--- title: Charter Leadership Forum: The growing interdependence between HR and IT description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/charter-leadership-forum-the-growing-interdependence-between-hr-and-it/ author: Massella Dukuly article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-04-10T10:30:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-19T07:41:26.183Z article:section: Charter og:title: Charter Leadership Forum: The growing interdependence between HR and IT og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Massella Dukuly](https://time.com/author/massella-dukuly/) Head of Workplace Strategy + Innovation, Charter Apr 10, 2026 10:30 AM UTC  Illustration by Charter · Photo by SeventyFour, Getty by [Massella Dukuly](https://time.com/author/massella-dukuly/) Head of Workplace Strategy + Innovation, Charter Apr 10, 2026 10:30 AM UTC _The Charter Leadership Forum is a roundup of guidance from the greatest minds in talent. For each edition, Charter’s research team asks expert practitioners to share their insights around the biggest questions shaping the changing world of work._ As AI becomes embedded into everyday work, organizations are discovering that many of the most important decisions about technology are no longer purely technical. They are deeply organizational. AI shapes workflows, redefines roles, and alters how teams collaborate and make decisions. That reality is pushing HR and IT into closer partnership than ever before. Historically, the two functions operated on parallel tracks: IT focused on infrastructure, security, and systems, while HR focused on talent, culture, and performance. But the rapid adoption of AI and digital tools is blurring those boundaries. Decisions about which technologies to deploy now directly influence how work gets done, how employees build skills, and how organizations measure impact. For leaders, this shift raises important questions about governance, ownership, and capability building. Who should lead AI adoption inside organizations? How should HR and IT collaborate to redesign workflows and roles? And what new structures or practices are needed to ensure that technology investments translate into meaningful improvements in performance? In this Charter Leadership Forum, we ask leaders and researchers to explore what this evolving partnership between HR and IT means for the future of work. **As AI reshapes how work happens, where are the boundaries between HR and IT shifting most dramatically and why?** **Jonathan Marek, chief operating officer, Guild:**The boundary isn't shifting, it's dissolving. The work that used to sit cleanly in HR—such as defining roles and org structures, supporting functional leaders, building skills and capability—now requires decisions about what humans do versus what AI agents do. For example, when Guild deployed Sierra, our AI agent for member support, we weren't simply executing an IT project. We were redesigning how work gets done—making decisions about what kinds of judgment we trust to a machine versus a human, identifying new higher-level human work our support specialists can do, and those specialists to succeed in those higher-level roles. Our model was a triangle: operations, IT, and people leaders all working hand-in-hand with far fewer boundaries. **Jessica Swank, chief people officer, Box:** Technology adoption is change management. Success depends on people, not just technology solutions alone. As AI becomes embedded in everyday work, the boundaries are blurred from a more traditional split of ‘IT owns the tools, people teams own the people adoption.’ Now, there’s a shared responsibility across IT, HR, and functional business leaders to redesign and reimagine how work actually gets done. Our chief information officer and I partner closely on our AI and tech strategy, but that partnership flows down into both organizations, with the IT team meeting regularly with key HR tech “champions.” Our people team has to help shape employee experience priorities, capability and skills building, workflow redesign, and overall adoption. IT needs to ensure the technical architecture, security, and scalability are sound. Together, this partnership leads to sustained adoption. **Gianpaolo Barozzi, chief technology officer for people, policy and purpose organization, Cisco:** That boundary is evolving into a shared design space for how organizations operate. Technology is now deeply embedded into how work gets done, how people communicate, and how decisions are made, making the overlap between IT systems and the human experience far greater than ever before. That means HR leaders need to be more fluent in technology, while IT leaders have to think beyond platforms and understand how their work shapes the employee and human experience. I don’t see this as a simple role shift; it’s a more fundamental change in how work itself is designed. As AI continues to transform organizations, HR and IT share the responsibility of rethinking what work and workflows should look like, in a thoughtful and responsible way. **Many organizations still treat technology adoption as an IT initiative rather than an organizational transformation. What risks does that create for talent development, culture, and performance?** **Barozzi:** When companies treat technology adoption in a silo, they focus on outputs to make existing work faster in the short-term, but they miss out on the opportunity to redesign how work actually gets done in the long-term. This gap is where a lot of organizations are struggling today and why many investments in pilot programs are not translating into real value. They are trying to automate what already exists rather than rethink what is possible. To create the right value from AI at Cisco, we begin with the outcomes we want to achieve, examine how AI can get us there, and then determine how we can deploy it. We think about this as a progression, where work itself is redesigned around what people are trying to accomplish. That is what we mean by AI-native design. It is not about using AI more, but about using it to create different kinds of value. **Swank:** When companies treat technology adoption—specifically AI adoption—as an IT project, they will fail to deliver the desired impact. The risk is that companies end up spending large budgets to deploy AI tools without seeing adoption or real business outcomes. They will fail to redesign the work, build fluency, and help employees understand the why or ‘WIIFM (what’s in it for me). redesign the underlying process itself. Failing