Smarter AI tools, not job cuts, are helping HP to manage digital fatigue and protect wellbeing
Seemali Shukla, people leader for Australia and New Zealand at HP, says the fastest-growing source of workplace stress in 2026 isn't AI itself — it's the fear around it.
Speaking to HRD, Shukla said HP's approach has been to use artificial intelligence to lighten employees' cognitive load rather than add to it, while resisting pressure to treat the technology as a cost-cutting shortcut.
Shukla has led HP's people function across Australia and New Zealand since 2017, after moving from the company's India business, where she headed talent acquisition across six entities and roughly 15,000 employees. She joined HP in 2015 and now sits on the leadership team supporting Australia and New Zealand operations.
HP's wellbeing strategy has long rested on three pillars – physical, financial and emotional health – and Shukla said that structure hasn't changed with AI's arrival.
"Wellbeing has always been there," she said. "But with AI coming in, it's more about how you design your technology, or provide your employees with tools, that help them focus on their welfare and wellbeing."
During the pandemic, HP's Australian arm partnered with the Mental Health First Aid Association of Australia and now runs a network of about 70 trained wellbeing ambassadors. The AI shift, Shukla said, has simply widened the brief: replacing ageing laptops on a fixed cycle, upgrading to AI-enabled devices, and rolling out tools like Microsoft Copilot to cut down on repetitive admin.
"It even gives me a little summary on top – what is this email all about," she said of her AI-sorted inbox. "So what I'm trying to say is to facilitate and make it easy, rather than causing stress."
That focus matters given recent research on how intensive AI oversight affects employee mental fatigue, which has found overload risks rising even as productivity gains accrue – a tension Shukla's model is explicitly designed to manage.
Better tools, not fewer jobs
Asked directly whether AI has driven headcount reductions at HP, Shukla was blunt: "There are jobs that are impacted, but HP has not done that so far."
She attributed any change to broader "organisational transformation," rather than an AI-specific cost play, and pointed to HP's Australian business as being weighted toward sales and customer service functions she said depend on human interaction that AI can support but not replace.
"We won't cut these jobs," she said, "because we still need a human to touch base and sell the product, or do the customer service part of it."
The comments land alongside a government report tracking AI's actual footprint in the local labour market. Australia's Department of Employment and Workplace Relations found no evidence to date of broad AI-driven labour-market upheaval in Australia, with overall labour market conditions remaining strong by historical standards.
Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth has said the government wants AI used to create "good jobs, not threaten them." Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has separately said he wants jobs created rather than lost as part of a technological shift he's described as more significant than the rise of social media.
Advice for HR leaders navigating AI adoption
Shukla's guidance to peers still working through their AI strategy is to draw a hard line between tasks. "Do not go overboard with AI, where you think about how you can cut costs by doing that. That's not a long-run story," she said. "You have to make a clear distinction between what is related to humans and what can be done by AI."
Training and best-practice sharing across HP's global teams, she added, has been more valuable than any single tool rollout – something echoed in broader employee wellbeing research on human-centred AI design, which similarly warns against AI adoption that outpaces staff trust and training.
HP's financial year ends on 31 October, and Shukla said the AI conversation will only intensify heading into the company's fourth quarter as teams plan for 2027 – a period she expects will bring more scrutiny of which roles genuinely benefit from AI support, and which still require a human at the centre.
