How IBM's CHRO Wants HR Leaders to Build AI Growth

Nickle LaMoreaux, Chief HR Officer of IBM, is encouraging HR leaders to look more closely at what they can do differently to drive AI growth. 

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal CPO Council Summit, Nickle shared that HR leaders need to consider “how we can put AI, technology and automation into enterprise workflows,” rather than looking at automating individual processes. 

This, Nickle says, can help companies see a measurable impact on their productivity – suggesting that those who aren’t looking at the growth AI can give their organisation are in danger of “missing the moment”.

Building a new HR system

IBM has already made several changes to its HR strategy under Nickle, with the company introducing AI chatbots as early as 2017. 

In the time since, these chatbots have been integrated into a wider ‘AskHR’ function – an AI-powered, conversational assistant that automates around 90 HR processes. These include payroll access, holiday requests and parts of the onboarding process. 

According to IBM, this agent has helped contribute to a 40% reduction in the HR team’s operational costs over four years, and has led to a 75% reduction in support tickets raised since 2016. 

Discussing AI implementation at the HR Tech 2025 Conference, Nickle said: “AI is not magic. It’s amazing, impressive technology that can totally transform your business. 

“But it takes hard work, behaviour change, culture change, business process change and sometimes leadership change."

A culture of continuous learning

To help ensure employees are equipped to deliver meaningful change and help deliver company growth, IBM has built up a culture that encourages continuous learning. 

Employees are required to complete at least 40 hours of learning annually through its ‘Your Learning’ platform, which offers employees targeted training based on their role, skills and overall career goals. 

As well as facilitating overall company growth, this training also helps employees move up within IBM – with the company using an AI tool to build an understanding of skills gaps and deploy staff on projects that allow them to further develop their skills. 

This can help employees be more agile in the workplace and prepare them – and the wider workforce – for the implementation of new technologies, says Nickle. 

She tells Forbes: “Once skills become deeply embedded into your culture and continuous learning is the norm, your workforce will be truly prepared for the future of work.”

Re-engineering roles

Speaking at the CPO summit, Nickle says that businesses “have to get comfortable constantly reengineering jobs to the value, and that value is always going to be shifting”.

As many jobs are “reengineered,” for AI, many workers are becoming concerned that it could lead to significant and long-term layoffs – with research from Reuters and Ipsos finding that 71% of Americans are concerned that AI will cause permanent job loss.  

While there have been significant job losses attributed to AI – with 54,000 people reportedly losing their jobs due to AI-related layoffs in 2025 – Nickle believes that this is the wrong approach. 

Instead, she says that employers should reinvest any savings into keeping headcounts flat or increasing them, in order to take advantage of any growth opportunities.

IBM itself has announced it plans to triple its US-based entry-level hiring in 2026 across a wide range of departments. 

Announcing this initiative at Charter’s Leading with AI Summit, Nickle says that, as AI can do “most of” pre-existing entry-level jobs, HR leaders must “be able to show the real value these individuals can bring now. And that has to be through totally different jobs”.