Most companies are pouring money into AI and getting little back. DeVry's Dave Barnett says the missing piece isn't tech – it's people
Human resources leaders are increasingly finding themselves at the center of enterprise transformation as organizations struggle to turn artificial intelligence investments into measurable business value.
According to Dave Barnett, chief administrative officer at DeVry University, many companies have focused too heavily on technology deployment while underestimating the human and organizational changes required to make AI effective.
Barnett said the shift has elevated HR’s role far beyond traditional workforce management. As organizations redesign workflows, rethink organizational structures and train employees to work alongside AI tools, HR leaders are now helping define how work itself evolves.
“While AI and transformation have been largely driven out of the CIO’s office, what we’re seeing now is it moving into the CHRO’s office — because this is a people matter,” Barnett said. “This isn’t purely about technology or tools. This is about people working differently.”
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Barnett recently spoke at the Society for Human Resource Management conference on how organizations can lead employees through large-scale workplace transformation tied to AI adoption. He pointed to research from Gartner showing that most organizations have yet to realize meaningful returns from their AI investments despite heavy spending across industries.
Much of the problem, he said, stems from organizations approaching AI implementation as a technology exercise rather than a workforce transformation initiative. DeVry’s own research uncovered what Barnett described as a “silent standoff” between employers and employees.
Employees, he said, are waiting for organizations to provide guidance, workflows and guardrails around how AI should be integrated into daily work. Employers, meanwhile, often assume workers will independently experiment with the tools and identify productive use cases on their own.
“Employees point to employers saying, ‘There’s this new stuff and you want me to do things differently give me guardrails, give me practices, tell me how workflows change, set me up for success,’” Barnett said. “Employers, concurrently, are pointing back at employees saying, ‘We’ve given you tools ... figure it out, do some cool new stuff.’”
Building competence and confidence
Barnett said organizations frequently underestimate the human dimensions of workplace change when introducing new technologies. In his view, successful adoption depends on two factors occurring simultaneously: employees developing both the skills and the confidence to use new systems effectively.
“I believe there are two things that are absolutely requisite for someone to adopt change,” Barnett said. “Someone needs cognitive competence and emotional confidence.”
Many organizations, he said, have concentrated heavily on technical training programs that improve employee competence but fail to address whether workers believe the technology is relevant to their jobs or whether they feel comfortable experimenting with it.
That challenge has pushed HR teams deeper into change management and organizational culture initiatives. Barnett said companies need to create environments where employees feel safe testing new tools, learning through experimentation and adapting workflows without fear of failure.
“When thinking about what we need to do for people, we need to make sure we’re addressing both competence and confidence in the way they work,” he said.
At DeVry, Barnett said AI is already being integrated into several HR functions. The university uses AI-powered learning systems that build adaptive learning journeys and simulations tailored to individual employees. The organization has also launched DeVry Pro, an external platform that uses an AI learning coach to help partner organizations with workforce development.
The university is also applying AI to employee communications and benefits administration. Barnett said DeVry is implementing AI-guided healthcare navigation services designed to help employees better understand and access healthcare resources.
“We’re using AI within HR, but we’re also leading the charge across the organization to help others through an upskilling and reskilling approach for how they use it in their areas,” he said.
HR’s role in redesigning work
Barnett argued that HR leaders must play a direct role in redesigning workflows and organizational structures as AI changes the nature of work itself. Rather than treating AI as a standalone tool, he said organizations need to rethink how jobs are organized into tasks and skills.
“HR has to be involved in workflow design — looking at how we break jobs into tasks and tasks into skills and ensuring we’re redesigning workflows to leverage this new collaborator in the workplace called AI,” Barnett said.
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That responsibility extends into hiring strategies and organizational design. As some forms of work become increasingly automated or commoditized, Barnett said organizations must identify where human capabilities can create distinct competitive value.
He also emphasized the need for long-term workforce planning alongside short-term operational guidance. The speed of AI development, he said, creates pressure for organizations to continuously educate employees about technologies that are still evolving.
“To me, it requires long-term direction and short-term acuity,” Barnett said. “We have to be clear and precise with people about the next three steps in front of them, while concurrently creating space for a longer-term vision.”
Barnett said organizations should avoid applying a single AI strategy uniformly across the workforce. Instead, he recommended segmenting employees into groups with different responsibilities. Most employees need practical, near-term guidance on how AI affects their current work, while smaller groups focus on experimentation and innovation.
“There’s a mid-tier team doing testing and experimenting,” he said. “And then you’ve got a top tier of innovators, your mavens — the people out front scanning the environment for the next move, the next change.”
Barnett said the future of work will depend less on artificial intelligence alone and more on how organizations combine technological capabilities with human judgment and collaboration.
“My deep belief is that as we think about the future of work, it’s not about AI alone,” he said. “It’s about AI plus HI — artificial and human intelligence coming together to create new value.”
