ORLANDO, Fla. — HR is in need of a revolution that will reshape it into a function that organizes how work is done, whether by humans, artificial intelligence or other technologies, SHRM President and CEO Johnny Taylor said during his SHRM26 keynote address Wednesday.
Taylor spoke flanked by massive video boards depicting legions of humanoid robots typing on keyboards, moving packages in warehouses and scanning blueprints with human project managers. Against that backdrop, he said HR departments had “lost the plot” and hadn’t caught up with executives’ desires that work be done efficiently, effectively and predictably.
“We didn’t quite keep up,” Taylor said. “We were so focused solely on people, and we sort of forgot where this is all going.”
That reality is underscored by the idea that CEOs and other C-suite leaders increasingly see HR as expendable. Taylor recounted a 2025 meeting with 92 Fortune 500 CEOs in which he asked them whether they valued HR, tolerated it or whether they felt it delivered so little value that their organizations could live without it.
In the end, he said, only 10% of those in attendance said they valued HR — and 30% said the function had little to no value.
Taylor also referenced recent headlines made by Ryan Breslow, CEO of financial tech company Bolt, who said the company laid off its entire HR team for “creating problems that didn’t exist.” At Uber, he continued, the company slashed 23% of its people team just a few weeks prior.
“The livelihoods of everyone in this room, the 1.6 million people in this country and the 6.7 million people globally who practice HR are in danger,” Taylor said. “Because there’s a drumbeat, a steady drumbeat and underground cadence that seriously questions our value.”
He was even more blunt moments later, saying HR as a function faces “extinction,” and that, because of that threat, the industry must evolve to meet executives’ demands for controlling costs and growth as well as ensuring that their organizations’ investments in people produce value.
Part of the challenge is, obviously, AI. Its rapid displacement of employees who have no promise of newer, higher-paying jobs is unlike that of other recent technological waves. Taylor said this has been illustrated at companies like Meta, which recently laid off 10% of its workers and left 6,000 open roles unfilled. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly said this move did not reflect AI replacing workers, but rather a conflict between the cost of AI and that of people.
This is where CHROs must place their attention, Taylor said. If the companies of tomorrow are faced with the choice between funding AI infrastructure and funding people, the profession will need to explain what return on investment the organization is getting for each employee and how those employees fit into the organization’s business goals.
“What we’ve got to do is stop focusing so much on the perfect performance appraisal or whether our employees are always happy — they need to be happy, but not always happy,” Taylor said. “Then we need to explain the value and ROI of each and every one of our employees. That’s how we’re going to protect employees, and that’s how we’re going to take HR back.”
HR can also play the role of meteorologist by forecasting trends in technology and people before they occur, he said. For instance, if an HR department had the analytical capability to predict that a certain percentage of employees would soon leave their organization, it could present the CEO with a plan to retain those employees.
Taylor framed this shift as a revolutionary one, even playing into the theme of the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, with the video boards this time depicting photos from American history.
He closed by calling the community to commit to changing together.
“We can make a courageous practice of recognizing our weaknesses and our strengths with clear eyes: being decisive, analytical, business-first, solution-oriented and owning the full function of work in our organization,” Taylor said. “I’ve made that choice, and I hope you will, too.”