What UNLEASH World 2025 revealed about AI and the future of HR

When technology outpaces adoption

UNLEASH World 2025 drew HR leaders, technology vendors and industry analysts together to make sense of an industry in rapid transition. Artificial intelligence dominated nearly every conversation, but the most valuable insights came not from the marketing messages on display, but from the honest discussions about what AI implementation actually requires. The event revealed an industry grappling with a fundamental tension: technology is advancing faster than most organisations can adopt it.

Key takeaways from UNLEASH World 2025

• Most AI in HR is automation, not intelligence
• Bolt-on AI features deliver quick wins, but native AI drives transformation
• Workforce planning and skills management are strategic priorities again
• Legacy systems struggle with interoperability and unstructured data
• AI cannot replace human judgement on context and culture

Continue reading for a deeper look at what these insights mean for your organisation.

The intelligence paradox

Walking the exhibition floor at UNLEASH World 2025, you could be forgiven for thinking artificial intelligence has already solved every HR challenge imaginable. Dashboards promised insights, copilots offered assistance, and smart systems claimed to automate everything from recruitment to performance management. Yet, behind the polished demonstrations, a more complex reality emerged.

Much of what is labelled as intelligence was actually sophisticated automation. The systems were impressive, processing tasks with remarkable speed and accuracy.

However, true intelligence requires more than speed. It demands the ability to understand context, adapt to new situations, and make judgements that account for nuance.

A vast majority of the current HR technology solutions have yet to bridge that gap. Organisations investing in AI-powered HR systems often expect transformational change but receive incremental improvements to existing processes.

From bolt-on features to native intelligence

One of the clearest dividing lines emerging at UNLEASH World 2025 was between organisations treating AI as an add-on feature and those building it into their core operations.

Bolt-on AI involves adding intelligent features to existing systems and workflows. An AI assistant helps write job descriptions faster, but the approval chain remains unchanged. A chatbot answers employee questions, but the underlying policies stay static. This approach delivers quick wins with minimal disruption.

Native AI requires rethinking entire workflows from first principles. It changes how data flows through systems, how decisions get made, and who makes them. This path is messier and more uncomfortable, but it unlocks possibilities that bolt-on solutions cannot reach.

The systems learn and improve continuously, adapting to changing conditions rather than executing fixed rules. The organisations making the most progress were those willing to embrace this discomfort, redesigning jobs, flattening hierarchies, and questioning assumptions about how work should be structured.

The skills and planning renaissance

Beneath the AI headlines, UNLEASH World 2025 showcased a quiet renaissance in workforce planning and skills management. After years of taking a back seat to flashier HR technology trends, strategic workforce planning has returned as a critical capability.

The reasoning is straightforward: AI makes many tasks faster and some roles redundant, but it also creates demand for new capabilities. Organisations need clear visibility into their current skills inventory, future requirements, and the gaps between them. When HR, finance and operations share a unified view of workforce capacity, capability and cost, planning stops being an annual ritual and becomes a continuous strategic process.

Several themes emerged around skills management. Skills taxonomies remain important, but organisations are moving beyond static lists. The most sophisticated approaches treat skills as dynamic, tracking how they evolve and combine in practice. This allows for more accurate matching of people to opportunities and better predictions about capability gaps.

The challenge is that most organisations are still building their foundations, with islands of skills data scattered across learning systems, performance tools, and recruitment platforms.

The infrastructure reality check

The major HR platform vendors demonstrated progress at UNLEASH World 2025, but they also revealed ongoing challenges. Legacy systems built for structured data and predetermined workflows are struggling to incorporate AI capabilities that thrive on unstructured information and adaptive processes.

Interoperability remains a persistent issue. Organisations typically run multiple HR systems, each with its own data model and integration approach. Adding AI capabilities across this fragmented landscape requires significant technical work.

At the same time, the EU AI Act gained considerable attention at the conference, establishing transparency and ethical standards that affect how HR technology gets built and deployed. The technical challenges are compounded by regulatory ones, and organisations need solutions that address both simultaneously.

What AI cannot replace

For all the discussion about AI's capabilities, UNLEASH World 2025 also clarified its limitations. AI excels in pattern recognition, prediction, and automation. It struggles with context, creativity, and conceptual thinking. It can analyse vast amounts of data about employee engagement, but it cannot understand why a particular team feels unmotivated. It can screen thousands of CVs, but it cannot assess whether a candidate will thrive in a specific company culture.

This reality reshapes what HR professionals need to focus on. The administrative tasks that consume so much time are increasingly handled by technology. What remains is the work that requires human judgement: understanding organisational dynamics, designing meaningful employee experiences, navigating complex interpersonal situations, and making ethical decisions about people's careers and livelihoods. The question is not whether AI will handle routine tasks, but whether HR functions can step up to more strategic roles.

Moving beyond the conference floor

UNLEASH World 2025 painted a picture of an industry in transition. The technology is advancing rapidly, the business case is becoming clearer, and the potential for transformation is genuine.

However, realising that potential requires more than purchasing new software. It demands a willingness to redesign workflows, develop new capabilities, and make difficult decisions about how work should be structured.

Success requires combining powerful tools with thoughtful change management, clear governance, and a genuine commitment to helping people adapt. Whether your organisation is just beginning to explore AI in HR or already deep into implementation, the path forward requires careful navigation. If you would like to discuss how these insights from UNLEASH World 2025 apply to your specific context, we would be happy to continue the conversation.