With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) coupled with the need for cost cutting to maintain or improve margins, a new type of career in HR is becoming apparent: the HR Ultra-Generalist. Coined by Faye Almeshaan and Alexis Clarfield-Henry in an article for SmartBrief, the term refers to the generalist who can navigate AI to complete a variety of tasks from benefits and compensation to recruitment anything in between.
A long-term trend has been the scaling down of HR departments. For a long time, HR, instead of being viewed by organizations as investment centers, has been considered a cost center. With HR recognizing they need to assist the employees, at times they forget they are on the management side of the equation, which to many organization leaders creates a dilemma. Most organizations, especially public companies, focus on short-term profitability. Employees are a long-term management issue and generally the biggest cost item for all organizations. If HR does not support management, then HR is a cost that must be contained.
Further, the more recent trends have been toward hiring the generalist over the specialist. As pointed out by Nicole Smartt Serres in an article for Forbes, generalists “tend to manage many areas as opposed to a specialist who handles one area. For instance, a generalist can handle benefits administration, manage a payroll department, and recruit and conduct workplace investigations, while a specialist leans more toward one area, such as benefits administration or leaves of absence.”
This leads back to the incorporating of AI into HR. Almeshaan and Clarfield-Henry state, “HR AI copilot could analyze data from employee surveys, feedback forms, and communication channels to identify trends in employee sentiment and engagement levels and then provide actionable insights, such as identifying departments where morale might be low.” The issue for the Ultra Generalist is too much information coming from too many sources without controlling the speed for consumption of this information. It can become overwhelming. Dashboards may be a solution, but management cannot forget to review the underlying data.
All of this leads to the new paradigm of HR. These employees need to have a sound basis in AI and how to use it, but also the ability to recognize the database necessary for AI to work. They do not need to be super knowledgeable in HR overall. Copilot generally works from the organization’s own datasets, unlike a program similar to ChatGPT which may or may not be limited. Yet for many, ChatGPT is used as a tool for job descriptions, new hire pricing models, survey data, performance improvement plans, employee relations, and a host of other things (such as compliance requirements) which may not be embedded in the organization’s datasets.
More importantly, down the road these Ultra-Generalists may earn as much, if not more, in the long run as HR Specialists.
Almeshaan and Clarfield-Henry predict that in “5 to 8 years, we will witness the emergence of unicorn companies with fewer than 50 employees run by small groups of ultra-generalists, quickly generating over $20 million in revenue per employee. With small teams managing such large corporations, the generalist’s ability to align, communicate, retain talent, and adapt will be their differentiating factor.” Their predictions go beyond the HR roles and responsibilities but across the roles of the organization from accounting to operations. It will likely have a negative impact on job opportunities and growth. A heavier reliance on technology in this scenario means less job opportunities and less need for those specializing. Accounting is another field that could be heavily impacted by AI.
Therefore, assuming they are right, the HR career is changing and may not be for the better. If costs control and the need for HR to be management side is most important over day-to-day compliance, there should be a corresponding rise to the HR consultancies and need for labor on demand when needed. In this scenario it leads to a divergence in the social economic lifestyle that many in the field experience today.
Source: SmartBrief 9/6/24, LinkedIn 11/29/23, Forbes 9/12/19