{"id":347200,"date":"2025-08-15T18:37:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T18:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/347200\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T18:37:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T18:37:22","slug":"ai-coming-for-your-job-it-may-be-stopping-you-being-hired-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/347200\/","title":{"rendered":"AI coming for your job? It may be stopping you being hired at all"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of the world\u2019s largest human resources organisation believes chief executives are slowing down recruitment because they fear workers will soon be replaceable by artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n

Johnny C Taylor Jr, president and chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management, which has about 340,000 members across 180 countries, said business leaders have told him they do not want to repeat mistakes made during the pandemic, when some companies overhired and then had to fire staff in large numbers soon afterwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve naturally become more conservative in our hiring, so if there\u2019s anything on the horizon that suggests that we may not need those people, we don\u2019t hire them,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there was a lot of guilt for, \u2018I hired you away from another job, you had a perfectly great life, I brought you over, I recruited you \u2026 and then I got rid of you through no fault of your own\u2019. So the impact of AI<\/a> on us is: we\u2019re hesitant to bring people on for fear that we\u2019re going to have to look at you across the table, and say, \u2018listen, you\u2019re great, you did great work, in fact you worked really hard, but I don\u2019t have a job for you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor, a lawyer and former HR executive for US companies including Blockbuster and Paramount, says he is scared by the rapid advancement of generative AI in the workplace. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have nothing to compare it to, if you think about AI,\u201d he said. \u201cHistorically technologies have been introduced and then took a time for adoption, and now instantly that day [when ChatGPT<\/a> was launched in 2022] millions of people signed up and agreed to get it and \u2026 now all of a sudden it\u2019s impacting us and that\u2019s what\u2019s so scary to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Robot-run<\/p>\n

A humanoid robot salesperson, developed by Galbot, at a kiosk shop in Beijing, China. The company plans to open 100 of these stores across China this year<\/p>\n

SONG JIARU\/VCG\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Some companies have been transparent about AI-driven job cuts, including IBM, which said that 200 HR employees were fired and replaced with AI chatbots<\/a>. Recruit Holdings, the owner of Indeed and Glassdoor, announced 1,300 jobs cuts last month from its technology segment, citing AI.<\/p>\n

Taylor believes some consumer-facing businesses that have cut jobs are not revealing the link to AI for fear of receiving criticism from customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost companies \u2014 I think because of damage to their brand \u2014 don\u2019t want to be seen as bad, especially if they\u2019re B2C [business to consumer],\u201d he said. \u201cSo if I could reduce headcount in a B2C business but doing it might subject me to a boycott, I\u2019m not going to tell you, but I\u2019m still going to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

US jobs data in July<\/a> showed businesses were slowing recruitment of new employees amid uncertainty around tariffs and the impact of AI on productivity. However, there have not been widespread job cuts.<\/p>\n

While the end impact of AI on the workplace is still unclear, Taylor said: \u201cOne thing is for certain. Human beings and workers in particular are going to be significantly impacted. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s to the degree that some suggest but if there are eight billion people on the planet, roughly four billion people working, if it\u2019s 10 per cent it\u2019s a lot of people who are no longer working.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 In tech bros\u2019 AI utopia there will be no job that machines can\u2019t do<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

He believes regulators and politicians will be forced to intervene, with officials getting elected based on whether they are perceived to be a \u201cjob killer\u201d or a \u201cjob protector\u201d.<\/p>\n

Workplace backlash against culture wars<\/p>\n

The advancement of AI comes as many chief executives are trying to avoid gaining attention for comments on social issues. <\/p>\n

Taylor says he believes employees are tired of \u201cworkplace polarisation\u201d after business leaders intervened heavily around the MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter<\/a> protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020.<\/p>\n

Taylor said that today the general approach from chief executives on whether to comment on events is \u201cunless you draw a straight line between this position and my business I don\u2019t have an obligation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Employees were \u201cfed up with, \u2018my company stands for this, so if I work there I have to stand for that\u2019,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n

\u201cResearch was saying the workplace was becoming very uncivil and polarised and people were telling us \u2018I actually don\u2019t want to come here and debate right or wrong, I just want to do my job. I just want to go home. I don\u2019t want to get into all of this. I can\u2019t solve a variety of years of slavery over lunch and not be glib\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he has observed a \u201cchilling effect\u201d on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in corporate America after a series of Supreme Court rulings and increased scrutiny of DEI programmes under the Trump administration. However, he said some of the changes in DEI schemes could reflect the fact that many companies had already made significant progress in achieving their diversity goals and reached their targets.<\/p>\n

In June the US Supreme Court ruled that \u201creverse discrimination\u201d claims, or discrimination claims brought by members of the majority race, gender or other protected characteristic, are not subject to heightened standards of proof. The ruling has \u201ctotally changed\u201d the HR landscape, Taylor said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember in my legal practice as well as in my HR practice, when you were getting ready to terminate someone or taking some sort of employee decision we\u2019d say, \u2018Is that person a member of a protected class, race, gender, national origin, disability?\u2019 Now everyone is a member of a protected class because the court has said everyone has a right to equal protection.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of the world\u2019s largest human resources organisation believes chief executives are slowing down recruitment because they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-347200","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115034236080246283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}