workplaces anymore. We have people with agency."
Redesigning jobs around what AI can't do
Rather than slow AI adoption, McClure argues for changing the question companies ask before they cut anyone.
"We want you to find things in your job that AI can take over for you, like data collection or handling routine processes," she said. "But we also at the same time want you to be thinking about, with the time you get back from doing that, how do you use the output that AI gives you so you use your human decision-making and critical thinking more, and then what work are you able to do instead."
She pointed to IKEA, whose parent company Ingka Group reskilled 8,500 customer service co-workers into remote interior design consultants after its "Billie" chatbot took over a large share of customer inquiries. That shift helped grow a remote sales channel that reached €1.3 billion in sales by the end of fiscal year 2022 (roughly $1.4 billion USD), according to Ingka Group.
"The breakthrough wasn't the chatbot," McClure said. "It was figuring out what humans do best and how they could add value, and reskilling or repurposing those people to the higher value work."
That reframing lines up with arguments from other experts that productivity gains require redesigning work, not more AI.
What empathy actually looks like at work
For McClure, that redesign starts with empathy, not more technology.
"We want [employees] to see that their work has value, that showing up every day matters, that they're seen and recognized not just for accomplishments, but for sometimes just pushing through the hard work, which is an accomplishment," she said.
Looking back on her HR career, McClure said she'd be a different, more empathetic leader today.
"In my day, you got one day for an aunt or an uncle or a cousin or a grandmother, and you got three days for a parent or a child," she said. "And, you know, having conversations with people that, maybe their grandmother was basically their parent. And so even three days wasn't enough for their grandmother, let alone one. I regret that."
That kind of individualized judgment, she said, is what modern leadership demands, more than the rules leaders were trained to enforce. It echoes what other leadership experts describe as empathy becoming a core competency as AI adoption accelerates.
HR's opening, if leaders take it
McClure ties HR's growing influence to the same argument. The function best equipped to make the business case for empathy, in her view, is also the one best positioned to prove whether AI actually pays off.
"The role of a senior HR leader or an HR leader in general has more opportunity and is more powerful than ever, because we are kind of at the intersection of technology, culture, systems, processes," she said. "All of that involves people and the work that they do."
HR's real opportunity, in her view, is being part of the earliest conversations about how AI gets implemented, then regularly reminding other leaders that the real ROI comes from redesigning the work so people and AI each add what they do best, not from simply eliminating a role AI can now handle.
"Now is the best time to be in HR for the leaders who are of the mindset of how do I be business-focused and understand that my responsibility is the people strategy, but also knowing that the people strategy drives business strategy," she said.
