What would you have done? IBM handed 94% of its routine HR tasks to AI and cut hundreds of roles — and its total headcount still grew

In May 2025, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna confirmed that the company had replaced several hundred human-resources roles with AI agents: its AskHR assistant now handles 94% of routine tasks — time off, pay statements, letters of employment. A leadership team facing those savings had three options: (A) eliminate the automated roles and bank the savings; (B) freeze automation to protect jobs and avoid friction; (C) automate the task but reinvest the savings and redeploy people into higher-value work.

IBM chose (C). The counter-intuitive result: the group's total headcount went up, because the freed-up money funded hiring in software, sales, and judgment-heavy roles. "Our total employment has actually gone up," Krishna said. The lesson holds in any sector: AI doesn't mechanically destroy jobs, it frees up resources — what you do with them decides whether it shrinks your workforce or funds your growth. Before automating a task, decide and write down in advance where the people and the savings will go: that redeployment rule, set before deployment, is what turns fear of AI into buy-in.

Source: Entrepreneur, "IBM Replaced Hundreds of HR Workers With AI, According to Its CEO," May 8, 2025.