by Mick Lavin, Coach, Agile Coach, Mentor
It feels like every few days there is another headline predicting that AI will wipe out some enormous percentage of jobs within the next few years. And each time, HR professionals and legal professionals are left asking the same question: “So what do I actually tell my people?”
The honest answer is that the reality is far more complex and, I think, far more manageable than the apocalyptic narratives suggest, at least for the moment. The global workforce isn’t heading toward a cliff edge just yet. But it is navigating a steep, winding road with some genuine challenges and also real opportunities for organisations that move thoughtfully.
In this article I cut through some of the noise. And based on the latest research including the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, we’ll look at what is possible, why “job displacement” is the wrong reference frame, and what task-level transformation really means when we manage talent.
The Big Picture: More Jobs, Not Fewer
Let’s start with the headline numbers, the WEF projects that by 2030, macro trends driven by technology and the green economy will create approximately 170 million new jobs globally, while displacing around 92 million existing roles. That’s a net increase of 78 million positions.
That’s not mass unemployment but it is certainly a transformation.
The jobs being created represent roughly 14% of today’s total global employment in these areas. This number is based on formal jobs and not subsistence work and jobs outside formal economies. Technology-driven roles, such as software developers, data specialists, and AI integration managers are growing fast. But so are roles anchored in the physical world and in human need: care professionals, construction workers, delivery drivers, and farm workers. These are all projected to grow significantly.
This matters for HR professionals and legal professionals in Ireland and across the EU. The question isn’t whether your workforce will change, it will. The question is whether your organisation is ready to navigate that change strategically.
What the Data Actually Shows at the Company Level
Here’s something that often gets lost in the debate: studies looking at thousands of CEOs and CFOs found that over 80% of companies report no measurable negative impact of AI on aggregate employment levels over the past three years.
The adjustment has predominantly occurred through internal task reallocation and within-firm productivity gains. Not mass redundancies, not sudden collapses of entire departments, but a gradual change. This aligns with what experienced HR professionals have already seen in practice, the change is real, but it is also gradual, internal, and often invisible to headline-level analysis.
The examples of IBM and Klarna in the previous articles are headline grabbers rather than the norm. I am seeing this in my own areas where the nature of roles is changing from hard skills such as data analysis and coding, to new hires being asked less about their definitive hard skills and more about their experience working with AI tools.
The Right Frame: Task Transformation, Not Job Displacement
The most important conceptual shift for HR leaders is this: AI is transforming tasks, not displacing occupations. But unfortunately, some organisations have moved too quickly and eliminated roles without fully understanding the tasks that can not be covered by AI. This was a theme that was repeated over and over at the Economist AI and Business Innovation Summit.
Research indicates that almost half of the skills within a typical job posting are poised for what’s called “hybrid transformation” by generative AI. Very few complex human roles are considered likely to disappear entirely in the near term. Instead, the workforce faces a scenario where 70% of the discrete skills required in most jobs will change fundamentally by 2030.
Think about what that means practically:
- An HR generalist won’t disappear but the proportion of their time spent on administrative drafting, data retrieval, and routine correspondence will drop sharply
- A legal professional won’t be replaced but initial document review, standard clause drafting, and legal research support can increasingly be AI-assisted
- A line manager’s role won’t vanish but how they access information, support their team, and track performance will look very different
The job title stays. The task mix changes dramatically.
The Hidden Risk: Eroding the Junior Talent Pipeline
This is something I am quite passionate about. When all the efficiencies have been made, and junior roles have been eliminated, where will our next experienced employee come from?
This is a challenge that doesn’t get enough attention in boardrooms but HR directors are quietly worried about it.
As AI automates the routine, lower-level tasks that have traditionally served as training ground for junior employees, such as basic document drafting, initial data synthesis, standard correspondence, organisations risk undermining the apprenticeship model that builds senior talent over time.
If a junior HR analyst’s primary output can now be generated in seconds by an AI tool, what exactly is that person learning? How does the organisation grow the next generation of strategic HR professionals if the pathway has been shortcut by AI?
This is a genuine structural challenge with real implications for talent pipelines and, in some sectors, for legal compliance around professional development requirements.
A Practical response: Redesign entry-level roles to focus on human-centric skills, AI orchestration, critical evaluation, stakeholder engagement, and relationship building, rather than routine production. Build deliberate “manual execution” rotations where junior staff complete tasks without AI assistance to develop foundational judgment.
