Editor’s Note: This is the third article in a seven-part GrowthBits series on AI in HR, exploring how leaders can preserve human judgment and embed AI responsibly as work evolves.

Anchor where human presence is constitutive of the activity’s value—where replacing the human doesn’t reduce quality but potentially breaks something.

Automate, Augment and Anchor serves as a guiding operational framework. Once you have named what you are protecting, the decisions follow logically. Automate where the four capacities (analogical thinking, theory of mind, ambiguity tolerance, and ethical reasoning) add no value. Augment where AI improves the information available to human judgment. Anchor where human presence is constitutive of the activity’s value—where replacing the human doesn’t reduce quality but potentially breaks something.

AUTOMATE
HAND IT OVER FULLY		AUGMENT
WORK TOGETHER		ANCHOR
PROTECT THIS
Benefits administration: Fast, accurate, always-available answers—not a shared inbox.Structured assessment: AI scores responses and flags rating inconsistencies; human decides.Consequential decisions: Hiring, firing, promotion, demotion require a human who owns and explains the decision.
Scheduling & coordination: Interview logistics, scheduling, onboarding sequencing.Performance calibration: AI flags rating inconsistencies; humans conduct calibration conversation.Difficult conversations: Performance feedback, PIPs, accommodations, investigations.
Compliance documentation: High-volume, low-judgment, high-stakes for accuracy.Pay equity analysis: AI surfaces gaps at scale; humans decide what they mean and what to do.Terminations & RIFs: No one should learn they have lost their job from an algorithm or a form letter.
Resume screening (first pass): AI against defined, validated criteria is more consistent than human first-pass; use it to prioritize not eliminate.Career pathing: AI maps patterns and flags departure risk; manager has the conversation.Crisis & distress: When someone is struggling, they need a human who sees them.
Engagement data aggregation: Collecting and visualizing data across teams and time periods.Manager effectiveness: Aggregated data prompts coaching conversations, not surveillance.Culture & belonging: Psychological safety is built in human moments, not generated by AI.
Payroll exception flagging: Routine processing with AI surfacing anomalies for human review.Recruiting pipeline: AI widens the funnel; humans conduct every substantive conversation.Manager-team relationships: The single strongest driver of engagement cannot be delegated to a system.

The Discipline for Each Category

Automate: The time recovered by automating these activities must be deliberately reinvested in anchor work. Automation that shrinks the HR function without improving the quality of its human interactions is a missed opportunity.

Augment: Augmentation fails when organizations treat AI output as a decision rather than an input. The AI recommends, the human decides. Document it that way (for your culture and for your lawyers).

Anchor: The pressure to let AI drift into anchor territory is constant and the efficiency argument is always available—but stay grounded human presence. Research from Gallup found manager relationship quality accounts for approximately 70% of team engagement variance.1 The ROI on human connection is real. It is slow to appear in dashboards, but permanent in its effects.

 

Up Next: Hiring is Changing: What Are You Actually Evaluating Now?

 

References

  1. Gallup, State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, 2023, https://www.gallup.com/file/workplace/506879/state-of-the-global-workplace-2023-download.pdf