to think holistically means adoption will likely remain low, employees will be frustrated, and performance will suffer. The organizations that get this wrong create confusion and resistance; the ones that get it right create confidence, momentum, and better business outcomes. At Box, one of our biggest lessons has been that you cannot simply apply an AI agent to an existing workflow and expect meaningful transformation. You have to first rethink and redesign the underlying process itself. Failing to think holistically means adoption will likely remain low, employees will be frustrated, and performance will suffer. The organizations that get this wrong create confusion and resistance; the ones that get it right create confidence, momentum, and better business outcomes. **Marek:** You risk creating performative adoption without actual change in your business outcomes. More and more companies are running this risk as they race to adopt new AI technology. The data is stark: The average company spent 93% of its AI budget on tooling and just 7% on training people. Among 6,000 executives surveyed, 90% of firms reported no AI impact on productivity. The San Francisco Fed compared it to replacing a steam motor with an electric one but leaving the factory floor unchanged. The cultural risk is even subtler. Framing transformation as a technology project signals to employees that their job is to adapt to the tool, rather than that the organization is committed to their transformation and growth in tandem. That breeds compliance rather than curiosity, which you need when the technology is evolving this fast. **Tonya James, vice president, product management for multi-country payroll solutions, ADP:** Success in the future of work will require organizations to approach innovation holistically. That means HR and IT leaders need to align their people strategy with their innovation strategy to realize the potential of new technology. In today’s landscape, these two workstreams are tightly interwoven. In reframing this as a true transformation, organizations can fully seize the opportunity in front of them: helping people develop skills to confidently use new tools, while creating space for more strategic work. **What does effective collaboration between HR and IT actually look like in practice? Are there structures, roles, or governance models that help organizations get this right?** **Barozzi:**At Cisco, effective collaboration in the AI era extends beyond HR and IT; it’s a companywide initiative. For instance, legal is essential so we have clear governance around how AI data is accessed, shared and used. Procurement is critical because most AI tools and platforms are now consumption-based through tokens or licensing models. To manage this dynamic, we are building a control hub for AI across organizations, applications, and use cases. Each function contributes its own perspective: IT on technical feasibility, legal on responsible and secure data usage, procurement on licensing and commercial structure, engineering on application and use cases, and HR on people impact and workforce experience. Everyone is providing their perspective and building on top of each other. **James:** Effective collaboration between HR and IT is outcome-driven and starts with a shared understanding of what the organization is trying to achieve. Rather than focusing on a specific structure or model, success comes from aligning early on goals, enabling better insights, or automating tasks. HR leads people strategy, including skills and workforce impact, while IT designs and deploys the right tools and technologies. The most effective approach is collaborative from the start, with joint input into identifying opportunities, designing solutions, and defining success. **Marek:** The workflows AI is transforming don't respect org chart boundaries at all. Consider onboarding a new customer. Depending on your business, this might involve sales, implementation, customer success, IT, legal, compliance, information security, and more. Currently, each function is getting AI tools designed around its piece of the puzzle. There is a massive opportunity to connect these tools and agents, which work across silos more effectively and independently, reducing the total process cycle time. We're missing a joint work design function of HR and IT that can look at a workflow that crosses multiple functional teams without bias, understand the cognitive demands on humans throughout, grasp the capabilities AI can bring, and intelligently redesign the workflow for a human-AI model. **How should HR leaders rethink their role in technology adoption—from tool selection to workflow redesign to employee capability building?** **James:** HR leaders should approach technology adoption as a strategic opportunity to shape how work gets done and what skills are needed to thrive in today’s workplaces. This means partnering closely with technology teams to identify opportunities, design workflows, and plan organizational structures that maximize impact. HR must consider the skills employees need, build capabilities through upskilling, and guide change management. By integrating technology adoption with people strategy, HR can reimagine work, create an ecosystem where tools empower employees, and help the organization fully benefit from technological advances. **Marek:** Historically, HR has viewed itself as an advocate for people during technological change. HR needs to move from advocate to architect, and that means two distinct things. The first is skilling. Not launching training programs and measuring completion, but genuinely building AI capability at scale. The demographic picture makes this urgent. Far more leaders are getting access to AI training than entry-level employees, even though the latter have roles that are at higher risk of automation. HR leaders who understand what the right AI learning programs can do for mobility into high-demand roles, have a real case for investing in the workforce, not just the tools. The second is architecture. Organizations are designed around functional capabilities, but AI's biggest returns come from cutting across those functions. HR, more than any other function, is positioned to see the whole organization neutrally. The top HR leaders will be those who learn to ask: "what's the biggest end-to-end process unlock we're leaving on the table?" **Swank:** People and HR leaders need to be proactive and engaged co-architects of transformation, rather than waiting downstream for technology decisions. From the start of our AI journey, we identified champions in the HR function who began building agents for AI HR use cases. However, we then evolved from “letting a thousand flowers bloom” to prioritizing the highest-ROI outcomes. To lead, HR must ask ‘what business problem are we trying to solve?’ instead of ‘what agent should we build?’ Many of the biggest gains come from rethinking repeatable, lower-judgment work and then rethinking broader organizational design, roles, and enablement. Recently, we strategically combined our global people operations and HR technology teams to streamline the opportunities within our tech stack. As part of this combined team, process optimization is also a new (and core!) capability. **Looking ahead, how might the relationship between HR and IT evolve over the next five years as AI becomes more embedded in everyday work?** **Marek:** The distinction is going to become less relevant, which creates its own problems. In five years, most knowledge workers will interact with AI agents throughout their workday as routinely as they interact with email. At that point, debating whether AI transformation belongs to HR or IT will feel as dated as debating whether culture is driven by communications or management. What I think replaces that boundary is something closer to a workforce intelligence function—combining what HR knows about people and what IT knows about systems to continuously design how human and AI work fit together. The organizations that build that capability explicitly will have a meaningful advantage over those that leave it distributed across functions, hoping it figures itself out. **Swank:** HR and IT will continue to become much more intertwined and much less transactional.jointly shape how people and intelligent systems work together. HR will need to become more fluent in technology, data, and AI-enabled work design, while IT leaders will be a larger part of the discussions around employee experience, behavior change, and organizational effectiveness. The partnership will be less about handing work back and forth, and more about co-leading transformation across the business. We’ll also see more cross-functional governance models, more shared metrics around adoption and business impact, and more roles that did not exist a year or even six months ago within every function. Ultimately, the companies that succeed will be the ones where HR and IT jointly shape how people and intelligent systems work together. **Barozzi:** I encourage teams to focus on the next three quarters—not the next three years—simply because the pace of change makes anything beyond that increasingly difficult to forecast. That said, we are moving toward a much deeper integration between the human side of work and the way work is executed through technology. IT and HR have no alternative but to work together to build the right human and technology environment for people to thrive. The boundary between HR and IT will continue to blur because we can no longer design technology systems without understanding their impact on people, and we cannot design people systems without understanding the technology that enables them. In the AI era, technology and humanity are inextricably linked. **James:** Over the next five years, the HR–IT relationship will likely become even more collaborative as AI becomes embedded in daily work. HR can help ensure AI aligns with organizational values and strategy, asking not just ‘can we’ but ‘should we.’ At the same time, HR gains more tech fluency, and IT becomes more people-focused, sharing expertise across functions. This collaboration supports workforce planning, workflow redesign, and meeting the expectations of digitally native employees, ultimately creating better outcomes by integrating people strategy and technology strategy from the start. --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: Charter Leadership Forum: The Case for Redesigning Work Around Skills, Not Job Titles](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/charter-leadership-forum-the-case-for-redesigning-work-around-skills-not-job-titles/)  ### Charter Leadership Forum: The Case for Redesigning Work Around Skills, Not Job Titles [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/charter-leadership-forum-the-case-for-redesigning-work-around-skills-not-job-titles/) [Open article: Charter Leadership Forum: What makes a good job in the age of AI](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7341575/charter-leadership-forum-what-makes-a-good-job-in-the-age-of-ai/)  ### Charter Leadership Forum: What makes a good job in the age of AI [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7341575/charter-leadership-forum-what-makes-a-good-job-in-the-age-of-ai/) [Open article: Charter Leadership Forum: Tactics for bridging generational divides at work](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7338610/charter-leadership-forum-tactics-for-bridging-generational-divides-at-work/)  ### Charter Leadership Forum: Tactics for bridging generational divides at work [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7338610/charter-leadership-forum-tactics-for-bridging-generational-divides-at-work/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/charter-leadership-forum-the-growing-interdependence-between-hr-and-it/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/charter-leadership-forum-the-growing-interdependence-between-hr-and-it/"},"headline":"Charter Leadership Forum: The growing interdependence between HR and IT","datePublished":"2026-04-10T10:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-19T07:41:26.183Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/charter-leadership-forum-the-growing-interdependence-between-hr-and-it/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3572802395a04379/69ef7ae123c6b49f19bcf8b0/clf-adp-HR&IT_(1).jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Massella Dukuly","jobTitle":"Head of Workplace Strategy + Innovation, Charter","url":"https://time.com/author/massella-dukuly/"}],"articleSection":"Charter","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3572802395a04379/69ef7ae123c6b49f19bcf8b0/clf-adp-HR&IT_(1).jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"clf-adp-HR&IT (1).jpg","caption":"","creditText":"Illustration by Charter · Photo by SeventyFour, Getty","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/charter-leadership-forum-the-growing-interdependence-between-hr-and-it/","name":"Charter Leadership Forum: The growing interdependence between HR and IT"}}]}] ```