The Emerging Reality: “New Collar” Roles
Alongside transformation of existing roles, entirely new categories of work are emerging. In the past two years alone, employers globally have created at least 1.3 million AI-specific roles, including data annotators, forward-deployed engineers, and AI integration managers.
These “new collar” roles don’t require traditional four-year degrees. They require hybrid skills: technical fluency with AI tools, manual adaptability, continuous learning mindset, and strong communication skills.
For HR professionals involved in workforce planning, this is a real opportunity and a real challenge. Recruitment profiles, job evaluation frameworks, and compensation benchmarking all need to be updated to reflect this new skills landscape.
I have spoken to a number of clients about this issue and I have a few questions for them:
- If we do not have a junior pipeline, then we need to hire externally every time. How will that drive wage inflation?
- How do you teach AI tacit knowledge, the same knowledge lost when we eliminate a role, or an employee leaves?
- How do we build company culture, if we have an aging workforce that is replaced by AI rather than messy people with all their baggage?
- Can we realistically expect productivity to increase exponentially without supervision (no AI oversight or the skills to oversee)?
“Talent Velocity”: The Differentiating Factor
LinkedIn’s 2026 Talent Report introduces a concept that deserves a place in every HR director’s vocabulary: Talent Velocity. It’s defined as an organisation’s ability to maintain real-time visibility into internal skills, rapidly build or acquire new capabilities, and fluidly mobilise talent to meet shifting market demands.
The data is stark:
- More than three quarters of global companies currently suffer from a “velocity gap”, they lack the organisational agility to reallocate human resources effectively
- The 14% of organisations functioning as “Talent Velocity Leaders” treat internal mobility as paramount, with almost three quarters saying it’s a higher priority than external hiring
- 90% of Chief People Officers in these leading firms agree they will increasingly organise teams around specific skills rather than rigid job titles
The organisations that thrive through AI disruption won’t necessarily be the ones with the most advanced technology. They’ll be the ones that can move their people fastest.
With one of my current clients, I am discussing their skills gap and how to fill it. While this is not directly related to AI, the ability to redeploy your teams quickly based on skills brings a level of agility that is a real market advantage. It also helps identify areas for training and development in your teams.
While this may seem like overhead, it is also an opportunity to implement AI to support your organisation with this task.
One capability that it is useful to think about is the ability to “Rapid Team”. Reducing the usual Norming, Storming, Forming, Performing cycle can be a huge benefit when reacting to an ever changing market, economy, or AI disruption.
Practical Steps for HR and Legal Professionals Professionals
For HR Leaders:
- Conduct a task-level audit of your most critical roles, not just job titles, but the actual tasks within them. Identify what’s ripe for AI support, what requires human judgment, and what needs to be redesigned entirely
- Build internal mobility as a core operating principle, not an afterthought
- Invest in “new collar” talent pipelines partnerships with technical training providers, apprenticeship schemes, and internal reskilling programmes
- Redesign graduate and junior programmes to preserve human skill development alongside AI literacy
For Legal Professionals and Leaders:
- Review existing employment contracts and handbooks for language around job duties task-level change can trigger “change of terms” considerations even when job titles remain the same
- Understand your obligations around consultation when AI-driven task transformation has a material impact on a role
- Keep a close watch on emerging case law around AI and employment rights this is a fast-moving area
The jobs question isn’t “will AI destroy work?” It’s “how is work changing, and are we ready?”
The evidence points to transformation, not elimination but transformation that is uneven, rapid, and requires deliberate leadership to navigate well. The organisations that will come out ahead are those that treat talent as a dynamic, living asset to be continuously developed and redeployed, rather than a static resource to be managed and occasionally cut.
Coming up in Article 3: “Human Super Skills” the distinctly human capabilities that are becoming the most valuable assets in the AI economy.
About the author
Mick Lavin is a Systemic and Intercultural Coach, Agile Coach and Mentor, accredited by the European Mentoring and Coaching council. For the past 30+ years, Mick has worked in the world of technology as a people, project, and strategic account manager in several European countries, with the US, in the Middle East, and in Asia. Mick specialise’s in people & leadership development and business agility in multicultural business environments, helping organisations move to a more responsive and people centric mindset.
