As business leaders across industries turn to AI to drive efficiency, productivity and modernization, the shift is reshaping not just how HR works—but also with whom the function works.
In particular, HR and IT are rapidly growing closer at organizations that are looking to stay on the leading edge in the age of AI. Many HR leaders are reporting record rates of collaboration with their IT counterparts, while some organizations have even merged the two functions into one. That thinking is giving rise to an entirely new C-suite title that marries traditional CHRO and chief IT officer positions: chief productivity officer.
Who is the chief productivity officer?
A recent piece in FastCompany offered a bold prediction: “The day may well come when organizations have a CPO—chief productivity officer, not chief people officer—in charge of both the people part of the company and the technology part, because those two pieces have to come together to redefine work at the enterprise level.”
Neil Morrison, GM, international markets at employee experience platform Staffbase, says the rise of the chief productivity officer reflects “growing pressure on leaders to make work actually work better”—largely owing to fragmented ownership of “people, processes and platforms.” One function, for instance, may have oversight of employee experience, while another manages workplace tools.
It’s an approach that can cause things to “slow down, accountability gets muddled and smart investments don’t always lead to real change,” Morrison says, noting that the merging of functions and creation of roles like the chief productivity officer are less about technology and more about reaching for alignment.
Cooperation or consolidation
Consolidation has its merits: Speedier processes, clearer ownership and a more direct line of sight into the ROI of tech investments, Morrison says.
It’s a “tempting” pivot for many, as leaders strive for more clear visibility into how broader workforce strategy comes to life each day. Yet, there is a real risk for imbalance.
HR professionals bring a focus on culture, ethics and human judgment, for instance, while the IT function is driven by “systems, data and scale,” Morrison says. And AI needs both sets of capabilities for success.
Yet, one voice will likely overpower the other if both perspectives are housed in one unit, or under one C-suite leader.
“That can lead to decisions that are too tech-led, or technology that never fully gets used,” Morrison says. “Over time, organizations can lose the depth and nuance that really matter.”
Instead, he advises, organizations should focus first on the foundation: fixing operating models and the ways in which decisions are made.
Finding a ‘true partnership’
That journey begins by shifting the attention from org charts to outcomes. Shared ownership—not silos—should be the goal, forged through close partnerships, co-leading AI transformation and plotting out what success looks like together.
CHROs must grow to deeply understand the tech strategy, while tech leaders have to recognize the outsized value of human-centered adoption; when both happen, Morrison says, “it becomes clear that you don’t need to merge roles.”
At his own organization, the HR and IT functions have formed a “true partnership.” HR doesn’t just ask IT for tech any longer. Instead, leaders are working side by side to define problems, test solutions and define success, both with the technology and for the workforce.
Organizations that hope to effectively redefine the HR-IT relationship will “put real structures” around collaboration, Morrison says: cross-functional teams, shared governance and leadership incentives that are defined not by rollout metrics but employee impact and adoption.
“It comes down to shared goals, shared metrics and mutual respect—not shared titles,” Morrison says. “AI works best when it supports people, and that only happens when HR and IT move forward together, separate, but tightly aligned.”
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