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ADP’s chief of operations Joe DeSilva is making a pointed argument: most HR leaders are asking AI the wrong question. Instead of “where can we use AI,” the productive question is “where can AI create more value for the business” — a reframe that shifts AI from a cost-reduction exercise to a strategic operating model. The piece, drawing on DeSilva’s operational view at ADP, argues that HR’s position at the intersection of people, policy, and operations makes it uniquely equipped to lead this shift, provided it stops treating AI as a technology project.
What this means for your business
The diagnostic DeSilva offers is sharper than the prescription. Organizations automating fragmented processes are discovering that AI doesn’t fix broken workflows, it accelerates them. If your HR function has spent years papering over inconsistencies in performance management, compensation banding, or compliance tracking, an AI layer surfaces those gaps faster than any audit would. The CHRO who recognizes that dynamic is in a structurally different position than one who handed the AI rollout to IT and is waiting for the efficiency report.
The deeper claim here is that HR’s long-promised “seat at the strategy table” is now contingent on a specific capability: the ability to read workforce data, translate it into business decisions, and hold governance together when speed creates pressure to skip steps. DeSilva is essentially describing a new HR skill profile, one where analytical fluency and cross-functional coordination matter as much as traditional people expertise. Worth noting that ADP, as a payroll and HR platform vendor whose business grows when HR functions expand their technology footprint, has a natural incentive to frame HR’s ambition upward rather than interrogate whether most HR teams have the data infrastructure to act on it.
The CHRO who should take this seriously is the one whose team is still spending the majority of its time on transactional work, benefits queries, onboarding paperwork, leave administration, while business leaders make workforce decisions without HR input. If that description fits, the AI question isn’t which tool to buy. It’s whether the function’s operating model can absorb the freed capacity and redirect it toward decisions that actually move business outcomes. The budget conversation to watch isn’t the AI tool line item; it’s whether workforce analytics headcount gets protected in the next planning cycle.
Based on reporting from AI and HR: ADP leader says HR isn’t asking the right questions, originally published 2026-08-06 08:00:00.
