The AI Adoption Gap in HR Is Real — 8 Steps for Fixing

CHROs everywhere are racing to help their companies leverage AI: unlocking cost efficiencies, accelerating output, and reimagining workflows. Boards are demanding it, CEOs are funding it and CIOs are modernizing around it.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: HR often lags behind the rest of the business in adopting AI themselves.

Not maliciously or intentionally. But in practice, many HR teams are still doing work the same way they did years ago: writing emails from scratch, building presentations manually, and spending hours formatting documents.

If HR is to support the future business plan, HR has to model the future.

Below is a simple roadmap for CHROs who want their teams to model the use of AI in their day-to-day work and prove its value fast.

1. Start at the Beginning: Let Your Team Know You Expect Them to Use AI
This might sound obvious (or unbeliveable), but we've worked with HR professionals who don't think it's "their job" to use AI - that it's really only an expectation for other departments. 

2. Ask Your Team How They’re Using AI
In an open forum or anonymous survey, ask a single question: “How are you using AI today to do your work?” Discuss the results, celebrate smart use cases, talk about the obstacles and the problems (it's not perfect, after all). When employees see peers using AI to help them with simple tasks (drafting job descriptions, formatting presentations, etc.), they begin to see AI neither as a threat or a "cheat", but as a productivity partner. Make AI usage visible, normal, and expected - not optional or exceptional. Likewise, create quality checks because, as is well documented, AI can hallucinate.

3. Call Out the Adoption Gap - And Close It With Support, Not Shame
When HR teams hesitate with AI, it’s often about a lack of confidence, discomfort, a fear of "cheating" or looking unprepared.

Research shows that women - who often make up the majority of HR teams - adopt AI tools at lower rates than men.

Studies from PNAS Nexus, the AI Literacy Institute, and others show women are more likely to view AI with skepticism, question its ethics, or worry that using it undermines authenticity. This is not a capability gap - it's a comfort gap. CHROs can help by framing AI as “a tool, not a cheat”, by normalizing experimentation and imperfection, sharing examples of women leaders using AI effectively, or creating peer learning circles where people test AI together. This will make AI become a shared competency within HR.

4. Normalize Every-Day AI Use in HR Workflows
Encourage your team to use AI for low-risk, high-impact tasks like:

• Drafting: write first drafts of emails, job descriptions, meeting summaries
• Editing: improve tone, clarity, or format
• Designing: turn text into presentation slides, job aids, or guides
• Summarizing: compress long reports, survey results, exit interviews

Give your team a simple instruction: Try AI for the first 20% of every task - and the last 20%. It speeds up work and raises quality without replacing judgment.

5. Provide Structured, Hands-On Mini-Training Sessions 
Most HR teams don’t need abstract lectures on AI - they need 10-minute practical demos of how AI can make their work easier. Activities like these will build their confidence faster than a lecture or an article. Examples include:

“Use AI to turn this rough email to a difficult manager into three polished versions.”
“Summarize this 10-page engagement survey report for a senior leader.”
“Reformat this learning curriculum into a clean slide deck.”
“Draft a growth-focused performance review in a more balanced tone.”

6. Bring the CIO In
Your CIO is driving the adoption of AI across the business - and has a perspective regarding how HR can help. Invite them to speak with your team about how other functions are using AI more aggressively, where the company is making its biggest AI investments, what “good adoption” looks like, and how HR can model AI adoption behaviors. This will help the team understand: AI isn’t an HR side project - it’s a corporate strategy, and HR is accountable for it, too.

7. Modernize Your Talent Profile: Hire More Tech-Forward HR Talent
Traditional HR experience matters - but it’s no longer all that matters. We need people in HR who embrace technology, who use it daily and creatively, who are curious about innovation and aren't intimidated about learning new systems or methods of working. When hiring, ask interview questions like:

• How do you use AI in your current HR role?
• What types of systems and tech tools do you like best?
• What's a technology that you haven't used yet because it seems intimidating?

You can teach HR technical skills. It’s harder to teach digital fluency, adaptability, and experimentation. Add early-career, tech-comfortable talent to the mix and the whole department becomes more future-ready.

8. Set the Expectation: AI Is Now Part of HR’s Operating System
Finally, be explicit:

“AI use is expected in HR - not optional.”
Not to replace people. To elevate them.
Not to cut jobs. To cut wasted time.
Not to dehumanize HR. To give HR more time for the human work.

Set team goals, track adoption, measure time saved, and highlight wins. When HR uses AI confidently and visibly, the rest of the organization follows.