If AI Could Give You Back 20% of Your Time, Where Would You Invest It?

A smarter, human-centered approach to communication in the age of AI

If AI could free up 20% of your HR team’s time, where would you invest it?

Would you focus on improving employee experience? Prioritize employees in AI-driven productivity initiatives? Strengthen leadership coaching capabilities? Upskill people leaders to become better communicators? Or tackle things that often get sidelined when the urgent overtakes the important?

I’m sure you could quickly compile a list.

That day isn’t as far off as you might think. EY Oceania’s Chief Technology Officer recently shared that super users of Gen AI are saving between 7 and 14 hours per week. If you can reinvest that time into what matters, it could make a significant difference for you, your team, and the business.

Yet, confidence in AI and the speed of its adoption aren’t keeping pace with its capabilities. In Australia and New Zealand, for instance, EY’s AI Sentiment Index shows that 37% of Australian and 28% of NZ employees believe the benefits of AI outweigh its risks, compared to 51% globally.

This points to a trust issue that I attribute to how AI adoption is being executed. We often see it managed under the direction of IT as a digital transformation. That’s where the problem lies—it needs to be people-first, not AI-first. That alters how people experience their work, how they perceive their value, and how secure they feel in a rapidly changing environment.

It's Emotion Before Logic

Our brains are wired to detect threats. When people receive a message about change, it doesn’t reach the rational part of the brain first. It hits the Limbic System, the emotional center, the part designed to detect threats and keep us safe. It’s quick, reactive, and unconscious.

This means we feel the message before we understand it. The Prefrontal Cortex, where logic and planning live, works more slowly. When the Limbic System hijacks the brain, clarity and rational thinking come second.

This is why emotion drives behavior, not logic.

And if our emotional needs are triggered, we react and resist. That’s four times more powerful than a reward. Our instinctive reaction is to protect what we have. So, when AI is positioned as a driver of efficiency or a justification for reducing headcount, it is no surprise that people feel overlooked and undervalued.

We have seen companies like Shopify, Duolingo, and Klarna make that misstep, announcing bold AI-first strategies without empathy. As a communication professional, I’m concerned that the impact on employees and the perceptions of customers were not taken into account more seriously. Klarna reversed course after public backlash. What did they miss? A human lens and communication that builds understanding and safety.

As I shared in a previous blog, Bridging AI and Human Connection, this is where leadership and employee communications become the bridge. It helps people process what the change means. It holds space for both emotion and logic, and it earns trust.

Using AI Where it Makes Sense

AI is already reshaping HR and internal communication in useful ways. It can support onboarding, respond to policy queries, handle repetitive queries, generate multilingual content, maintain tone, and scan for sentiment patterns that might otherwise be missed.

Platforms like Poppulo are helping teams do this at scale, supporting HR and comms functions in tailoring content, optimizing delivery times, and reaching people in the formats that work for them.

That means more time for the strategic and human work that matters and less time spent formatting, translating, or juggling competing priorities.

Working faster and more efficiently isn’t always the smartest approach. Producing more content, particularly bland, ubiquitous AI-generated content, is unlikely to yield better outcomes. It’s still the people on your team who understand the nuances, bring empathy and context, coach, lead, shape the culture, and partner in change.

In a recent interview on the For Immediate Release podcast with Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz, we discussed how AI is influencing internal communication and why human capability is more important than ever. It’s the human who trains AI, makes the decisions, and ensures it’s used responsibly.

AI might surface patterns, but it’s people who read between the lines, navigate emotions, and make the judgment calls. That’s the work that builds trust, supports culture, and makes communication meaningful.

Getting the Balance Right

This is not about AI or humans, but rather both. I fully expect that by late 2026, our teams will be human and AI, so we need to find the right balance.

It starts with clarity on where AI fits, what tasks it supports well, what role it plays, where the human voice and judgment are essential, and when communication needs to go beyond information sharing to creating connections, building safety, and trust.

It also means putting the right foundations in place. The recently updated Global Alliance Responsible AI Guiding Principles for PR and Communication is an excellent guide to help design trustworthy systems and communication-AI practices.

5 Ways to Start

If you’re rethinking how communication works in your HR team, here are five ways to implement a both-and approach:

• Begin with the work rather than the tool. Collaborate with your team to identify where their time is spent and what tasks can be automated or supported by AI, enabling them to focus on the work they should be doing.
• Start small. Pilot a tool in a low-risk area, like handling FAQs or onboarding, and learn from it.
• Improve your team’s communication capabilities alongside AI. Develop AI literacy alongside strategic communication, influencing and coaching abilities, and guiding change.
• Set clear expectations. Let people know when it’s AI-generated and why that matters.
• Track trust alongside outputs and outcomes. Productivity is important and easy to measure. However, sentiment, connection, and trust require more effort but are essential in supporting the need for change with AI adoption.

What Next?

If AI gives your team back time, then the opportunity is yours to shape.

Will you invest it in building stronger teams, deeper trust, better leadership capabilities, and a more people-focused approach to change?