HR Isn’t Broken… It’s Being Replaced

The End of CoEs and the Rise of Total Talent

In this episode, Edan Haddock takes on one of HR’s most established models… the Centre of Excellence.

As technology accelerates and AI begins to take on more of the work traditionally owned by HR, Edan explores what this means for the structure of People functions. From the slow decline of HR Operations, to the identity crisis facing People Partnering, and the quiet disappearance of standalone OD… nothing is off limits.

The big question: if those pillars start to fall, what rises in their place?

Edan makes the case for Talent stepping into the spotlight… not just as hiring, but as the core operating system for workforce strategy, experience, and capability.

This isn’t about HR being broken.
 It’s about whether it evolves… or gets left behind.

Join the Edan Haddock - Total Talent community (formerly Rubberband)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:51

All right. Welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent. No sponsors, no guests, no fluff. Just what's actually happening out there in talent, people experience, and the future of work. New episodes are dropping every Friday. And today, we are going to poke the bear a bit. We're going after something that's been sitting quietly in the background of HR for years. Something that organizations, and I'll say most organizations, still treat as sacred. The center of excellence model. You know the pillars in center of excellence, people partnering, HR operations. It's been packaged as best practice for over a decade. But here's the question I want to sit on today. What happens to that model when technology doesn't just support HR, but replaces large parts of it? And I don't mean improves, I mean replaces. Because if we're honest, a lot of what sits inside HR operations, organizational development, people partnering, it's already being automated, augmented, or bypassed entirely. So does talent then become the front door to everything? Does the whole model collapse into something new? And most importantly, what dies first? Let's get into it. The model we all inherited. Before we tear it down, let's actually understand it properly. The HR operating model most organizations use today was designed for a different era. An era where data was slow, systems didn't talk, people teams were process heavy, and scale meant hierarchy. So the solution was structure. Centers of excellence were created to bring deep expertise, talent acquisition, learning and development, reward, organizational development. People partners, HR business partners. They were there to translate business needs, provide advisory, and act as the face of HR. And then HR operations handled transactions, managed systems, and kept the engine running. On paper, it's clean, it's logical, it's scalable. But it was built for a world where humans had to be the system. And that world doesn't exist anymore. Technology just changed the game. And I want to talk about what's actually happening right now. Not theory, but reality. We've got AI screening candidates, AI writing job ads, AI running engagement surveys, AI analyzing sentiment, AI answering employee queries, AI building dashboards in seconds. And not one day, this is now. Inside organizations, inside teams, inside people functions. So here's the shift. HR used to be the holder of information. Now technology is, which means a huge part of HR's value proposition just disappeared. Think about HROps for a second. Payroll administration automated. Contracts automated. Policy queries, chatbots, reporting, real-time dashboards. So what happens to HROps? It doesn't evolve, it shrinks dramatically. Not because people failed, but because the work itself is disappearing. Let's say it plainly. HR operations, as we know it, will not exist in the same form in five years. Perhaps sooner. In fact, likely sooner. That whole layer was built to manage friction. But tech is removing friction. So what's left? A smaller function focused on governance, risk, and systems oversight. But not execution. Execution is being handled by automation, AI agents, self-service. And here's where it gets uncomfortable. Some organizations haven't realized this yet. They're still hiring into HROps like it's 2012. Still building teams around work that is actively disappearing. And that transformation, that's lag. I feel people partnering and HR business partnering, I feel they're staring into an identity crisis at the moment. And we're really talking here about the one that could get defensive the fastest, you know, HR business partnering. Because this is where it gets interesting. People partners were built to advise leaders, translate strategy, coach, influence. But let's get honest for a second. How much of people partnering today is actually triage, policy interpretation, employee relations, process navigation, a lot. And guess what? AI is getting very good at all of that. So if technology handles data, insights, first-level advice, then what is the role of the business partner, the HR people partner? This is where most models break. Because if people partners don't evolve into true strategic operators, then that function becomes redundant, not reduced, but actually redundant. OD feels like it's the quiet casualty, organizational development. This one is flying under the radar a little. But it's probably the most at risk. And why? Because OD traditionally owns engagement, culture, change, leadership frameworks. But now engagement is becoming real-time, predictive, and embedded in talent. Culture, that's measured continuously. Change, that's driven through data, not workshops. Leadership development, AI-powered, personalized, and on demand. So where does OD sit? It either integrates into talent or disappears as a standalone function. And most organizations haven't even started that conversation yet. So, and knowing my audience, this is where it gets fun. Does talent win? Because if HROP shrinks, OD dissolves, people partnering, HR business partnering transforms, then what becomes the center of gravity? Talent. But not talent as we knew it. Not just hiring, not just pipelines, not just employer branding. I'm talking about total talent. Where talent owns hiring, workforce planning, internal mobility, engagement, experience, skills, performance signals. Because talent is closest to supply, demand, capability, and movement. Which then means talent becomes the function that actually understands the workforce end to end. The rise of total talent. Let's paint the picture. A modern model doesn't look like centers of excellence, people partners, HR ops. It looks like talent and people experience as the core engine, lean specialist capability on demand, not siloed, and technology and AI layered always on. Where talent isn't a vertical, it's the platform. Everything runs through it. Workforce planning, talent. Engagement, talent. Internal mobility, talent. Skills mapping, talent, hiring, obviously talent. And here's the shift. Talent stops being reactive and it becomes the operating system. Now, what actually dies? Let's answer the question directly. What dies? Not HR, but parts of it. Here's my take. Traditional HR ops as a large function dies. Standalone OD teams die. Transactional people partnering or HR business partnering roles die. But then what survives? Strategic advisory, experience design, workforce intelligence, and talent-led operating models. Now, what I'm describing here isn't about job titles. It's about value. If the value disappears, the role then follows. Now, why most organizations won't change, here's the twist. Even with all of this, most organizations won't move. And why? Because this structure that we're in, this structure feels safe. And that's because this is how we've always done it. This is best practice. And this is what everyone else does. And change requires us to let go of roles, to redesign teams, to upskill people, and to take risk. And we're not very good at that. Human resources are not good at that. We never have been. So what happens? We we get old models with new technology bolted on, and that never works. So you might ask me what I feel you should be doing right now. If you're listening and thinking, all right, so what should I actually do? Here's where I'd start. We need to map our current HR work and define what is transactional and what is strategic. We need to identify what can be automated today. Not next year because things are moving far too quickly. It's what could be automated today, and that becomes an ongoing cycle. We need to redesign around talent as the core, not as a function, but as a platform. We need to stop protecting legacy roles and protect impact instead. And of course, we need to do this. Many of us are, but more of us need to do this. We can't delay. We need to build augmented teams, humans and AI agents. Because that's where this is going. It is not optional anymore. It is inevitable. So is HR broken? No. It's just evolving faster than its own structure. And the Center of Excellence model, it did its job and it did its job well. But its time is running out. The question isn't whether it changes, it's whether you change with it. Or get left managing a model that no longer fits the world you're operating in. So, as always, no fluff, no sponsors. Just what's actually happening in talent. This is Eden Haddock, Total Talent. New episodes every Friday. If this one's a hit, or if this hit you, or if it got you thinking, or if it got you cranky, that's cool. This is my view. This is sharing me sharing my thoughts of what's happening. Please, if you connect, share it and start the conversation. And I'll see you next Friday. Cheers.