How CHROs can Leverage AI for Talent and Culture Development

Boston Consulting Group’s latest research finds nearly three quarters of CEOs now identify as their organisation’s primary decision maker on AI – twice the share reported in 2025.

With this shift, AI is playing a significant role in business transformation agenda, touching strategy, operations, culture, risk and – critically– talent.

For HR leaders, it signals that AI is no longer a peripheral initiative to support but a defining context for how organisations will organise work, build skills and maintain trust. 

Companies plan to almost double AI spending in 2026, from 0.8% to 1.7% of revenues, even as half of CEOs say their roles are at risk if returns do not materialise.

This mix of urgency and uncertainty naturally heightens the importance of workforce confidence, cultural adoption and responsible use – all areas where HR has outsized influence.

The emergence of a digital workforce

A defining feature of the current moment is the rise of AI agents.

Four in five CEOs are more optimistic about AI ROI than a year ago, and most expect AI agents to produce tangible results in 2026.

Industry signals align with this expectation: at AWS re:Invent, AWS CEO Matt Garman sketched a future of “billions of agents” capable of managing complex business processes.

He characterised the next generation as “frontier agents,” which are more autonomous and massively scalable.

For HR leaders, this implies the emergence of a digital workforce that needs many of the same managerial constructs as people: identity, access, supervision and performance standards. 

As agents enter decision flows in talent acquisition, performance and rewards, the stakes for bias and privacy rise.

Responsible AI practices in HR, such as bias testing, data minimisation, audit trails and clear human oversight, are increasing in importance, with HR’s proximity to both regulatory exposure and employee trust positioning it as a natural co-owner of enterprise AI governance. 

Building a trailblazing culture

Despite the enthusiasm, BCG’s data suggests most leadership teams are still in early stages of effective engagement.

Only 15% of CEOs qualify as “trailblazers” – decisive champions who have upskilled nearly three quarters of their employees and are pursuing large-scale change.

These organisations report gains in productivity, speeds and decision quality where AI has been applied systematically.

The pattern is less about a singular technology advantage and more about an operating rhythm: adopting faster builds confidence, confidence accelerates adoption and returns compound as capabilities deepen.

For HR, the takeaway is that capability building and process redesign are inseparable, with skills growing in relevance when the work itself is reimagined.

Commenting on the Boston Consulting Group report, Sylvain Duranton, coauthor and Global Leader of BCG X, shares: “CEOs have a defining role in shaping how AI delivers value. The true competitive advantage lies with those CEOs who will reshape functions end-to-end and invent new products and services that drive growth. 

“The fact that nine out of ten CEOs tell us that by 2028 the measure of success for a company will be heavily tilted towards those that are able to get AI right reflects the significant change we are seeing in the market.”